Drumline (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Romantic Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	113:50
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:59)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Stone III
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Nick Cannon Zoe Saldana Orlando Jones Leonard Roberts GQ Jason Weaver Earl Poitier Candace Carey Shay Roundtree Miguel A. Gaetan J. Anthony Brown Afemo Omilami Angela E. Gibbs
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	John Powell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/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 Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish Bulgarian Romanian Russian	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Pearl drums
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, extra band numbers

    The original promotion that I saw for Drumline advertised it as "Bring It On with drums". That's a terrible description of this film, but I can understand why they said it. To my mind, this film is more like Fame than like Bring It On, especially when we hear each section leader explaining why their section is the most important part of the band. Or it is more like a sports film, any sports film.

    Devon Miles (Nick Cannon) is a hot-shot young drummer from Harlem in New York. He was part of a prize winning band as a high school senior (we see them perform at his graduation). Now he's come to Atlanta (quite a way from New York), with a full scholarship, to be part of a big-time marching band at Atlanta A&T college. He's thrilled, and more than a little arrogant about it.

    We meet a bunch of freshmen, and learn what their initial training is like — there's a close resemblance to all those boot-camp films we've seen, even down to being woken up really early in the morning on the first day. Devon's conflict starts when he first meets the leader of the drumline, Sean (Leonard Roberts) — Devon doesn't handle authority well.

    There are two ways in which this film does resemble Bring It On. At A&T, the football team is secondary — people come to the games to hear the marching band. And there's a big competition: in this case it's the BET Southern Classic, which is a playoff for marching bands, with a first prize of $50 000 (but it's more about the honour). Our heroes are not the reigning champions, though; for the last four years the winners have been Morris Brown College.

    There's a strong rivalry between Morris Brown's band, and their musical director, Mr Wade (J Anthony Brown), and A&T's band, and their musical director, Dr Lee (Orlando Jones). These bands play, but they are are as much about the choreography as about the music. And they are about confrontation: it is not uncommon for one drumline to challenge another, and see who can reel off the slickest cadences. (Yes, there's a scene like this in Bring It On, but it's a one-off there, and it isn't in this film).

    Interestingly, these colleges do have cheerleaders, but they also have a dance squad that performs in front of the band (on the DVD label it's the dance squad you see, not the band!). Devon makes an overture to a pretty lady, Laila (Zoë Saldana), not realising that she's an upperclassman (and therefore theoretically out of reach), and leader of the dance squad (putting her even further out of reach). When he is the only freshman to get rated P1 (with automatic entry to the band of the field), she comes looking for him.

    This film is primarily not an ensemble piece (although parts of it play that way). This is about hot-headed Devon, who has serious talent, but whose attitude keeps getting in his way (he reminds me of Leroy in Fame). It's actually about a chain of conflict, between Devon and Sean, between Sean and Dr Lee, and even between Dr Lee and President Wagner (Afemo Omilami), the president of A&T College. There are lessons to learn for each one of them.

    You'd have to be blind not to notice that almost everyone in this film is black, and you'd probably notice a lot of black slang even if you are blind. The single exception is Jayson (GQ). Well, there's a white guy with a sousaphone, and a couple of others in the background, but they only appear a couple of times, and none of them have any lines. I don't think this was intended as a commentary on segregation in Atlanta, but it comes across like that.

    The final competitive sequences are excellent. But it's the story leading up to those sequences that gives them the real punch. If you don't feel good at the end of this film, then you better check yourself for a pulse...

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It is 16x9 enhanced. The original and intended aspect ratio is 2.35:1, so that's cool.

    The image is beautifully sharp. Shadow detail is very good. Film grain is not noticeable. There's no low level noise.

    Colour is excellently rendered. There are some vivid colours — marching band uniforms are not known for their subtleties of hue — and they are represented well. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no film artefacts.

    There is a lot less aliasing than you might expect, which is a remarkable achievement; there is still some aliasing on some of the uniforms, but I was surprised how little there is. There are a few spots of moiré. This transfer is free of MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in 16 languages. The English subtitles are for the Hearing Impaired. I watched them, and they are fairly accurate (a bit abbreviated, as usual), well-timed, and easy to read.

    The disc is single-sided and dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change falls at 60:59, in a black frame, and is next to impossible to see on most players. A particularly slow player might make it visible through the pause, but that would be the only way.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is exactly one soundtrack on this disc: the film's soundtrack in Dolby Digital 5.1. And in this case, the 5.1 is fully justified.

    The dialogue is clear and readily comprehended. There are no audio sync issues with the dialogue (there are some inserted sound effects that are slightly out).

    The score is excellent. Some of it comes from John Powell, some of it is familiar songs, and some of it is marching band music. There's some hip hop, and a variety of other styles. It adds considerably to the film.

    The surrounds get more use than is obvious. The obvious directional sound is very cool, but there is subtle ambience at other times. The subwoofer gets plenty to do, too. This soundtrack really benefits from the full 5.1.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are absolutely no extras on this disc.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. It gets the job done.

    The Region 1 disc was released some time back (over a year ago). It is a full-blown special edition; heck, they got both full-screen and wide-screen versions. That's a big contrast to the bare-bones disc that we get in Region 4.

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• director's commentary
• 10 deleted scenes (with commentary)
• BET special: making of Drumline (21:40)
• 2 music videos
• I Want a Girl Like You  (4:05)
• Blowin' Me Up (With Her Love)  (4:30)
• soundtrack promo
• trailer: Antwone Fisher

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• nothing

    That makes it pretty clear which is the richer disc. And these are not trivial extras — the commentary is a decent one, and the director (Charles Stone III) imparts a lot of information, including the fact that he is a drummer from way back (that would be kinda handy on this film!). The transfer on both discs is excellent, although I think there might be one or two visual artefacts on the R1 that aren't on the R4.

    Gotta give this one to the Region 1. If you only want the movie, then the R4 will do, but if you want the whole package, then the R1 is the only way to go.

    A really good film on a bare-bones disc with an excellent transfer.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    There are no extras on this disc, and that's a real shame — you have to go for the R1 to get the extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall