Another Day in Paradise (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Audio Commentary-Larry Clark (Director) Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	100:35
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Larry Clark
Studio Distributor	Chinese Bookie Picts Eagle Entertainment	Starring	James Woods Melanie Griffith Vincent Kartheiser Natasha Gregson Wagner Paul Hipp Brent Briscoe Branden Williams
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	Howard Paar Robin Urgang

    A local hood, Mel (James Woods), patches Bobby up and offers him a job. Bobby accepts the offer. Mel advises Bobby that they will be hitting the road and it's up to him if he wants to bring Rosie along or not.

    Next we meet Mel's girlfriend, Sid (Melanie Griffith), who by the way is a junkie and somewhat kind-hearted. We get to know some more about our couples before their next robbery, which goes without a hitch. When the time comes to sell the drugs that they stole, things get screwed up. Mel gets shot and Bobby is badly hurt.

    There is plenty more to come, but I will leave the plot synopsis at that, as I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't seen the movie.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not widescreen as erroneously stated on the back cover. The original film's aspect ratio was 1.66:1. It's not clear if this is a Full Frame or a Pan & Scan transfer, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it is Full Frame.

    The transfer is impressively clear and sharp. No low-level noise was noticed. The shadow detail was excellent, with plenty of depth. There is, however, one scene during the opening sequence where the screen is almost totally black. I suspect that this was a deliberate cinematic choice made by the director rather than a transfer problem.

    The colour is exemplary - beautifully saturated, rich and vibrant. Skin tones had a wonderful richness and depth to them that I have rarely seen.

    Grain was almost non-existent. It was so trivial that it is almost not worth mentioning. There is one exception to this, however, which occurs between 30:49 and 31:27, where the image takes on a definite grainy appearance. Since the rest of this film is so grain-free, I believe that this graininess was more the result of the type of film stock used to film this particular scene, rather than being a transfer problem.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen. Aliasing is rare and extremely mild when it does occur. I suspect most, if not all, occurrences will go unnoticed, even on really big screens such as projectors, when you are actually watching the movie, instead of looking for faults like I was. There is some trivial aliasing during the end credits.

    Film artefacts were reasonably scarce with just the odd one popping up every now and again. A slightly more serious problem occurs at 34:42, where two black lines appear down the length of the image. These lines come and go up until 35:32, when they finally decided that they had had enough fun and disappeared for good. This was clearly a film artefact, not a transfer problem.

    Fun Note: Keep an eye out for the guest appearances of 'The Microphone' and 'The Mysterious Helping Hand'.

    Packaging Errors: In addition to the incorrect labelling of this transfer as widescreen when it is not, there is no theatrical trailer nor subtitles on this DVD as is promised by the packaging.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The dialogue was usually clear and easy to understand, but there were a couple of occasions where it became muffled and harder to make out.

    No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer.

    The music was supervised by Howard Paar and Robin Urgang, and it seemed to suit the movie well.

    The surround channels are predominantly used for music, with the odd sound effect thrown in for good measure. The soundstage generally sounded front-heavy and the overall impression I got from the mix was that it had more in common with a Dolby surround-encoded soundtrack than with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. In short, it is a rather disappointing Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

    There are not too many sequences that actually need the subwoofer, but it was lightly used throughout the movie to add a little extra kick to the music, and to the odd scene.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    I have one small criticism to make of the Scene Index menu - it does not have an quick index, so if you want to jump to chapter 21 you have to go through five screens before you can select it. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference when you want to jump to a particular chapter.

Filmographies

Director's Commentary - Larry Clark

• 100 minute U.S. theatrical release (in addition to the Director's Cut which is basically the version we got)
• Clarence Carter Music Video
• Theatrical Trailers
• English, Spanish and French subtitles
• 1.66:1 widescreen video aspect ratio

• Extra movie footage that was cut from the U.S. release (one scene)
• 448Kb/s audio stream

    (Ed. I would have to disagree with this assessment, as I would consider the incorrect aspect ratio of the R4 version to be most unsatisfactory, including the unintentional appearances of 'The Microphone' and 'The Mysterious Helping Hand' referred to previously. Readers are advised to make up their own minds depending on what is important to you.)

    The sound quality is good, but the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is disappointing and a little front-heavy.

    There is not much in the way of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall