The Sapphires (2012)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Featurette-Making Of
Rating
Year Of Production	2012
Running Time	99:13 (Case: 103)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Wayne Blair
Studio Distributor	Entertainment One	Starring	Chris O'Dowd Deborah Mailman Jessica Mauboy Shari Sebbens Miranda Tapsell Tory Kittles Eka Darville
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Cezary Skubiszewski

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     In 1968 three Aboriginal sisters from a mission in rural Victoria, Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), Gail (Deborah Mailman) and Julie (Jessica Mauboy), are discovered performing in a local pub talent contest by down and out entrepreneur Dave (Chris O’Dowd). He persuades them to go to Melbourne where, joined by their cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens), they successfully audition for the US military and, as The Sapphires, go to Vietnam to entertain the American troops. The Sapphires is the story of their conflicts, their friendships, their loves and their tour of duty in the war zone.

     The Sapphires started life as a musical stage play by Tony Briggs, whose mother actually did work as an entertainer in Vietnam, and is based on the experiences of two sets of sisters who are actually seen at the end of the film, a nice touch. The cast is uniformly excellent and it is difficult to pick the most charismatic, although Chris O’Dowd with his sad dog look and Jessica Mauboy and her magnificent voice probably just shade it. The film’s locations in Vietnam and rural Australia look great, the performance songs are delivered with colour, style and gusto. Although the film does refer to the “stolen generation” in Australia and the racism of the times in the USA, Australia and Vietnam, and to the damage done by war, these themes are never laboured and the feel-good elements highlighted. As well, the romantic subplots feel superficial, and are not developed to any extent.

     The Sapphires is somewhat superficial in addressing the racism of the day and the horrors of the Vietnam War, so the trials the young women were required to go through is reduced to almost nothing, and the romantic subplots get too much time. However, The Sapphires is intended to be entertaining, and the result is a light-hearted, good humoured and funny film with a killer soundtrack (which reached number 1 on the ARIA Album Charts).

Video

     The Sapphires is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the original theatrical ratio, and is 16x9 enhanced.

     The print is sharp and detailed and looks great. In fact the detail is so good it makes the indifferent CGI tracers and explosions in the sequence towards the end of the film quite obvious. The colours are luminous, be they the browns and yellows of rural Australia or the greens and blues of Vietnam. When the girls perform on stage in their sparking blue dresses it looks fabulous. Blacks and shadow detail are excellent, brightness, contrast and skin tones natural. There is occasional pleasing light grain, but except for slight motion blur I did not notice any film or video artefacts.

     There were no problems with lip synchronisation.

     English subtitles for the hearing impaired are available.

     The layer change at 55:48 was at the end of a scene and resulted in a slight pause on my equipment.

     A great looking print with wonderful colours.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is a choice between English Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 Kbps, English Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 Kbps and English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio description for the vision impaired at 192 Kbps.

     I listened to the 5.1 audio track. Dialogue is good and the music and songs come across well. The surrounds are not overused, with mainly ambient sound and some music. What we get works OK although to my ears it could have used more oomph during the performance numbers or during the Vietcong attack. The sub-woofer provides support to the music and explosions without calling attention to itself.

     The original music by Cezary Skubiszewski, who also scored Bran Nue Dae, was good but the highlights of the soundtrack were the songs, some sung by the women in the film, by the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, “Smokey” Robinson and Otis Redding.

     The audio does the job without being outstanding.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Making of The Sapphires (12:04)

     On set footage plus interviews with Tony Briggs, the co-writer whose mother performed in Vietnam, plus the director, producers, director of photography, costume designer, hairdresser, editor, production designer and the five principle cast members, all in 12 minutes! They talk about casting, clothes, the production and shooting on film to get the right look. Obviously not in much depth with all those people in 12 minutes, but interesting enough.

     There is no release of The Sapphires outside of Region 4 at present, with the Region 2 UK due in March 2013. The Australian Region B Blu-ray has additional extra features: rehearsal footage, Vietnam featurette, character profiles, deleted scenes, cast interviews and interview with the original Sapphires so that is the best option if your system will allow it.

     Based on actual events, in The Sapphires an all-girl Aboriginal singing group do a tour of duty in Vietnam entertaining the US troops. Although the film does refer to the ‘stolen generation” in Australia and the racism of the times in both the USA and Australia, on the whole The Sapphires is a light-hearted, good humoured and funny film with a killer soundtrack.

     The video is excellent, the audio are good. There is one reasonably interesting extra, but the Blu-ray release has more.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall