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Category:    Home > Reviews > Special Interest > Baseball > Sports > Pure Heat - Ultimate MLB Flamethrowers

Pure Heat: Ultimate MLB Flamethrowers (Documentary)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Documentary: B-

 

 

In film, you hear about franchises all the time, but what about baseball, a sport that has been around longer than film itself?  In recent years, beginning particularly in the 1980s, some feel the sport has become too commercial and even semi-Hollywood in presentation.  Watching the pitching retrospective Pure Heat: Ultimate MLB Flamethrowers (2005), I considered the validity of this claim as the show, which runs about 65 minutes, does cover as much of all those years as it can.  However, it is so lopsided towards newer players that it does ring with the sincerity it should have.

 

Baseball fan or not, this DVD officially licensed by Major League Baseball to Shout! Factory is still a good show, but not to the extent it could have been.  Too bad this was not an extended version of the program, because there is no doubt the MLB archive has tons of footage that would have made this work better.  Instead, it becomes too self congratulatory and as a result, is not as journalistic or more deeply celebratory of the roots of the game.  Despite that, it makes for a decent if disappointing show.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is odd, with moiré fringing on some parts of some images, such fringing all over other footage, yet all from very clean video.  The film footage fares better, even when it might be a tad muddy, a problem that is obviously going to be worse with older NTSC video shown earlier on.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is also fine, but has no surround information.  Extras include five extended sequences from actual games to show the highlights of pitching at its best.  Fans will find it worth a look and non-fans a too-brief crash course.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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