Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie Review

Or, A-Maze and Young Eastie’s horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 14, 2010

“Mo’ money, mo’ problems,” was the mantra of the Notorious B.I.G., who found out the hard way that life at the top of the rap game isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, there’s Cristal and McMansions, pimped out cars and more booty than you’d find in the hull of a pirate ship, but along with success comes the inevitable: sycophantic leeches, old “friends” looking for a handout, legal woes, high stakes rivalries. The hip hop scene has cooled off a bit from the superheated gangster rap days of the 1990s—when the east and west coasts seemed permanently embroiled in opposition—but making it to the top is still an exercise in danger and dedication, requiring just as much street smarts and business sense as raw talent. Just Another Day, a fictional new film by hip hop documentarian Peter Spirer (Rhyme and Punishment), explores a day in the life of two rappers, one a platinum selling mega-star, the other fresh from the streets and eager to prove himself.

It’s a hard knock life for Young Eastie (Jamie Hector, The Wire), a talented rapper who just cut his first demo. He lives with his sisters and overbearing mom on the rough side of Miami, works at a down home diner—where he sells pot through the drive through window to make some extra cash—and longs for the rags to riches trajectory that makes the rap game just another iteration of the American Dream. Unlike many wannabe rappers, scrawling sloppy rhymes in composite notebooks while pining for the spotlight, Young Eastie actually has skills. The trouble is getting the right people to notice them. He’s got a lead with Gary (Inny Clemons), the business manager for successful hip hop artist A-Maze (Wood Harris, also of The Wire), but getting his demo to Gary is more difficult that you’d think. First of all, there’s a war going on between two rival Haitian drug gangs, and people all over the city are getting shot just for looking like potential dealers. (At one point, Young Eastie is forced to rhyme at gunpoint to prove he’s a rapper, not a dealer, even though—technically—he’s both.) When he finally scrapes up enough cash to pay for the demo—with some help from a one-time girlfriend—Eastie has to track down A-Maze’s entourage and pass the disc off in person. (E-mail or FTP sites don’t cut it, I guess.) This, in and off itself, is quite an urban adventure.

A-Maze’s day isn’t going any easier. The head of his record label (Big Daddy Kane) is pressuring the perfectionist to put out another album—his last didn’t even go gold—and a Hollywood movie exec has decided A-Maze is too controversial a commodity to put in a feature film. But these are the least of his problems. A beef with rival rapper B-Bone (Petey Pablo) has flared up and the word on the street is that A-Maze is basically a dead man walking. His publicist wants to play up the conflict to generate sales—citing the longstanding hatred between 50 Cent and JaRule, who makes a brief cameo in the film—but A-Maze smartly retorts, “I ain’t never seen a publicist lying face down in the gutter.” The threat proves very real, as B-Bone’s people trail A-Maze crew all day, taking pop shots and phoning in violent threats. For A-Maze, this is—as the title suggests—just another day, and as he struggles to keep his status as king of the hip hop mountain, it’s clear that the lifestyle is taking its toll. He’s tired, wary, always on guard. If he sees his former self in Young Eastie’s fiery ambition, he hides the resemblance under layers of denial and dismissal.

More complex than your average hip hop movie—where success is defined by “making it”—Just Another Day is, if not an outright cautionary tale, at least a warning that, as Big Daddy Kane’s character tells Young Eastie, “some dreams become nightmares.” Even when the film revels in the excesses of rap culture—misogyny, macho posturing, violence—it does so backhandedly, simultaneously showing how destructive these tendencies can be, and how they affect Young Eastie and A-Maze similarly. By following two characters over the course of a single day, writer Iain Kennedy and director Peter Spirer effectively show that whether you’re standing on the top or grasping the bottom rung, the ladder—the hip hop game—is still the same. The troubles that A- Maze encounters, and the hustles that he runs, are identical to Young Eastie’s, just on a larger scale. Jamie Hector and Wood Harris have been in this situation before—on HBO’s The Wire, Hector played an up-and-coming rival to Harris’ drug empire—and they both slip convincingly into their roles. The supporting cast, though, gives mixed performances. Big Daddy Cane and Young Dre—who plays dreadlocked rapper Selahsi—are good, but it’s amateur hour for some of the smaller parts. Believability sometimes takes a hit, but Spirer makes up for it by shooting in some of Florida’s rougher locales, using hand-held high definition video cameras for a look that has quasi-documentary realism but still feels cinematic. The vibe is enhanced by composer Vita Colapietro’s original hip hop score, which stands up toe to toe with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” from 8 Mile.

Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot on high definition video, Just Another Day arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC encode that seems true to source. That said, the source has a few issues that are common to lower-budgeted shot-on-video productions. First off, video doesn't have as wide of an exposure latitude as film, so highlights here—the sky, bright lights on actors' faces, white t-shirts—are frequently blown out, erasing detail in a wash of blinding white. Black levels, on the other hand, aren't as dark as they could be, and the combined result is an image that's both flat and somewhat harsh. Still, it is what it is, and for what it is, Just Another Day looks pretty good. There are definitely some soft shots—mostly due to subjects slipping out of focus, a byproduct of handheld camerawork—but in general the picture is fairly sharp, with defined facial and clothing textures. Color reproduction is a little dull—another effect of shooting on video—but there are some occasionally vivid primaries and skin tones stay warm and natural. With the exception of a few nighttime scenes, video noise is kept to a minimum, and I didn't spot any overt banding or aliasing.

Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a movie about the hip hop scene, you'd expect Just Another Day's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track to really kick, and it does—to some extent. The music throughout sounds excellent, filling out all the channels with crisp snare hits, ultra-low bass response, and a tonal range with real breadth. The surprise, then, is that everything else about this mix feels restrained and front-heavy. Aside from the music, the rear channels have very little to do. You'll occasionally hear some ambience —chatter at a record store, club noise, street sounds—but it's very quiet and uninvolving. I don't think I noticed a single cross-channel effect. I chalk this up to the fact that the film is shot in a quasi- documentary style, with most of the audio captured on-location. This also seems to have affected some of the dialogue, which has a tendency to feel slightly withdrawn in the mix. I found that boosting the volume a few clicks did the trick. English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering, but I did notice that on a few occasions the subtitles lag about two seconds behind what is being said.

Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

A Hip Hop Hustle: The Making of Just Another Day (SD, 9:53)
Opening with a montage of behind-the-scenes footage set to music from the film, this short "making of" documentary eventually expands to include interviews with most of the key players.

Just Another Day Making Music (SD, 9:26)
More interesting is this music-making featurette, which shows how the actors collaborated with composer Vita Colapietro to create the rap songs featured in the film.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 5:30)
Includes five short deleted scenes.

Trailer (SD, 2:49)

Just Another Day Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The hip hop movie genre has its own set of clichés, and while Just Another Day succumbs to some of them, it differentiates itself with a clever narrative structure that shows both what it's like to be on top and what it's like to struggle to get there. I don't think the film has as much crossover appeal to non-hip hop oriented audiences as, say, 8 Mile, but it's entertaining and even occasionally poignant. Definitely worth a rental for those interested.