5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Writer Hall Baltimore, in career decline, comes to a small town during a book tour, and becomes involved in the murder investigation of a young girl. In a dream, he is approached by a youthful ghost named V, whose connection to the murder is unclear.
Starring: Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin, Joanne WhalleyHorror | 100% |
Surreal | 12% |
Thriller | 8% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.00:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.00:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
There's a New Age maxim that the universe is going to deliver what you need directly to your doorstep, which may then beg the question as to why Francis Ford Coppola may seem to "need" so many problems when he sets about to make a film. His foray into near madness is well documented in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (included on the Apocalypse Now 4K release), and while a really appealing documentary by his granddaughter Gia included on this disc charmingly shows, while Coppola was emotionally almost ebullient during this production, there was evidently no shortage of issues surrounding the shooting of this film. That mention of New Age sensibilities may be even more salient given a brief moment in Gia's documentary that shows Francis having the cast and crew join hands in a Kum-ba-yah moment that includes some kind of magical incantation. When the documentary also shows weird little vignettes like Elle Fanning evidently having been kept from the first day of shooting for some indeterminate but seemingly vindictive reason (not on the part of Fanning, just to be clear), it is almost achingly obvious that the shoot had any number of obstacles to overcome. That aspect aside, however, it may be the fact that Coppola reveals in this documentary that whatever you want to call this film (more about that in a moment), it stemmed from an "unfinished" dream Coppola was having in Istanbul when he was shocked awake by the "alarm clock" of the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer at the veritable crack of dawn. Some Freudians and/or Jungians might suggest that basing a film on even a finished dream might be a risky proposition, but as even Coppola discusses, he was basically attempting to fill in a rather inchoate dreamscape for the "film version", and that lack of clarity and purpose suffuses the once and future B'Twixt Now and Sunrise to not especially helpful effect.
B'Twixt Now and Sunrise is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and Zoetrope Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1. Based on the admittedly risky screenshot comparison approach, this doesn't look to me to differ in any significant way from the now nearly decade old Blu-ray of the theatrical version. Gia's documentary actually shows some of the even then probably midrange HD cams used for the shoot, and as such, this has an undeniably "video"-esque look a lot of the time, with a somewhat flat image. As Casey mentioned in his review, a lot of the presentation is razor sharp, almost to the point that it can look artificially sharpened (though I don't think it was), and the palette is also extremely variant throughout, due to some aggressive grading choices. Casey wasn't much of a fan of the dream world's emphasis on desaturation with only one or two elements in the frame offering any hint of hue, but I rather liked it, despite the fact that in the blue gradings in particular fine detail can noticeably ebb.
B'Twixt Now and Sunrise features Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio (though once again the menu brands it with only the standard Dolby logo, without identifying it as TrueHD). The film's lower budget can't help but penetrate to a somewhat underwhelming sound design, but there is still some clear surround activity in the dream sequences in particular. Occasional "waking moments" also offer some engagement of the side and rear channels for both ambient environmental effects and at least occasionally directional dialogue. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.
It's maybe either sad or hilarious or some indescribable combination thereof that Val Kilmer and Joanna Whalley reunited (kinda sorta) for this film, and that may be of some interest for trivia buffs. There's potentially little else here probably even for fans of Kilmer, Fanning and/or Dern, not to mention Francis Ford Coppola. I personally found the film's stylistic gambits to be a bit more enjoyable than Casey did, and some of the dream world material almost succeeds in capturing a diaphanous alternate reality. Technical merits are generally solid and I found the documentary by granddaughter Gia to be rather charming, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.
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