6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
After being struck and killed by lightning, a young man recounts the way he blackmailed his fellow classmates into contributing to his literary magazine.
Starring: Chris Colfer, Rebel Wilson, Allison Janney, Christina Hendricks, Sarah HylandComedy | 100% |
Teen | 82% |
Drama | 43% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Justin Bieber has just informed us that he’s an “artist”, a revelation he delivered to a resounding chorus of “boo”’s at the Billboard Music Awards, a response which seemed to throw the self-absorbed youngster into something of a tailspin as he continued to blather on about how all the negative press he’s received (much of which he’s generated due to his ridiculous behavior) shouldn’t be “spoken of”. Note to Bieber: stop acting like an ass, and the press will have less with which to fill their tabloids. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not actually disparaging Bieber’s musical gifts (such as they are), though truth be told, I’m not exactly in the preferred demographic for his material, and the professional musician in me cynically wonders how much of his prefab sound is managed through the artful application of ProTools. But when a 19 year old gallivants around the world, doing spectacularly dunderheaded things like claiming if Anne Frank had lived she would have been a “belieber”, sorry, dude, the term “artist” is not exactly something I’d emblazon you with. (True tidbit: my local paper just had the priceless headline Bieber loses custody of monkey, gets booed onstage.) Which brings us to the case of Chris Colfer, a young man just a couple of years older than Bieber and one of the stars of Glee: The Complete First Season, who has already acquitted himself quite well in both the acting and singing fields. Now Colfer has written both the source novel and adapted screenplay for as well as starred in the amiable enough comedy Struck by Lightning. If Bieber is an “artist”, someone like Colfer, especially someone as relatively unassuming (at least when compared to the self-aggrandziing Bieber), must be something akin to a God.
Struck By Lightning is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of New Video Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This digitally shot feature actually looks rather anemic in high definition, with a strangely muted palette and nothing that really pops with excessive clarity. Extreme close-ups reveal abundant fine detail, but the bulk of this film is unexpectedly lackluster. There's nothing downright horrible about this transfer, and in fact there are no compression artifacts to speak of, but for a very recent vintage film shot in native HD, there's not a lot of "wow" factor here.
Struck By Lightning is similarly fairly subdued in its sound mix, delivered via either a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or DTS- HD Master Audio 2.0 mix. The 2.0 mix is actually a bit clearer at times, being more centrally focused, but the 5.1 mix has some added depth and a couple of decent shots of LFE along the way. Dialogue is cleanly presented and the score, which includes a few nice source cues, fills the surrounds quite well. Fideltiy is excellent but dynamic range is fairly restrained throughout the film.
Struck By Lightning should appeal to anyone who liked The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but it also has something to offer those who might not care one whit about "outcast teenager" films. There's some gentle humor as well as some unexpected pathos in this film. Is it perfect? No—it's too rote at times and it ties everything up a bit too neatly for my personal taste (despite the fact that the "hero" is dead from the get go). But there's a charming and refreshing honesty to much of this film, one that I connected with far more viscerally than I did with Wallflower. This Blu-ray's video is kind of uninspiring (though there are no actual "problems" with it), and the audio is fine if similarly lacking real punch. Despite these qualms, Struck by Lightning comes Recommended.
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