Sex & the Other Man (Warner Vision) (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	85:26
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Karl Slovin
Studio Distributor	Frederick Zollo Warner Vision	Starring	Ron Eldard Kari Wuhrer Stanley Tucci
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Anton Sanko

    Sex & The Other Man is a rather slow, independent film, based on the play by Paul Weitz of the same name (although it is also known as "Captive"). It's a pretty ordinary film served up on a pretty ordinary disc.

    In this black comedy, written and directed by Karl Slovin, Bill (Ron Eldard) and his girlfriend, Jessica (Kari Wuhrer), live together in a roomy NY apartment. While Bill and Jessica are a handsome couple, they are having trouble in their bedroom. Even with the use of games and fantasies, Bill is completely impotent. To make matters worse, Bill now suspects that Jessica is straying, and that her boss, Arthur (Stanley Tucci), will soon be taking care of business.

    One evening after work, Arthur and Jessica are about to get busy in her apartment, when Bill bursts in and takes some Polaroid snaps. Bill then ties a confused Arthur up, and demands a large sum of money in exchange for his silence. The excitement of the blackmail has a strange effect, and suddenly, Bill finds that his impotence is cured. Bill gets to work, while Arthur is forced to watch.

    Bill then decides to keep Arthur tied up for the weekend, but Arthur has other plans . . .

Video

    The transfer has the quality of an old VHS tape.

    The grainy transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. I am guessing that it is open-matte, full frame.

    The sharpness, black level, and shadow detail are all poor, and the source material looks very dirty. For example, consider the complete lack of detail in the dark night shot at 0:50.

    The colour is reasonable, but seems to have an orange tint.

    There are no serious problems with MPEG artefacts, but the grainy image sometimes looks pasty or pixelated. There are no problems with film-to-video artefacts. Small film artefacts appear throughout.

    No subtitles are present.

    This is a single-sided, single-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio sounds cheap and thin. Indeed, there is a VHS-like background hiss throughout. The only option is English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine.

    The minimal musical score is credited to Anton Sanko, and features jazz and Latin flavoured sounds.

    The stereo audio is not surround encoded, and thus there is no surround sound presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There is one extra.

Menu

    A simple menu, it is static and silent.

Trailer (2:45)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, with English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio.

    Sex & The Other Man is zoned for all regions, and our version is the same as the R1.

    Sex & The Other Man is rather dull and slow. It fails to break free from its play origins, and is composed of overly long, play-like sequences.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is also poor.

    There is one extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall