Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.5
Overall		4.0

Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie Review

At Last I've Found You

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 25, 2015

The original release date for the Blu-ray of Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky was April 15, 2014, and it was postponed so many times that fans began to feel like Charlie Brown being offered a football to kick. But here it is at last, with some remarkable new extras as a reward for the delay. Released by Warner under its licensing deal with Paramount, Crowe's 2001 remake—or, as he prefers to call it, "cover"—of the 1997 Spanish psychological mystery Abre los ojos remains a stubbornly bizarre creation. As Crowe says in one of his new commentaries, there's a special look in the eyes of people who want to talk to him about Vanilla Sky. It's the kind of jigsaw puzzle with which fans get obsessed and, with this new Blu-ray, Crowe has tossed a stack of new pieces on the table.

Released in the holiday season, promoted with a huge image of star Tom Cruise and billed as a film by the director of Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky did good box office, but it was not warmly embraced. In the featurette recording the promotional tour, Crowe tells of a journalist who left the interview wanting to strangle him, and in the commentary he recounts how one theater usher offered refunds before the film started to anyone who was there under the mistaken impression that they would be seeing a romantic comedy. The negative reactions were not a surprise; indeed, Crowe and Cruise (who co-produced) courted them deliberately. One of the major differences between Vanilla Sky and its Spanish source is the former's often playful exploration of a peculiarly American style of worshiping celebrity, wealth and success—a style that finds its most common expression in advertising and popular culture. What better way to subvert pop culture than to take one of its most familiar avatars, a bankable movie star with a thousand-watt smile, and systematically distort his image? (And for anyone who hasn't yet seen Vanilla Sky, I mean "distort" in the most literal sense.)

In Jerry Maguire, Crowe and Cruise put a shallow but good-hearted charmer on a road to redemption that had a few odd turns but was generally familiar. Vanilla Sky's path, by contrast, goes completely off the map and possibly into another dimension. Multiple interpretations exist, and Crowe has made a point of saying that he rejects none of them, even those that are based on mistake. (A date that appeared by accident in an early scene supports an interpretation the filmmakers never anticipated, and Crowe says that the film wanted to make room for that reading.) In every interpretation, though, the main character wasn't the typical Tom Cruise hero. He might not even be a hero.

David Aames (Cruise) is the 33-year-old heir to a publishing empire based in New York City. He has a fabulous apartment in the historic Dakota (where John Lennon lived), filled with artwork and gadgets, and women light up in his presence. In the words of his best friend, aspiring novelist Brian Shelby (Jason Lee), David is "living the dream". But in the famous opening sequence of Vanilla Sky, David has an odd nightmare. He arises and drives to work through curiously unpopulated Manhattan streets, only to arrive in a Times Square that is utterly deserted. Empty. Brightly lit but devoid of life. As David runs screaming through the empty city, he awakens next to his latest lady-of-the-moment, Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), an aspiring actress whose sell-by date is rapidly approaching. (The Times Square sequence was accomplished without the use of CG, on an early Sunday morning.)

This is only the first in numerous shifts of perspective in Vanilla Sky, which takes the technique of the "unreliable narrator" to new extremes. The nightmare and David's awakening turn out to be a flashback told by David to a police psychologist, Dr. Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell), who is evaluating David in a prison cell guarded by Aaron (Michael Shannon). According to Dr. McCabe, David has been charged with a murder that David insists never occurred. According to David, he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy by his board of directors ("the Seven Dwarves", as he calls them) to seize control of the publishing company, despite the legal barriers erected by his long-time family attorney, Thomas Tipp (Timothy Spall). Dr. McCabe seems to have the better of the argument, though, since he is able to point out that it is David who insists on wearing a rubber mask.

David's attempt to explain himself to McCabe leads back to his 33rd birthday party, at which several key events occurred. One is that Julie Gianni showed up without an invitation—a fact of which David promptly and ungallantly informed the lady as she was standing naked in his bedroom. (Leaving her off the guest list is a significant omission, since David allowed several former girlfriends to attend). A second key event is Brian Shelby's arrival with a new acquaintance, a dancer named Sofia Serrano (Penélope Cruz, reprising her role from Abre los ojos). David, who is normally cool and collected in his dealings with women, is transfixed. He and Sofia end up spending the night getting chastely acquainted. She calls him a "pleasure delayer".

Now, it doesn't require much insight to have detected a streak of crazed jealousy in the spurned Ms. Gianni that will lead to trouble. David even refers to her as a "stalker", and the trailer for Vanilla Sky spelled out the threat. But after the birthday party, the narrative of Vanilla Sky fractures into multiple parts that seem to go in different directions, none of them clearly leading to the prison cell where a masked David is being interviewed by Dr. McCabe. That transition is eventually accomplished by methods worthy of David Lynch, but by then every viewer will be as certain as the masked man in the cell that something is drastically wrong with this picture. Among other things, David Aames will have met the mysterious Edmund Ventura (Noah Taylor), who assures him that there's an explanation for everything that is happening to him but then doesn't give it.

An "official" explanation for the events of Vanilla Sky is fully provided by the end of the film, but many viewers find it unsatisfying (to put it mildly), which is why numerous alternative interpretations have been proposed, the most coherent of which are enumerated by Crowe in his commentary. Less interesting than the interpretations, though, is the fundamental question that haunted David Aames in the dream that opened the film and that haunts him along every path of the story: How is it that I can have everything anyone could ever dream of and still feel so alone? The answer to that question is the film's conclusion.

Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll reteamed with Crowe for Vanilla Sky, having just completed Almost Famous. Toll has said that he shot the film almost entirely in a "reality-based" style, so that the audience would not be able to tell, any better than David Aames, what was real and what was fantasy. This accounts for the mostly naturalistic color palette, although, on a second viewing, one will begin to notice subtle shifts that make sense in the context of the overall narrative.

According to a reliable source, Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has been derived from a master of recent vintage supplied by Paramount, on which Warner has done some additional cleanup. The result is somewhat difficult to evaluate. It has a film-like texture, without obvious evidence of artificial sharpening or noise reduction, and the colors appear life-like and natural. However, for a project shot on 35mm film in 2001, the image is notably soft and lacking in fine detail, and it is hard to believe that this is simply a byproduct of the original photographic process. This is not to suggest that Vanilla Sky should pop off the screen, but I wonder how DP Toll would evaluate this image.

There are any number of reasons why a Blu-ray image may be less than optimally detailed. One possible cause is the use of a source element that is several generations removed from the original camera negative; another is high frequency filtering to facilitate compression. The latter is certainly a possibility here, where the average bitrate is 22.45 Mbps in a film with numerous scenes of action and complex imagery. Now, it is certainly possible, especially given the long delay in preparing Vanilla Sky for Blu-ray, that the compression was carefully massaged to ensure that bandwidth was conserved wherever possible and allocated where necessary. No artifacts were evident. It's unfortunate that the new extras in 1080p could not have been placed on a second disc, thereby leaving more bits for the feature, but that would have necessitated a higher cost, and too many pre-orders had already been placed at Amazon's bargain price of $8.99 (or less) during the fourteen-month delay while the new extras were prepared.

Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Vanilla Sky's original 5.1 mix has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it sounds terrific. The mix is full of subtly layered sounds that register subliminally on a first viewing but emerge into consciousness once one becomes more familiar with the film's peculiar structure. (I wish I could be more specific, but I can't without spoilers.) Those sounds are more distinct on the Blu-ray's track than I can ever remember hearing them, if you know what to listen for. (Crowe's commentary is a useful primer on the mixing philosophy.) The dialogue is also very clear, except when it's deliberately obscured, and it's mostly centered, except when it's intended to be hard to localize. (Yes, it's that kind of movie.) There are several major events that are accompanied by powerful sound effects. (Again, I cannot be more specific.) But by far the most important component of the soundtrack, as usual in a Cameron Crowe film, is the music, which consists of original compositions by Nancy Wilson and carefully selected pop songs, of which the lyrics often counterpoint the film's narrative. Among the many tunes are "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys; "Can We Still Be Friends" by Todd Rundgren; "Heaven" by The Rolling Stones; several songs by the Icelandic group Sigur Rós; and several by R.E.M.

Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The many postponements of Vanilla Sky's release on Blu-ray resulted from the efforts of director Cameron Crowe and his production company to assemble a wealth of new extras to be added to the already substantial complement released with Paramount's 2002 DVD. The new extras are listed first and marked with an asterisk:

• *Alternate Ending: The alternate ending begins at approximately time mark 1:50, and director Crowe has recorded new commentary for this portion, but up until then the film is identical to the theatrical version.
  
  Crowe and his team have reconstructed Vanilla Sky's original ending, which leads to the same conclusion but expands several roles, primarily Kurt Russell's McCabe and, to a lesser extent, Michael Shannon's prison guard and Noah Taylor's Ventura. Several key scenes play out differently, and a few are added. The result, according to Crowe, so confused preview audiences that the decision was made to streamline the ending and concentrate on the crucial exposition that, at least on the surface, ties together all of the events. A final, important difference occurs in the original ending's final line, which is identical to the theatrical version's except for the speaker. Listen carefully.
  
  The alternate/original ending appears to have been reconstructed from a work print or other less-than-ideal source. There are obvious flaws in the compositing; detail is weak; and the color timing isn't final. Screenshots 30 through 35 (after the menu screen) are from this footage.



• *Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Commentary by Cameron Crowe) (1080p; 1.78:1; 34:52): Many of these are alternate versions of scenes that exist in the theatrical version but a few (like "Two Daughters") are unique. Crowe's commentary discusses the details, except for the last three, of which the longest ("Attention to Detail") has been incorporated into the alternate ending.
• Be Real
• Two Daughters
• Career Advice
• Dog Porno
• Ebooks
• Great Sex
• He Gets It All
• Livin' the Dream
• The Pleasure of Sofia
• Memorial
• Attention to Detail (no commentary)
• "Fix Your Face" Jump (no commentary)
• L.E. Infomercial (no commentary)



• *Mask Test (w/Optional Commentary by Cameron Crowe) (1080p; 1.85:1; 3:24): Settling on the exact form of the mask worn by David Aames was a painstaking process. This was one of the tests.



• *Kurt Russell Single Take (w/Optional Commentary by Cameron Crowe) (1080p; 1.85:1, centered; 6:10): As Crowe explains in the commentary, he has included this take to show "what a truly great working actor does in order to find a moment of startling reality for a movie". The scene is Dr. McCabe's most impassioned speech, for which Kurt Russell must (in Crowe's phrase) "dismantle [himself] as a human being" on a soundstage surrounded by green screen and a film crew. Crowe can be faintly heard off-camera giving direction.



• Commentary with Director Cameron Crowe and Composer Nancy Wilson: Crowe does almost all the talking, and Wilson supplies an occasional comment and musical accompaniment on guitar (which more commentaries should have). Crowe adds Tom Cruise by phone for about five minutes during the middle. Crowe has a lot to say on a variety of topics, including casting, production, the experience of filming specific scenes, editing choices, comparisons to Abre los ojos (including reactions from director/co-writer Alejandro Amenábar), influences (especially his idol, Billy Wilder), various clues and references in the frame, audience responses and the various interpretations of the film, including Crowe's several theories. Anyone intrigued (or baffled) by Vanilla Sky should find this commentary at least interesting and possibly enlightening.



• Prelude to a Dream (480i; 1.33:1; 6:15): This is Crowe's introduction to the film, accompanied by casting videos, on-set hijinks and on-location footage, including the Times Square shoot.



• Hitting It Hard (480i; 1.33:1; 10:06): This featurette covers the international press tour for the film's 2001-2002 release.



• An Interview with Paul McCartney (480i; 1.33:1; 1:36): Interviewed on Entertainment Tonight, McCartney describes how he came to compose the theme. Crowe tells a longer version on the commentary.



• Gag Reel (480i; 1.85:1; 5:30): This was an easter egg on the DVD. It's a good gag reel, because it's been edited with the right pacing, i.e., fast.



• Music Video: "Afrika/Shox" by Leftfield/Afrika Bambataa (480i; 1.33:1; 3:59): Set to a montage of clips from the film.



• Photo Gallery with Audio Introduction by Photographer Neal Preston (1080p; various)
• Introduction (2:51)
• Slideshow (18:13)



• Theatrical Trailers (480i; 1.85:1)
• Unreleased Teaser Trailer (1:43)
• International Trailer (2:51)



• Credits

Vanilla Sky Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There is so much to unpack in Vanilla Sky that one could write a treatise on the subject (if someone has not already done so). Most important, though, is that the film is now finally available on Blu-ray in a serviceable, if not stellar, presentation with new extras that deepen our understanding of its writer/director's creative intentions. As a total package, Warner's Blu-ray is an attractive buy, especially at its current price, and is therefore recommended.