Blue Smoke/Carolina Moon (Nora Roberts Telefilms on DVD)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: C+
The Nora
Roberts telefilm releases continue on DVD with two more melodramas in the new
series being issued on DVD by Sony. Blue Smoke offers Alicia Witt is an
interestingly odd tale of a young lady who saw her family pizzeria burn down at
age 11. This makes her want to be an
arson investigator. Gotta love the idea. Just when she finds potential love with a new
man (Matthew Settle), the evil person behind the destruction of the family
business comes back. Of course, he must
die.
Carolina Moon has Claire Forlani (whose career
went into an odd tailspin after being paired with Freddie Prinze, Jr.) as a gal
with premonitions of the future. She is
haunted by some horrific images, but a man (Oliver Hudson from the TV comedy Rules Of Engagement) may be the key to
finding out what is behind the visions.
Jacqueline Bisset also stars.
Both
telefilms are once again competent, but also formulaic, predictable and aimed
at a female audience. It is pretending
to be feminist, but is post-feminist and in its ideology, a bit right of center
if not as bad as the last set. Thanks to
the Horror-like angles, these are not as awfully melodramatic as the Angel Falls/Montana Sky set, just not much better. Overall, it is the better set of releases.
The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image is once again softer and
more color limited than expected in both cases, shot in digital High
Definition. Both have plenty of weak shots
and the compositions are far from imaginative.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is surprisingly surrounds limited and even
dialogue-weak. The production audio is
just spread around and it is simple stereo at best. There are still no extras for some reason.
- Nicholas Sheffo
