Blu-ray Review Lovelace Blu-Ray Review (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

Lovelace Blu-Ray Review

Linda Lovelace, the star of 70s porn phenomenon 'Deep Throat' has went through quite a few social transformations. At the beginning of her career, she was perceived as a sexually liberated young girl who represented the next step in the free love generation. Lovelace gained fame not just through the film 'Deep Throat' but also through numerous TV and party event tours, speaking and advocating her role in 'Deep Throat' and sexual liberation.In the film 'Lovelace', which closely follows her own book, 'Ordeal', we instead look at these events differently, as though all appearances and events that led up to her appearance in 'Deep Throat' was a giant act in order to deal with ongoing abuse - spousal and child abuse - that she ran from her entire life.

Studio: Anchor Bay

Distributed By: Anchor Bay

Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HDMA

Subtitles: English SDH

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 Hr. 33 Min.

Package Includes: Blu-ray

Disc Type: BD25 (single layer)

Region:

Release Date: 11/05/2013

MSRP: $29.99

The Production Rating: 3/5

Linda Boreman's story is one that can only be told with a large series of caveats. When she first came forward with her story in 'Ordeal', she was immediately embraced by those who oppose pornography and questioned by those who doubted both her motives and sincerity. Enough so that the editors of that book demanded polygraphs (which appear in this film) because they, also, found her story unbelievable in light of all of the prior appearances in support of her adult film work... and what followed.In 1980, when Ordeal was published, Lovelace recounted seemingly unbelievable tales: forced at gunpoint to be raped by five men, forced on camera to have sex with a dog, tales that she was beat and raped nightly. Ordeal was such a buzz book that she made appearances on daily shows like Donahue and multiple media sources.Linda Boreman's narrative that the porn industry had chewed her up and done terrible things to her was wildly popular, and frankly, if even a small portion of it was true, it marked a despicable way to treat another human being.The problem with Ordeal, though, was that Lovelace was a terrible narrator, faltering back and forth, and eventually recanting some of her own book when she returned to adult shoots in the mid 80s for a short while. Linda's back and forth on her own work, as well as repeated denials by those named within the book made for a very interesting potential biography; a way to tell a story with a lot of different viewpoints to shape a complex, difficult to understand story.Lovelace, the film, seems to skirt away from that. The first two segments of the film are amazingly effective at portraying Lovelace as the life-style loving free spirit who was into the porn scene and embraced it. The third act, however tells the entire story again from the perspective of the book, as to provide a meaningful way to rethink the entire story from Linda's perspective, an abused and battered woman forced into a career she did not desire.The film has a few great performances; Seyfried sells her role and Peter Sarsgaard both are good, but Sharon Stone's performance as Linda's mother works on every level. Despite having such a great cast, though, the film can't overcome the problems with it.I've often thought that autobiograhies don't necessarily make for great films; because they are told from the perspective of the person who lived it, they too often lionize themselves. The bigger problem here is that Linda Boreman never held a consistent narrative and the numerous rebuttals to her work are given no weight at all.This isn't to say that she wasn't abused, harmed, and potentially raped - and that story should be told. But this film seems to completely deny any other viewpoint on any events leaving you feel as though you're only seeing a small part of the story.

Dick Long Scene

Film Shoot Scene

Video Rating: 3/5 3D Rating: NA

Filmed in a style designed to mimic seventies films, Lovelace provides a grainy and sometimes too dark view of the world it is trying to present. There are times where I want a film to feel and look authentic to the period, and moments where the settings and film design is simply distracting to the viewer.Lovelace unfortunately crosses over into the latter category too often, and the video design doesn't just look old-school it looks more like poorly upkept old-school film practices. This is fairly distracting for the end viewer.While the film is probably encoded correctly, at a very high overall bitrate (26.8Mbps AWBR) the film is not one you will ever use to show off the quality of your home theater.

Audio Rating: 4.5/5

In contrast to the video methods, the audio is quite good; dialogue is crisp and clear and the use of all channels helps set the soundstage. The film is really dialogue heavy, but it manages to stay crisp and clean. In more boisterous moments, music and atmosphere feel all channels in the room, giving you a real feeling of being in the center of the party.

Special Features Rating: 1/5

Behind 'Lovelace' - This 13:57 HD add-on gives the filmmakers view of the film, and frankly it is the reason why I wrote most of the intro to this review. It is obvious after watching this behind the scenes that this film really takes the story of 'Ordeal' at nearly face value, rejecting any other viewpoint on Linda Boreman's career. This is OK, but it makes me feel as though the film from the onset left all the good cards on the table; in a biopic film that could have challenged viewpoints and provided multiple ways to look at the story, the directors chose the most straightforward method of handling the storyline.There are no other extras, pardoning trailers.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Lovelace is a film that has a lot going for it; Amanda Seyfried does a sensational job portraying her role, and the story is interesting. The problem with this film is that there is a willing audience who wants to see all of the good and bad of the porn industry and the film doesn't really address that effectively. In contrast, even the porn industry is working to revisit their past and cover events - industry driven sites like DistribPix are updating 1960s/1970s pornographic titles to BluRay, re-interviewing the actors, directors and others to talk about the impact of porn (though mostly positive) and trying to sort through the industry.I had looked for something like Lovelace to be an effective counterpoint to these more upbeat titles, but the fact that it fails to address any of the controversy around Ordeal or to deal with any second guessing on the narrative hurts what I think could have been an effective indictment on the treatment of women.

Reviewed By: MattCR

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[schan1269]

This movie tells its story like Cpt. Philips tells its story...

Enjoyable as long as you have blinders. I'm still buying it.

And like mentioned before...this movie should go along with Lovelace...(if you have a region-free DVD player...haven't checked Netflix/Hulu etc...)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-Girl-Ruth-Vega-Fernandez/dp/B00DTUF4G8/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1383501238&sr=1-1&keywords=call+girl

 

[Richard Gallagher]

A Salt Lake City Tribune reporter interviewed Harry Reems a couple of months before Reems died. Reems said that the filmmakers never asked him about what happened on the set of Deep Throat, and he denied that Linda Lovelace was mistreated on the set.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22425058/harry-reems-former-porn-star-talks-about-linda

It's clear to me that her story is a combination of fact and fiction. The problem is figuring out what is fact and what is fiction.

 

[mattCR]

What makes her story somewhat confusing is that she did return to porn briefly, and she recanted some of the elements of the book (things that are not in the movie, like the forced sex with animals and the sex at gunpoint) but then she said she got desperate for money and did that.. it's all very muddied.

Frankly, all of that makes for great possibilities in telling this story; to show how confusing and potentially dangerous ... But I think if they had let this be a little bit more questionable and not so self-assured this would have been a better that could have sparked some debate and discussion.

The fact that it is completely open-and-shut I think hurts any real discussion of events.

 

[haineshisway]

While I don't really have any interest in thoughts about the film, I do take exception to the video rating and how it's presented. The job of a reviewer is to report if the video accurately captures the intended look of the film, and if it does it should get the highest marks - it's really that simple. It doesn't matter if the reviewer "thinks" it should look some other way, or doesn't like the photography or the style - that's for the body of the review not the video rating. If a transfer perfectly replicates what the director and DP put on film, then that's a five-star rating. This rating is based solely on the reviewers preferences or wishes and has nothing to do with the actual transfer and how it does its job. I mean no disrespect here, but I just don't find it kosher in this instance.

 

[Ruz-El]

I'd suggest skipping this one and watching "Inside Deep Throat", a much better documentary on the subject.

Having just finished reading "The Other Hollywood", it seems that both porn and anti-porn people manipulated Linda for their own gain. Her side of things are contradictory, and the other side of things are mostly those sided with some real dirt bags, so who knows what the "truth" is? I think it can be said with some certainty that Linda wasn't the complete naive innocent presented here

There is a good movie to be made about Lovelace, but this one isn't it. I found it tried to hard to be "Boogie Nights", but ended up just being looking cheap.

 

[schan1269]

While I don't really have any interest in thoughts about the film, I do take exception to the video rating and how it's presented. The job of a reviewer is to report if the video accurately captures the intended look of the film, and if it does it should get the highest marks - it's really that simple. It doesn't matter if the reviewer "thinks" it should look some other way, or doesn't like the photography or the style - that's for the body of the review not the video rating. If a transfer perfectly replicates what the director and DP put on film, then that's a five-star rating. This rating is based solely on the reviewers preferences or wishes and has nothing to do with the actual transfer and how it does its job. I mean no disrespect here, but I just don't find it kosher in this instance.

I watched snippets of this. While I agree 3 is low. I'm not sure it is a 5 either. At least 4.5.

And this "ranking video on thoughts of expectation" not on "intent as filmed" is odd. But it is what it is. IF this forum gets either MS 45 or Whip and the Body for review...I hope the reviewers chosen actually own the DVD to compare them to(I'm not the only one here to own either...but I could be the only one with both...maybe?)