For Your Consideration (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Interviews-Cast Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	82:54
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Christopher Guest
Studio Distributor	Fortissimo Films Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Catherine O'Hara Stephen Rannazzisi Ed Begley Jr. Eugene Levy Harry Shearer Christopher Moynihan Christopher Guest John Michael Higgins Carrie Aizley Stephanie Courtney Suzy Nakamura Jim Piddock Jane Morris
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Christopher Guest Eugene Levy Jeffrey C.J. Vanston

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	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, to some comic effect
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    For Your Consideration is the latest spoof from the Christopher Guest/Michael McKean/Harry Shearer/Eugene Levy ensemble that are best known for the mockumentaries Spinal Tap, Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. This time around the team are picking apart their own, the Hollywood studio system's love for the Academy Awards.

    Partway through filming a studio art film (read: low budget campy melodrama), Oscar buzz for the performance of one the has-been stars (Catherine O'Hara) starts to swell on the Internet. As the buzz spreads through town and inflates to include another of the film's has-beens (Harry Shearer) and an up and coming star (Parker Posey), excitement on the production set grows. This leads to the studio heads, led by a smiling but sinister Ricky Gervais, getting excited and "guiding" the project to better marketing ends - much to the torment of the director (Christopher Guest) and writers (Micheal McKean and Bob Balaban). The film itself, Home For Purim, is a period piece about a Jewish family coming together, and coming out, at a holiday reunion in their country home, spurred on by the terminal illness of the family matriarch.

    For Your Consideration retains the largely ad-libbed style of awkward character-driven comedy that Christopher Guest's work is known for, but the movie follows a traditional narrative presentation rather than the mockumentary style of the team's previous films. While this is a welcome change to the usual formula, it is hard not to feel that some of the laughs have been sacrificed in order to force in the more structured plot. Even with some rather dull sequences slotted in for the benefit of plot, the story is patchy at best. Whilst you may think this wouldn't usually be a problem for a Christopher Guest comedy, as the laughs will make up for any other short-comings, it is in this instance.

    Whilst the movie is generally amusing, there aren't many of the big laughs that you would normally expect form these guys. In fact, the only time I found myself laughing out loud was when Fred Willard's faux-trendy middle aged entertainment news correspondent character (think Molly Meldrum with a mean streak!) was on-screen. The movie struggles to make its rather brief 82 minute running time. The film is virtually wrapped up after about 65 minutes, after which follows some fairly general padding (much of which are actually the funniest parts of the film).

    As a long time fan of Christopher Guest et al., I found For Your Consideration to be the first disappointment the gang have delivered. It certainly isn't a total write off, but only fans need consider this flick.

Video

    The film is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, slightly short of its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The film was made reasonably cheaply and certainly looks it. The focus is soft throughout, which looks to be a combination of both the cheap filmmaking as well as a mediocre DVD transfer. Shadows and dark scenes contain a reasonable level of detail (although this is swallowed by macro blocking in some scenes), but the colours on the disc are quite pale and blacks look more like dark greys. A modest degree of film grain is visible throughout the film, though it never really detracts from the film.

    The film and its extras have been crammed onto a single layer disc and this has resulted in some noticeable MPEG compression artefacts. Of particular note is mosquito noise, which is quite noticeable in several scenes as halos surrounding characters and other objects (eg. 1:58 and 61:36). A moderate level of pixelation is visible in all scenes, but particularly around block colours. On the plus side, there are no film artefacts noticeable in the transfer.

    There are no subtitles on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The film features a single English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kbps) audio track. The track is fairly disappointing for a recent film. It almost sounds like a mono track. This type of comedy does not call for a particularly fancy audio track, but this one is below even the most modest of expectations

    The dialogue is clearly audible once the volume is adjusted enough. This is a very quiet track. The audio sync is pretty bad, however. The audio frequently appears to have been inserted in an ADR loop and often does not match the lips of the characters.

    There is not a great deal of music in the film, but when it is used it is used very well for the over-the-top melodramatic theme to the movie within the movie as well as to introduce several of the mock TV shows in the film. Unfortunately, the poor fidelity in the soundtrack is particularly shown up by the music.

    There is no noticeable surround speaker or subwoofer usage in the soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Theatrical Trailer (2:23)

    A generic theatrical trailer for the film, which comes across more as a mockumentary than the standard narrative film it is.

Cast Interviews (14:54)

    A series of generic and mildly amusing press kit interviews with Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge and Ricky Gervais. Worth a look, but no more than once.

    Region 4 misses out on almost every front with this release. Specifically, the Region 1 disc contains the following features that the Region 4 disc misses:

• 18 Deleted Scenes and Outtakes
• "Home for Purim" poster gallery
• Commentary by co-writers Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy
• English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
• English, Spanish and French Subtitles

    The Region 1 version misses out on the moderately entertaining Cast Interviews contained on the Region 4 release.

    An interesting failure from Christopher Guest and his troupe. For Your Consideration is recommended for fans only.

    The video quality is fairly poor for a recent film. The audio has been scaled back to a mono-sounding stereo mix. The extras can be described as modest at best.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall