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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Main Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer Cast Biographies Featurette - Remembering Ritchie Music Video - Los Lobos: La Bamba Music Video - Howard Huntsberry: Lonely Teardrops Audio Commentary - Luis Valdez (Director), Stuart Benjamin (Executive Producer), Lou Diamond Philips (Actor), Esai Morales (Actor) Audio Commentary - Taylor Hackford (Producer), Daniel Valdez (Associate Producer)
Rating
Year Released	1987
Running Time	104:10 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (51:38)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Luis Valdez
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment	Starring	Lou Diamond Phillips Esai Morales Rosanna DeSoto Elizabeth Peña Danielle von Zerneck Joe Pantoliano Rick Dees
Case	Transparent Soft Brackley
RPI	$36.95	Music	Los Lobos

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) German (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes, copiously
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish French Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, La Bamba is performed once again during the credits

    The story begins in Northern California during 1957, with Ricardo Valenzuela (Lou Diamond Phillips) living the same sort of hard labour life as millions of Hispanic Americans did during those days - in his case one of picking fruit on a plantation. Young Ricardo dreams of leaving the plantation life behind and hitting the big time so that he can buy all those things that the middle-class of America seem to take for granted. Along comes his half-brother, Bob Morales (Esai Morales), who whisks the family away to the good life in a nicer neighbourhood, working better jobs. After some argument from their mother, Connie (Rosanna DeSoto), they move into a modest little home on the other side of the state. As Ricardo attends high school and meets a nice young girl named Donna Ludwig (Danielle von Zerneck), Bob gets himself in more and more trouble living the life of a bikie.

    Eventually, Ricardo gets a gig playing guitar for a band called The Silhouettes, who are led by a rather arrogant saxophonist/vocalist who refuses to let Ricardo sing or do anything that might get the band their break. Eventually, however, they abandon this leader and go with Ricardo to play a show in an American Legion club. At this moment, he is spotted by a record company executive named Bob Keene (Joe Pantoliano), who approaches Ricardo and talks him into adopting the Ritchie Valens stage name, ditching his band, and going solo. From there, it is all history with Ritchie fulfilling all his dreams and living the life of a rock and roll star until that fateful day in February of 1959, when Ritchie, Buddy Holly, and The Big Bopper were all killed in a plane crash. You wouldn't believe this, but members of my family know people who were actually surprised to see the film end this way.

    For what the film tries to be, it is reasonably successful in spite of taking a few liberties with the life of its subject. However, I have to agree with a lot of other critics that the opening scenes with planes crashing and falling out of the sky in his dreams were completely unnecessary, and weigh the film down. With these dream sequences lending a huge weight to the film, one half expects that the Ritchie Valens being depicted here would have been surprised if he didn't die in a plane crash. Lou Diamond Phillips, however, gives a striking performance in his big screen debut as the seventeen year old with a couple of number one records, which helps lift the film. Esai Morales is great as the elder half-brother, helping to give the film much of its sense of being about a family thrust into the big time. However, what makes the film truly memorable are the renditions of Ritchie Valens' hit recordings by Los Lobos, who keep the songs true to their original style while just updating them enough to take advantage of what was then modern recording techniques. As a dramatization of events that changed American society and a look back at the past, La Bamba is a great place to get started.

Video

    The transfer is sharp, but it doesn't hold a candle to most transfers of more recent films, or even some transfers of films that happen to be of comparable age. At a rough guess, I'd say that the source material used to create this transfer had deteriorated just a tad, although most of the issues with the resultant transfer are very minor. The shadow detail of this transfer is good, but not great, mostly because of the film stock that was used during filming in all probability. There is no low-level noise to spoil the picture.

    The colours range from having a great emphasis on browns and reds during the early stages of the film, to more vibrant during the concert performances and the scenes of the Valenzuela family living the good life in a nice Californian neighbourhood. There is no colour bleeding as such, but the lights in some of the staged events give a flared effect that would look almost out of place in modern films.

    MPEG artefacts are not a problem in this transfer. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some minor aliasing at times that was never particularly distracting, or even really noticeable for the most part. Film artefacts are somewhat more problematic in this transfer, with nicks and scratches spread throughout the film's running length. The sequences that detail the dreams of planes falling from the sky are extremely grainy, partly an artistic choice on the part of the filmmakers, but it doesn't exactly do the compression any favours.

    This disc uses the RSDL format, with the layer change taking place between Chapters 16 and 17, at 51:38. This is as good a place as any for the layer change, and it is only a brief pause, making it minimally intrusive.

Audio

    In order, the soundtracks are the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 5.1 with a bitrate of 448 kilobits per second, then dubs in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, with two English audio commentaries tacked on for good measure. These are all encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 with surround-encoding and a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second. I listened to the English soundtrack and the two audio commentaries.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, with little or no difficulty becoming apparent even with the occasional heavy Spanish accent. Some of the dialogue is spoken in Spanish, but none of it was of any consequence to the film. There were no problems with audio sync.

    The music in this film can be roughly divided into two parts: original music by Carlos Santana and Miles Goodman, and the Ritchie Valens numbers, which were performed by Los Lobos. The music is very authentic to the setting of the film, with a true Latin American sound rather than the garbage put out by the likes of Ricky Martin et al. Indeed, the song from which the film takes its title is shown during the nightclubbing scene, with the members of Los Lobos making a small cameo as the band on stage, in its original form, which sounds quite different from the way Ritchie Valens recorded it. The Mexican people, much like the Spanish, have a way of making the acoustic guitar speak in a language all of its own, which is quite beautiful to listen to in its proper form.

    The surround channels were used to provide support to the music and such sound effects as passing cars or planes. They were used throughout the film without me really noticing them much, which either means they provided a subtly immersive experience or they just weren't used enough. Considering how much more alive the songs sound in Dolby Digital 5.1, I'm inclined to say they provided the subtly immersive experience that one should expect from films of this age that have been remixed into six channels. There were occasional moments when the soundfield become stereo in nature, usually during discussions that move the plot forward a bit, but these can be overlooked since most dialogue sequences sound ridiculous when redirected throughout the entire sound field.

    The subwoofer was used in moderation to support the music and some bass-heavy sound effects such as the crashing planes in the dream sequences. It lent a nice floor to the music without calling any specific attention to itself.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Cast Biographies

Featurette - Remembering Ritchie

Music Video - Los Lobos: La Bamba

Music Video - Howard Huntsberry: Lonely Teardrops

Audio Commentary - Luis Valdez (Director), Stuart Benjamin (Executive Producer), Lou Diamond Philips (Actor), Esai Morales (Actor)

Audio Commentary - Taylor Hackford (Producer), Daniel Valdez (Associate Producer)

    The video transfer is good, but the film itself hasn't aged too well.

    The audio transfer is very good.

    The extras are comprehensive.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (my bio sucks... read it anyway)
May 10, 2001