Brothers of the Head (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of Interviews-Cast & Crew Outtakes Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	89:10
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (65:56)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Keith Fulton Louis Pepe
Studio Distributor	Dendy Madman Entertainment	Starring	Jonathan Pryce Harry Treadaway John Simm Luke Treadaway Sean Harris Ken Russell James Greene Elizabeth Rider Luke Wagner Anna Nygh
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Clive Langer

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) 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	Yes
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

Told in the style of a documentary filmed in the present day, Brothers of the Head is the story of a pair of conjoined twins who are manufactured into glam rock stars in 1975. Zak Bedderwick (Howard Attfield), a struggling music promoter, buys the lives of Tom and Barry Howe (played by non-conjoined brothers Harry and Luke Treadaway) from their poor father with the intent of turning them into a rock act. Tom and Barry are joined just above the hip and share a common circulatory system and liver. Locking the brothers up up in a dishevelled old manor house with a violent manager and a songwriter, Zak waits for magic to happen.

As the band begin to take off, Barry and Tom become involved in a love triangle with an academic, come journalist, that begins their emotional downfall.

Ken Russell stars as himself, making a feature film about the Howe brothers at the same time the documentary is being made.

Brothers of the Head is a reasonable drama, but it really struggles to make much of a story out of its bizarre concept. Ironically, the film struggles to get past the superficial freakshow concept of the twins in much the same way that it portrays society struggling to get past that same concept. The problem really comes down to the weak characterisations of the twins themselves. The interviewees in the film have plenty to say about the twins' individual personalities, but none of these qualities come through when the pair are on screen. The documentary style does a much better job of characterising the surrounding characters than it does its main subjects, which would work better if the film explored these characters a bit more (perhaps using the twins as a MacGuffin rather than the real focus of the film).

Brothers of the Head is probably more noteworthy for its pedigree than for the film itself. It was directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, whose previous effort was Lost in La Mancha, the brilliant documentary about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make a Don Quixote film (they pair certainly employ the same style to this fictional work). The screenplay was written by Tony Grisoni, a frequent Gilliam Collaborator (probably best know for his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas adaptation), based on a rare non-Sci Fi novel by legendary author Brian Aldiss. It is a shame the ingredients didn't mix as well as they could have.

Video

The film is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, which appears to be an open matte of the theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and is 16x9 enhanced.

The video does an excellent job of capturing the look of film from the mid 1970s in segments of mock archival footage and looks very good throughout the rest of the movie, where a modern look is applied.

The image is quite sharp, save for intentionally soft segments of mock archival footage. It features a good level of shadow detail throughout. Grain varies considerably from scene to scene depending on the look of the individual scene, but generally looks quite natural. There is no sign of low level noise in the video.

The colour in the video changes considerably depending on the intent of particular scenes, though it looks very good throughout. The bits set in the modern day look bold and bright. The mock archival segments tend to look slightly washed out and feature softer contrast between colours, much like film stock from the 1970s.

The video is free of noticeable compression-related artefacts and does not feature any film artefacts that do not appear to be intentional.

No subtitles are present for the feature.

This is a RSDL disc. The layer break occurs at 65:56, mid scene, but was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps) and Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kbps) audio tracks are present for the film. Both are quite clear and well mixed.

The dialogue is clearly audible throughout the film and appears to be well synchronised to the video.

The film features music that is quite authentic to its era, all credited to the twins' band and written and produced by legendary music producer Clive Langer (who has previously done a similar job of creating era-authentic music for the comedy Still Crazy). The authentic soundtrack is by far the easiest thing to recommend about the movie.

The surrounds get a modest amount of use throughout the film. The subwoofer gets a great workout, mostly from the films music - particularly in creating a thuddy, washed out pub sound to the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

A reasonable sized collection of dull extras.

Making Of Featurette (3:41)

A advertorial "Making Of" featurette that does little more than advertise the film and reiterate its plot.

Interviews

Four interviews with key cast and crew. Each discusses their involvement with the film and experiences. Worth a look for fans, but not terribly informative. The interviews are:

• Keith Fulton (Director) - 7:03
• Lou Pepe (Director) - 9:08
• Clive Langer (Music Consultant) - 4:12
• Harry and Luke Treadaway (Stars) - 7:57

B-Roll Footage (11:59)

Out of context on-set footage of production. Moderately interesting, although it's a bit like a fishing expedition in that there is a sea of nothing with the odd interesting tidbit to be noticed.

Theatrical Trailer (1:44)

A short theatrical trailer that successfully makes the movie out to be a lot more interesting than it actually is.

The Region 1 edition includes a series of Deleted Scenes that are not on the Region 4 edition, but misses out on all the extras found on the Region 4 edition. Region 4 wins this comparison by weight of numbers in the extras, though neither is a remarkable package.

The story of a pair of conjoined-twin glam-rock stars, told in a documentary style. Unfortunately, this drama never lives up to the potential of the intriguing concept it is built upon.

Video and sound on the disc are both very good. The extras are reasonable in volume, but not quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall