The Heart of the Game (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Featurette-Making Of-Making of The Heart of the Game Deleted Scenes Interviews-Cast & Crew Audio Commentary-Director - Ward Serrill
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	98:04 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ward Serrill
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Ludacris Devon Crosby Helms Maude Lepley Bill Resler Darnellia Russell Joyce Walker
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	The Angel

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

    The Heart Of The Game is the documentary story of the Roosevelt Roughriders girls' basketball team. Bill Resler is a college tax professor who doubles as the girl's basketball coach. Resler takes over the team as a bit of a challenge to himself (surely it must beat teaching tax!) and his desire to lift the profile of the sport where most of the support had been sent in the usual direction of the boy's team. When Resler's tough training drills start paying off and the girls start winning, attendances at the games begins to increase. Pretty soon the girls' games are a hotter ticket item than the boys games.

    Resler's game plan soon shifts up a gear when a new girl arrives at the school. Darnellia Russell is a tough, inner-city girl who is also a pretty fine basketball player. The story then follows Darnellia's adjustment at her new school and with the team over several seasons. At first Darnellia looks to have a great future ahead in the game - she is clearly the best player in the team, but off court troubles could ruin it all for her. She finds herself having to constantly deal with bad grades and then the serious issue of a teen pregnancy threatens to end her career entirely. Threatened with a ban on playing from the ruling body, Darnellia doesn't give and enters a court battle against the league in order to play.

    This is a really uplifting story, genuinely inspiring without overdoing the sentiment. It comes highly recommended.

Video

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, this is also 16x9 enhanced.

    From the outset this is obviously a  low-budget film with much of the image filmed on what appears to be digital tape-based equipment, so don't expect too much in terms of a visual treat here. But overall it's not that bad. Everything is clear and clean. There is some grain evident in many of the shots with poor lighting, but overall this is a reasonably clean image.

    Colours aren't exactly what I'd call vibrant, but they are still well rendered with no problems.

    There are no compression or film-to-video artefacts. Film artefacts are also absent, with much of the film shot on tape.

    There are no subtitles, which is a shame.

    This is a dual layered disc with the main feature on one layer and the extras on the other.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

   Only one soundtrack is present; an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo effort that is adequate for the role required of it. There is a little stereo separation, but nothing to get overly excited about.

    Dialogue is excellent, with no obvious audio sync problems.

    There is no surround or subwoofer use at all.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Featurette-Making Of

    This is a really good making of featurette that sees the director explain how he came to be attracted to the story of the Roosevelt girls basketball team. Runs for 26 minutes.

Deleted Scenes

    There is a total of 12 deleted scenes, with optional commentary by the director.

Interviews-Cast & Crew

    Interviews with narrator Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, plus coach Bill Resler and player Darnelia Russell.

Audio Commentary

    Director Ward Serrill provides an interesting commentary that underlines how much of a passionate project this was for him.

    Both Region 1 and Region 4 discs are essentially the same.

    The Heart Of The Game is an inspirational story, presented on a decent disc with solid video and audio and a swag of extras.

    Worth a look.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall