6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
In the boring desert of New Mexico, a single mother raises her two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, whose deepest desire is to leave the dead calm town. Shade is the type to escape in her extravagant fantasies while Trudi is so rebellious it could drive her away.
Starring: Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, James Brolin, Robert KnepperDrama | 100% |
Romance | 11% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
BDInfo verified
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The universe sometimes (often?) works in mysterious ways. For reasons which will perhaps be obvious (or at least discernable) to those who know both properties, I kind of started thinking of Gilmore Girls as I was watching Gas Food Lodging (the title is variously rendered with or without commas), Allison Anders’ 1992 film featuring a hard working waitress single mom and her two daughters. Yes, that two daughter thing is an obvious manifest difference, but there’s a kind of underlying dynamic at play in the film which in some ways presages the long running series. In any case, the mysterious universe supplied a little punchline when I turned to my New York Times crossword app shortly after watching the movie and one of the first clues which greeted me was “Gilmore Girls girl” (the answer was Rory, for those wondering). As Anders gets into in an appealing interview included on this Blu-ray release as a supplement, she pretty radically reinvented Richard Peck’s source novel Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt, since, as Anders herself states on a few occasions in the interview, “I write my own stuff.” Those changes evidently included whittling down an original three daughters from the novel, as well as giving mom Nora (Brooke Adams) more of a love life. There’s a bittersweet quality running through Gas Food Lodging, and the focal trio of Nora and daughters Trudi (Ione Skye) and Shade (Fairuza Balk) are all brought memorably to life in a somewhat vignette driven enterprise that highlights the sometimes perilous trajectories that can develop between parent and child, as well as siblings.
Gas Food Lodging is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains only the following generic verbiage about the transfer:
Gas Food Lodging is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with 2.0 stereo sound. The HD Master was provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.We're showing another version of Gas, Food, Lodging that looks like it was relatively recently a part of Sony's MOD program, a program whose quality can at times not be quite up to the usual standards of the august label, and my hunch is this is probably the same master, since it has a few issues along the way. A lot of the brightly lit outdoor material pops quite nicely, with excellent detail levels in things like the often complex patterns in fabrics that both Shade and Trudi wear. But there's fairly wide variability throughout this presentation both in terms of sharpness and clarity, but also in terms of grain resolution and density and saturation. Some of the rougher looking moments are shown in screenshots 18 and 19, where the darkness of the environment certainly contributes, but there are other, more brightly lit moments, where things can look a little mottled (see screenshot 5 for one example). Other moments seem a bit blanched when compared to the bulk of the presentation (see screenshots 8 and 11). Nothing here is horrible by any stretch, and there's a refreshing lack of major damage to be seen, but this is a title that might have benefited from a new scan and some restoration efforts.
Gas Food Lodging features a nice sounding LPCM 2.0 track, one which supports some of the enjoyable musical elements quite well, while also rendering what is in essence a pretty "talky" enterprise without any problems. Ambient environmental effects dot a lot of the outdoor material, and dialogue is always rendered with clarity and no issues with regard to dropouts or distortion.
This is the first release I can recall personally reviewing that refers to "views expressed in value added materials" in the opening "disclosure" text divorcing the releasing entities from any connection to said materials. The "value added materials" are:
Gas Food Lodging is a bittersweet film and one that coasts a considerable way on the combined charisma of an effective cast. The story has a bit of a struggle maintaining forward momentum, and the ending seems a bit anticlimactic in a way, but there's some honest emotion here that may recommend the film to those who like smaller scale character studies. Video has a few passing issues, but audio is fine and the supplements quite enjoyable. Recommended.
Arrow Academy
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