HTF REVIEW: Blood and Wine (1 Viewer)

[Michael Osadciw]

BLOOD AND WINE




Studio: 20th Century Fox
Film Year: 1996
Film Length: 101 minutes
Genre: Crime/Drama

Aspect Ratio:
[*] 1.85:1 enhanced widescreen

Colour/B&W: Colour

Audio:[*] English 5.1 Surround[*] Spanish Dolby 2.0 Surround[*] French Dolby 2.0 Surround

Subtitles: English & Spanish
Film Rating:







Release Date: February 7, 2005.


Film Rating: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Starring: Jack Nicholson (Alex Gates), Stephen Dorff (Jason), Jennifer Lopez (Gabriela), Judy Davis (Suzanne), Michael Caine (Vic), Harold Perrineau (Henry)

Written by: Nick Villers & Bob Rafelson
Directed by: Bob Rafelson


There is no honour amongst thieves.[/i]


Blood and Wine is the story of Alex Gates, a man with a shady second life to his family. Married to beautiful wife and owning a wine shop in southern Florida, Alex seems to have a normal and enjoyable life. But his wine business is quietly failing and his wife has been troubled with some alcohol issues. During this time, it’s given Alex a chance to do some philandering.

There is no one to keep him in line from his risky business either. His stepson has had difficulties working a respectable and steady job. Their relationship is poor and neither of them care for each other at all. A good poker friend of Alex has also been involved in crime. It’s no wonder that Alex has been so easy drawn in to participate in a successful crime of stealing a million dollar diamond necklace to get his life out of the pits.

It’s not until Alex takes a few miscalculated steps that he gets caught in a situation where his wife finds plane tickets to New York with false names on it – one of a man and the other of a woman. It is this incident in the film when things go backwards. The necklace is unknowing taken by his wife and Alex goes on pursuit for it. With his stepson on his mother’s side and a beautiful ex-nanny on an unknown side, who knows how the situation will turn up in the crime-drama.

This is the third film in director Rafelson’s informal trilogy starting with Five Easy Pieces and then The King of Marvin Gardens. This film has a great cast but it’s surprisingly disappointing. The characters are thin in development, especially Alex’s wife played by Judy Davis. She’s underrepresented in the beginning of the film only to take on a larger role later through the film. Nicholson’s acting is very dry in this film, but it’s a trait of him that is so common in all of his films. I just found his character uninteresting. Jennifer Lopez as the nanny is typecast to play her Latino role. Unfortunately, neither her acting at this point of her career or her character is worth mentioning. In fact it’s more comical if anything. Which brings me to my final point: I really don’t care for any of the characters or what happens to any of them. They were on screen for 101 minutes and the disc will go back on my DVD shelf for a long time. This is unfortunate because I wanted to really like the movie but in the end it was only satisfactory. I give it a C+ grade.


VIDEO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: :star:

/ :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

I am very impressed with the quality of this DVD. The first thing I noticed immediately is that there is not a hair of edge enhancement on this disc. On my 110” screen, the image shows the sharpness limitation of DVD. I’ve been watching a lot of HD lately such as the Superbowl as well as the Olympics (but must admit that NBC’s HD looks terrible in comparison to CBC’s HD channel in Canada – there is far more information on the CBC feed when available). So…in comparison, this disc looks soft, but correct for the format. It doesn’t have edginess while trying to impress with false detail like discs with enhancement have.

Compression artefacts are almost entirely absent (except for a minor blip at about 1h13m into the film just before Vic hits Alex on the hammock in his backyard – I forgot to write the time down). Anyways, that little error is virtually unnoticeable and happens only for a fraction of a second and only appears on Michael Caine’s face.

The colour temperature of the film is warm throughout. Colours look on par with reality in the sense that they don’t look over or under saturated for the medium. The film’s black level is a little higher than I’d like to see it because it ever so slightly reduces contrast. Film grain is also very minor.

The aspect ratio of this DVD looks correct at 1.85:1. Viewing the film with less than 1% overscan all around shows the film to be evenly framed in its correct aspect ratio.

There is a 1.33:1 full frame presentation on Side A (not reviewed).


AUDIO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

The film is encoded with Dolby Digital 5.1. The audio is really 4.0 surround. All five channels plus the subwoofer are encoded but the actual content doesn’t play back that way. Not once did my Mirage BPS-400 subwoofer turn on with its auto-protect mode. Any bass in the film, which is very little given that this is mostly a dialogue film, is up in the main channels.

Dialogue is clear. It sounds like a good mix of live dialogue and ADR. The ADR is well integrated but doesn’t quite sound the same as being taken directly off the set. Sound effects fit the scenes and never draw attention to it. While not a loud soundtrack, the sounds have good fidelity to make them feel real.

Surround activity is also very low. I did not notice any discrete left-right surround activity. If there was, it was so minimal to the point of being undetectable. There is a little bit of presence with the film’s music score.

One annoyance that happened several times during the film was high-frequency noise. It just rings for a little while during a few scenes as well as into other scenes. It also came mostly from the left channel.

SPECIAL FEATURES :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Yay! Fox has included widescreen enhanced features finally!! The 7 making-of featurettes, which focus on everything from film to cast (”Genesis,” “The Characters,” The Job of Acting,” “On Jack Nicholson,” “On Michael Caine,” “On Bob Rafelson” and “Bob and Jack – Long Dialogue” - spread over 32 minutes), are enhanced for widescreen TVs. Not to say that all of the footage was done with an HD camera. A lot of it is standard-def video cameras zoomed in to fill a widescreen image. Viewing with almost no overscan, the image doesn’t always fit to the far sides. Most of this footage is dated, if not most than all of it, back to the day when the film was made. I’m not that familiar with the director so his footage looks a little newer. Since this is the first time this film has been released on DVD, I’m assuming it is new because we also get a commentary from the director as well. It’s more intensive than the screen-specific commentary that we hear from both Nicholson and Dorff – theirs only add up to about 3 minutes total and is not new. It sounds like it’s pulled from their on-camera interviews in 1996 and that audio was just put over the scenes they briefly talked about.

Fans of the film may also like the 13 minutes of deleted scenes. There are eight of them total and look like they are from a video version of a workprint (the video is 4:3 but in widescreen).

Lastly, the film also has the theatrical trailer (in 16:9) as well


In the end...

While I didn’t find it the most entertaining film, it’s worth to check out the performance of Michael Caine because it’s always hard to fault the guy for being a star on screen. The film is rated R but I think that’s way too harsh of a rating for what goes out the door these days. The DVD is flawless in its presentation so for those of you who have been waiting a long time for this can finally break open a bottle…

Michael Osadciw
February 13, 2006.