Crazy/Beautiful (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Romance	Menu Animation & Audio Audio Commentary-John Stockwell (Director) & Kirsten Dunst (Actor) Featurette-Blurring Fiction And Reality Theatrical Trailer-1:25 Deleted Scenes-4
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	95:03
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (56:01)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	John Stockwell
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Kirsten Dunst Jay Hernandez Bruce Davison Taryn Manning Lucinda Jenney
Case	DV-8
RPI	$34.95	Music	Paul Haslinger

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Turkish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired German French Italian Spanish Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Icelandic Hebrew Greek Turkish Estonian German Audio Commentary Swedish Audio Commentary Norwegian Audio Commentary Danish Audio Commentary Finnish Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Crazy / Beautiful is difficult to describe. It is not the sort of film you might expect to see Kirsten Dunst in. In fact, if you are considering this film because Kirsten Dunst is in it, and you like her other films, then I suggest you think carefully before sampling this one. In her previous films she has been a "girl-next-door", a good girl. (Ed. Not in Interview With The Vampire she wasn't.) She is far from that this time. In the commentary, she remarks that she really liked the role because it gave her such a chance to act. It is certainly not a glamorous role - she looks wasted in more than one scene.

    This film has two central characters: Carlos (Jay Hernandez) and Nicole (Kirsten Dunst). They meet on a beach when Carlos is with his friends (sorry, I don't know if they are his posse or his homeys - I am way out of touch with that), and Nicole is doing community service picking up rubbish. He recognises her as going to the same high school.

    We get to see their home lives. Carlos lives at home with a large extended family, and takes a bus for 2 hours to get to school - he has ambitions to go to the US Naval Academy (Annapolis) and become a naval pilot. He plays football, rather well, in fact. Nicole lives at home with her father and stepmother, gets a lift to school with her best friend Maddy (Taryn Manning), who drives like a maniac. Nicole's big ambition is, well, it's not clear she has any ambition other than to get out of class. She drinks, she smokes pot - she is basically wasting her life. She breaks rules for no good reason.

    Carlos and Nicole find each other attractive. They find themselves drawn to one another. Almost everyone else thinks it's a bad idea, for a variety of different reasons. Carlos' family are afraid that Nicole will distract him from the good marks that will be the key to his career. Nicole's father (Bruce Davison) is worried that her self-destructive tendencies will hurt Carlos. That's a bit of a twist - he's worried about Carlos getting hurt. Carlos' friends are concerned that she is keeping him from socialising with them. Basically, everyone is worried about Carlos. One of the few people who likes them together is Maddy.

    Slowly, as their relationship develops, we come to understand more about Nicole, and we begin to see a likeable side to her character. You have to see these things unfold, so I won't tell you any more about the plot.

    They set this film in East LA, and they wanted to get as authentic a feel as possible, so they held mass casting sessions for Hispanic / Latino actors - many of the young people they hired had little acting experience. It doesn't show - the standard of acting is very good.

    It is inevitable that race conflict appears in a film about a relationship between a boy of Mexican origin and a white American girl. At least they didn't overplay it.

    Apparently studio management decreed that they must get a PG-13 rating, and that was difficult (they had to re-cut several scenes) - with alcohol / drug / sexual scenes involving teenagers, that's understandable. The original script also included a nude scene, but that would have wiped out any hope of a PG-13, so it was scrubbed (yes, folks, you will have to wait longer to see all of Kirsten Dunst, although you will see more of her here than elsewhere). The Australian version is rated M, which is roughly equivalent to PG-13. It stretches the limits of that rating, though. Oh, and the audio commentary might raise that rating...

    The film works very well most of the way in, then suddenly it is as if they ran out of money - they resolve everything very quickly, and rather too easily. That's a shame - I was expecting more, and was disappointed. Perhaps you might enjoy it more if you are forewarned that the ending is inadequate.

Video

    The picture is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced. This is the original aspect ratio.

    The image starts very grainily and noisily - the title sequence was shot on Super-8 - but the movie proper is fairly clear, with reasonable sharpness, good shadow detail, and no low-level noise. There are a couple of slightly grainy low-light sequences, but even these are fairly clear.

    Colour is deliberately washed out - in the audio commentary, the director discusses his use of a special film stock which gives lower contrast and reduced colour intensity. Clearly the desaturated colour is intentional. There's also a distinct blue cast over the first two thirds of the film, which slowly fades towards the end of the film.

    There are a couple of film artefacts (like the green blotch at 11:53), but they are easy to miss. There is no significant aliasing or moire. There are no MPEG errors.

    There are fifteen subtitle streams for the main soundtrack, and five for the commentary (German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish - no English!). I watched the English subtitles, and the English captions. They are accurate, well-timed, and easy to read - they have even subtitled the songs, which is important because the songs are relevant.

    The disc is single-sided and RSDL-formatted. The layer change is at 56:01. It is quite visible, but not disturbing to the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are soundtracks in English and German; I listened to the English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    The dialogue is mostly easy to understand, although there is quite a bit of dialogue in Spanish which is not translated for us. There are no visible audio sync problems.

    The score has some rather raucous elements, but that's the nature of the contemporary songs used. The quieter moments are quite effective, though.

    The surround speakers get used to add some depth to the soundfield, but that's all. The subwoofer is used to extend the bass of the soundtrack in a couple of places, but it gets very little use.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus have animation and transitions, with music from the movie behind them.

Featurette: Blurring Fiction and Reality (15:14)

    This is really just a Making Of featurette. Interesting, but nothing special - the most unusual part of this featurette is the title.

Deleted Scenes (7:18)

    Four deleted scenes:

• Confrontation at the Pier
• Nicole Gets Lost
• Future Plans
• Carlos Changes His Mind

Audio Commentary - John Stockwell (director) and Kirsten Dunst (actor)

    This is an informal commentary, with the director and lead actor simply watching the movie and commenting on it, and the process of making the movie. Kirsten Dunst is interesting to hear, but she does giggle unattractively in a few spots. John Stockwell does come across as a little pretentious, but he has a lot to say about the intentions behind the movie. I think both of them realise some of the shortcomings of the movie, although they don't talk about them too openly, but there are moments that sound as if they are making excuses. It was revealing when they pointed out a few scenes that were re-shot later - Kirsten was working on Spiderman, and her hair was red and her cheekbones more prominent, making the shots jar with the rest of the film.

International Theatrical Trailer (1:25)

    This trailer is 1.85:1, but not 16x9 enhanced.

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• German and Turkish soundtracks
• lots of subtitle tracks
• picture disc label (very plain monochrome label)

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• English dts soundtrack
• French and Spanish soundtracks
• Sneak peeks (trailers for Just Visiting and Double Take)
• advertisements before the menu (Just Visiting and Double Take)
• audio commentary for trailer

    The two discs are very similar - the menus are almost the same, and all the extras except for the trailers are on both discs. For two discs with such similar content, it is surprising how different the front covers are.

    I sampled the dts soundtrack. The music comes across better, but the dialogue is the same - I wouldn't go for the R1 purely because it has a dts soundtrack.

    The video quality is very similar between the two. I suggest you might be better off getting the R4 disc, so you can avoid the advertising, but it's a small point.

    An unusual movie, which you may not like, transferred well onto DVD.

    The video quality is fairly high, but somewhat variable.

    The audio quality is high.

    The extras are quite good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall