6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A husband and wife are sucked into a hellish TV and have to survive a gauntlet of twisted versions of TV shows they find themselves in.
Starring: Jeffrey Jones, John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Eugene Levy, David TomComedy | 100% |
Dark humor | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
BDInfo
None
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Director Peter Hyams' Stay Tuned is a product of its time, but it's also a timeless satire and dire warning about the perils and pitfalls of electronic addiction. Two years later, Hyams would go on to make a movie that really is about time -- Timecop -- but Stay Tuned is the more relevant work, a less fundamentally entertaining film than Timecop but a picture that nicely balances a hard lesson with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The film feels quaint today with its yard-filling satellite dish a prominent visual, and today large screen and small price off-brand flat panel displays are for sale in just about every corner store, featuring technology that even at the bottom of the barrel puts the film's focal 44" CRT to shame. But Hyams keeps the film focused on the idea, not the technology, finely integrating the concept of mismanaged priorities, addiction, and humor in a film that can be boiled down to UHF meets The Running Man, two films released a few years before Stay Tuned and that were undoubtedly, on some level, inspirations for this work.
Stay Tuned is certainly not the most visually robust movie ever released to Blu-ray. It's a little dull, lacking the bold color intensity and brightness of newer films, but it delivers a solid, capable palette that reveals Roy's green Sonics ballcap, electric blues, a pink sweater, and some other interesting shades throughout the "Hellevision" world to general satisfaction. The colorful cartoon sequence offers a fairly robust palette, while the noir-ish black and white detective segment enjoys a healthy contrast and grayscale. The picture is a little flat and soft but seems fairly accurate to the original photographic source. Light grain is retained and core textural qualities are fine if not unassuming. There are no seriously complex and finely intimate and manicured skin, clothing, or environmental textures, but each earn a passing grade for baseline definition. The image benefits most from the 1080p resolution rather than any super sharpness at the source. There are some nicely detailed wooden structures and dusty terrain textures in the old west segment, which is probably the most purely handsome in the film. Black levels are a little light and skin tones are a touch pasty. The encode is of a high quality, passing difficult scenes in low light and surrounded by smoke with no noticeable issues. A few examples of print wear -- pops, speckles -- are evident but not commonplace.
The included DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track plays rather large for its channel constraints, offering very good front side width whether considering effects or music. The former is often a little more impressive than the latter, but both find plenty of engaging aggression and a sense of spatial awareness, making the most of the constraints and occasionally managing to offer an almost faux sense of surround detail, particularly in the most high energy, involved moments, including big booms of thunder and blowing winds when Roy and Helen are sucked into the satellite, big crowd din at a wrestling match in chapter three, or ripping gunfire, shattering glass, and screaming bystanders in chapter six. Dialogue is adequately detailed and effortlessly images to the front-center stage location.
Stay Tuned's Blu-ray release contains only one extra. The Making of 'Stay Tuned' (1080i upscaled, 4x3, 6:11) offers a plot recap, a character exploration, and takes a look at some of the fictional TV worlds the characters visit. Cast and crew interviews and clips from the film comprise the majority of the feature. This releases does not ship with a slipcover or DVD or digital copies of the film.
If Stay Tuned were remade today, there's no doubt it would center on cell phone addiction, not one man's television watching habits. The film is comically dated today but its core remains fundamentally sound and approachable, a core that is essentially a comically bent warning about the dangers of electronic addiction to the individual and the family structure. The film has a lot of fun throwing its characters into familiar television places and scenarios, and in a world of remakes and re-imaginings it's amazing that the concept hasn't been revisited with a more contemporary digital vessel in the middle of it all. Sony's pressed "manufactured on demand" Blu-ray delivers proficient video and audio. One extra is included. Recommended.
2006
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1986
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1993
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2003
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2014