Dead Letter Office (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Interviews-Cast & Crew-7 Gallery-Photo-12 Theatrical Trailer-2:26
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	90:11 (Case: 93)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (71:33)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Ruane
Studio Distributor	Southern Star Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Miranda Otto George Del Hoyo Nicholas Bell Syd Brisbane Georgina Naidu Jane Hall Jillian O'Dowd Vanessa Steele Guillermina Ulloa Franko Milostnik Mark Wilson Barry Otto Alethea McGrath
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Roger Mason

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    If you want to see a happy story about happy shiny people, I urge you to look elsewhere. Or, should I say, if you are looking for a superficial story and shallow characters, go elsewhere. Don't watch this film if you are afraid to get involved. This film is about complex, detailed people who are hurting, and who don't automatically get a happy ending. There are comic moments, but this is a real drama.

    The Dead Letter Office is where mail goes when the regular postage system cannot deliver it. It is amusing that this film, which uses so many Australian place names, refers to Metropolitan Post, rather than Australia Post.

    We come into the film following Alice Walsh (Miranda Otto), a young woman whose greatest ambition in life is to find her father. As a child she wrote him many letters, thinking that he was receiving them and simply not replying. It's not until she is grown that she discovers that the letters were returned by the Dead Letter Office (her mother kept them from her). Now she thinks she has a chance of finding him by getting a job in the Dead Letter Office.

    The man in charge of the Dead Letter Office is Frank Lopez (George Delhoyo). Our first impression of Frank is that he is a stern boss, but we learn that he's a man with deep internal feelings. It takes a long time for us to learn what drives him.

    Most of the comic touches come from the other workers in the Dead Letter Office: Kevin, Mary, and Peter. Most of the drama comes from following Alice and Frank. Both of them are hurting, and there aren't simple answers for them. It's reassuring to see that Alice runs into problems with security when she tries to abuse the Dead Letter Office's facilities to find her father.

    The relationship that develops between Frank and Alice is complicated, much more like real life than is normal in a film.

    There's a lot to like in this, even though it is not a happy film. I liked that (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Alice's father was played by Barry Otto (yup, Miranda's dad). The two central performances are magnificent, and the supporting cast do a good job.

    DVD is such a marvellous medium for giving us a chance to see films like this; films with more lasting value than fast food.

    Strongly recommended.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, but is not 16x9 enhanced. That's close to the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. It's a real shame they didn't make this a 16x9 enhanced transfer — it's already a dual-layered disc, so the reason wasn't disc space.

    The picture is a bit soft, but reasonably clear. Shadow detail is rather good. There's some film grain, but it is mostly quite fine and generally untroubling. There's just a trace of low-level noise.

    Colour is excellent, with mostly dull colours, but rendered very well indeed. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are a very few minute film artefacts, but you'll probably never see them.

    There is a lot of mild aliasing, probably exacerbated by the lack of 16x9 enhancement. There some minor moiré, and some mosquito noise, but no shimmer. There's occasional noticeable edge enhancement. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are no subtitle tracks, unfortunately. There are subtitles burned into the image for some of the Spanish spoken.

    The disc is single sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL; the layer change comes at 71:33. It comes at a natural pause, just before a cut. It's noticeable on some hardware, but is not too bad.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack, in English Dolby Digital 2.0 at 224kbps. It's not marked as surround-encoded, but if you have your ProLogic decoder switched on it does a good job of putting the dialogue in the centre channel while keeping the music spread across the front; there's no surround activity, though.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand, especially for Australians — there are a couple of words that might be a little less clear for non-Australians. There are no visible lapses in audio sync.

    The score, from Roger Mason, is excellent, although he does indulge in occasional pan-pipes to symbolise Chile. The acoustic guitar work is really good.

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static, with music. It's easy to use.

Interviews: Cast and Crew

    These are more detailed than usual, and rather interesting.

• John Ruane (director) (6:10)
• Miranda Otto (6:42)
• George Delhoyo (5:09)
• Deb Cox (writer and co-producer) (3:03)
• Denise Patience (producer) (4:33)
• Ellery Ryan (cinematographer) (2:38)
• Chris Kennedy (production designer) (0:58)

Gallery: Photos

    Twelve uncaptioned photos from behind-the-scenes.

Theatrical Trailer (2:26)

    It is interesting to see how they made a trailer for a film as complicated as this one — they did a good job.

    I can find no indication that this film has been released on DVD in Region 1 (yet). Puts us another one ahead of them!

    An interesting and worthwhile film, presented reasonably well on DVD.

    The video quality is good, but really shows the lack of 16x9 enhancement.

    The audio quality is good for a stereo track.

    The extras are reasonable, and worth looking at.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall