Bulworth (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Biographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	103:55
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (46:41)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Warren Beatty
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Warren Beatty Halle Berry Oliver Platt Paul Sorvino Jack Warden
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Croatian Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes, Pot
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Warren Beatty has his mark stamped all over this movie, taking credits for directing the film, writing the story, co-writing the screenplay with Jeremy Pikser, and just for good measure he gets a producer credit as well. Oh yeah, did I mentioned he starred in it too?

    Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is the Democratic Senator for California. He's running for re-election but has had enough of the political system. Consequently, he does a deal with Graham Crocket (Paul Sorvino) of the American Insurance Federation to hold up a Bill in committee that would force insurance companies to provide their product to the less well-off levels of American society. In compensation for this service, he extracts $10 million worth of life insurance from them, with his daughter as the beneficiary.

    However, Bulworth has plans to commit suicide in a rather unusual manner - by taking out a contract on his own life. He arranges this through Vinnie (Richard C. Sarafian), a rather shady character. Having put his plans in place, he is free to tell the voting public exactly how American politics really works during the time he has left. He does this with the help of Nina (Halle Berry) and her friends by performing hip-hop songs that utilise the lyrics to get his message across.

    This is a good movie with an engaging plot and it is hard not to get involved with the Bulworth character as the story unfolds. As a political satire goes, this is a funny movie with plenty of witty dialogue, not to mention humorous hip-hop songs.

    This film was quite deservedly nominated for the Best Writing Academy Award 1999. Additionally, it picked up Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, Best Screenplay and Best Performance by an Actor for Warren Beatty. Despite all the nominations, it wasn't successful in winning any of these awards.

Video

    This is an acceptable transfer with a number of problems evident if you are paying attention.

    Bulworth is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. This is the original aspect ratio for this film.

    The sharpness of this transfer is quite variable. While many shots are nice and sharp, there are many that appeared slightly soft. It's difficult to assess whether this has been introduced during the transfer or if this is a problem with the source material. In addition to this there are also a couple of shots, such as at 37:12, 42:59 and 85:01, which are noticeably out of focus. These instances I would put down to camera work. There is also evidence of edge enhancement, such as at 55:18, however this was not frequent enough or severe enough to become annoying. No low level noise was apparent. There were no problems with shadow detail.

    In general, the colour is well saturated although in some scenes the colours appear slightly muted.

    There are occasional film artefacts in the form of small marks and at least one small hair. These are all very minor and in no way distracting. Pixelization is occasionally apparent and there is some minor aliasing but neither of these artefacts reaches an annoying level. There is what appears to be telecine wobble noticeable during the text that is displayed at the beginning of the film. There is also a slight jump at 6:59 which is probably due to some minor damage to the print used for the transfer.

    The English subtitles are a long way from word perfect with plenty of missing or substitute words and phases being used. Despite this, the meaning is basically intact. There's no problems visually as they are easy to read and use large white characters. There are plenty of subtitle languages to choose from if you need them.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 46:41, during Chapter 10. It is quite well placed and not particularly disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    A very good audio transfer is present on this DVD with only a few minor problems.

    This DVD comes with a single audio track, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. There is a single instance of distortion heard from the front left channel at 1:11.

    For the most part, the dialogue is clear and easily understood. The only exception to this is during some of the noisy crowd scenes where the odd word is lost in the background noise. I wasn't aware of any issues with the audio sync.

    The music, based around rap and hip-hop style music, is nothing if not energetic.

    This is a dialogue-driven story so the sound design is mostly concentrated in the front sound stage. Having said that, the rear channels come alive in the nightclub, church, convention, and other scenes involving crowds to place the viewer right in the middle of the action.

    The subwoofer is powerfully used when needed in support of the musical score, for example at the night club in Chapter 7.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This is not a disc you'd buy because the vast variety and quality of the extras.

Menu

    This is displayed in an aspect ratio of 1:85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. This is a bare bones effort which features neither animation nor audio.

Theatrical Trailer

    A typical trailer which runs for 1:43 and is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 without 16x9 enhancement. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded.

Biographies - Cast & Crew

    Typical text-based biographies and filmographies for the main cast members and director.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded English & French audio tracks
• Spanish subtitles

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

• 16x9 enhancement
• Most of the subtitles on the local disc

    The inclusion of 16x9 enhancement for the R4 disc makes this the clear winner.

    Bulworth is an entertaining story which has a few significant comments to make about the American political system. It is presented on an acceptable DVD.

    The video quality is acceptable but suffers from a number of minor flaws.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are very very limited.
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall