Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Songwriter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 2, 2019

Mill Creek has released Director Alan Rudolph's 1984 film 'Songwriter' to Blu-ray. The film makes its Blu-ray debut as part of the studio's line of releases featuring 'Retro VHS' slipcovers. The Blu-ray presentation is nothing to write home about, but it does deliver competent A/V quality. The release does not include any supplements. Read on for brief film, video, audio, and packaging reviews.

A star is born...

Songwriter Doc Jenkins (Willie Nelson) finds himself in a bind when a bad deal with music mogul Rodeo Rocky (Richard Sarafian) grows increasingly worse. Rather than give in, Doc fights back when he burns down his old business, starts a new one ("Lone Star Music"), and discovers a young up-and-coming talent named Gilda (Lesley Ann Warren). He decides to put her name on his songs and brings back his old friend Blackie Buck (Kris Kristofferson) to serve as the new company's president. "Gilda's" music takes off, shooting up the charts. She performs with Blackie to full houses and rave reviews, but Rocky isn't going to give up so easily.

The film explores the business of music -- including hard-edged negotiations, at times at the end of a few guns -- but more interestingly the business of the people who make it: their work on the road and in the studio but also the personal details of their everyday lives. The film's focus is on Nelson's Doc, a likable, down-to-earth sort whose talent as a singer/songwriter is eclipsed only by the size of his own heart. As he tries to pull a fast one on his not-so-likable manager by making a star of Gilda, Nelson offers a remarkable inner reflection of a man within a maelstrom of secondhand fame and grueling business negotiations, all the while trying to reconnect with his ex-wife (Melinda Dillon) and his daughters. The film is worth watching for Nelson's performance alone, revealing a character range as perfected and satisfying as his singing voice.

The film is not concerned with building a linear, traditional narrative. Its focus is introspective, building its characters from the inside out (though with plenty of details that work on the "out" side of things) and shaping some of the key emotions through musical prose. The film flows not through point-counterpoint construction but rather within a more intimate character exposé that is itself within the larger world of music business realities and the clash between talent and greed. It's a well-rounded picture and more than capable of carrying a complex character-driven story while also building and exploring the more essential narrative pieces.

Songwriter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Songwriter's 1080p transfer struggles during the opening title sequence which is besieged by extraordinarily thick grain and excess print deterioration, but the image tightens up thereafter. The picture is far from perfect, but it settles into a generally filmic presentation with more evenly distributed and less dense grain, featuring well-rounded textural qualities that reveal intimate skin, hair, clothes, and environmental details with relative ease, though lacking the precise complexity found on the finest 1080p releases, catalogue or new release. Colors are fairly dim and dull, offering little zip or punch but defining essential elements well enough. Black level depth is decent within the image's fairly bland contrast, ditto flesh tones. As noted, signs of print deterioration remain throughout, and mild, but frequently evident, compression artifacts cover many backgrounds.

Songwriter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Songwriter's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack is fairly nondescript, offering a little more space and spread than some other aged tracks from Mill Creek. Musical clarity and vocal delivery, essential to the film's narrative, are delivered with satisfying stretch and detail, the former spreading to the edges and the latter finding a home in an imaged front-center location. A few localized sound effects are nicely defined across the front, wth a few more ambitious elements, such as a tour bus barreling down the road at the 13-minute mark, offering a good bit of stage engagement. Basic dialogue rarely struggles with clarity or prioritization and images to a relatively seamless front-center position.

Songwriter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Finally, a purpose for slipcovers! So often the collectible outer shell features the exact same artwork, front, back, and side as the Blu-ray case inside, making them largely ornamental at best. Occasionally embossing/debossing work adds a little variety but this reviewer has always pitched them in the trash, partly for that reason and partly because doing so saves precious (albeit finite) shelf space, critical when one's collection is in the thousands. Mill Creek has taken a step to make slipcovers a little more meaningful with this line of "Retro VHS" slipcovers that offer a shrunken-down approximation of a vintage rental store copy and also feature a portion of a VHS tape extending from the side of the case, even if most VHS covers were open at the bottom.

For Songwriters, the cover features a bit of fake wear (creases, edge frays) and a red border around the box's edge. The box features a pair of stickers, one notifying of the film's R rating and the other advertising that the film is a Drama, the former being slightly atop the latter. The front artwork is significantly different than the Blu-ray case inside, which is a much less interesting and dynamic (though still vintage), but it's nice to have two different artworks available in one package. The main title sticker on the VHS tape reveals the film's title, some legalese, as well as the word "color." The sticker shows some handling wear, too. A "Be Kind Rewind" sticker has also been applied. Of course these are not real stickers (it would be great if they were) but rather part of the print, and there's no texture to the cassette, either. Still, it's a pretty nifty visual. The rear side is a little less neat, keeping up with the vintage look at the top but showing a few necessary tech details on the bottom that correspond to the Blu-ray. The bottom side of the VHS tape is also visible. Humorously, a handful of Blu-ray disc logos appear on the front, rear, and spine to break the illusion (though not entirely); the one on the front, situated at the top, in a fairly large size, is the worst offender.

What would be really cool would be if the entire box art mimicked the VHS cover and the Blu-ray artwork underneath entirely mimicked the VHS tape, which could have easily been accomplished. That would offer more of a seamless illusion of actually pulling a VHS tape out of the package rather than it simply appear printed on part of the slipcover.

Note: Photographs of several other Mill Creek 'Retro VHS' slipcovers can be found here, here, and here. Because each slipcover offers the same basic layout with only some small unique identifiers distinguishing one from another beyond cover art, photos will not be included for every release in the line. Those linked images do offer a good overview representation of what to expect form this line.

As for on-disc supplemental content, there is none. This one at least offers a top menu screen, but its only option is "Play."

Songwriter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Songwriter has the feel of a film in a very raw state, but at its center it's very complete. It's a simple tale of humanity in a much more complicated world, about the music industry and the songwriting process but also about the people who operate in it. Willie Nelson is a revelation, proving to be as talented an actor as he is a musician. Mill Creek's "Retro VHS" slipcover Blu-ray is itself a bit rough around the A/V edges, and no bonus material is included. But the disc is priced to move, and the technical presentation serves the film well enough. Recommended.

Coming soon: '90s retro slipcovers!