Extras:
Cinemax Featurette, Charlie Rose Show, Sundance: Anatomy of a Scene,
Audio commentary
Director:
Mark Romanek
(One Hour Photo, Static)
Producers:
Pamela Koffer, Christine Vachon and Stan Wlodkowski
Screenplay:
Mark Romanek
Music :
Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek
Cast :
Sy Parrish: Robin Williams
Nina Yorkin: Connie Nielsen
Will Yorkin: Michael Vartan
Jake Yorkin: Dylan Smith
Bill Owens: Gary Cole
Det. James Van Der Zee: Eriq La Salle
Det. Paul Outerbridge: Clark Gregg
If you want your snaps developed quickly, then a One Hour Photo
shop is where you take them to be developed. Most people do a good enough job
in their own vocation in life to get by, but Sy Parrish (Robin Williams)
takes things to extremes.
He muses on how each photo is a snapshot in time, how it defines what we've
done and where we've been... and starts to take an unbelievably unhealthy
interest in the Yorkin family, a mother and father occasionally at odds with
each other and their young son Jake.
This is the kind of film where I can't really say too much. It's plain to see
from early on that Sy - short for Seymour - is a loner and an incredibly
disturbed individual. Just how that manifests in his day-job and his home life
is played out for the camera.
One Hour Photo can be minimalist one moment and shock you the next,
which strikes of similar dealt out in director Mark Romanek's only
other full-length feature film, 1985's Static, starring Amanda Plummer,
one of my favourite films of the 80s and which has still to make its way onto
DVD. Mark's also known as a director of music videos for the likes of
Madonna, David Bowie and REM.
Although lightweight at comedy of recent times, Robin Williams always puts in
a good turn for drama such as in
What Dreams May Come
and the 2002 remake of Insomnia and therefore excels as
the freaky photo lab assistant, while the rest of the cast is fine but take
on roles that never cause them to think too much about their performance,
including E.R.'s Eriq La Salle as a detective and Gary Cole
(Midnight Caller, American Gothic) as Sy's manager.
One of the perks of the job was being able to sleep in-store.
The film is presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio as seen in
the cinema, but while most of the print is fine,
shots of Sy's flat can be over-grainy for such a recent film and some
scenes in the photo store look like the all-white background is giving the
foreground objects a bit of a problem. It's difficult to describe, but it
doesn't sit right onscreen and looks a little jerky at times. A scene
just over an hour at the door of the Yorkin household is similarly affected.
For such a drama there won't be a great deal in the way of stand-out FX,
but creepy swooping noises can be heard on the soundtrack to add tension.
"He's behind you..."
When the disc begins it immediately plays very jerky 16:9-letterboxed trailers for
forthcoming titles 28 Days Later, The Good Girl, Super Troopers, the
remake of Solaris - which disappeared quickly from the cinema - and
John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs.
I don't like this way discs do this. They should only be made selectable from
the usual menus and not forced upon you in this way.
The extras aren't plentiful and partly repeat themselves a bit:
Cinemax Featurette (13 mins):
Standard TV filler. Letterbox 16:9-cropped clips with chat from the main cast
and crew - the chat being shot in 4:3.
Charlie Rose Show (34½ mins):
An interviewer I've never heard of before, but one in New York who chats
to Robin Williams and Mark Romanek. The trailer is shown at the start of
this section, but don't watch it before you see the film. Not even the UK
trailer showed clips in such depth as it contains too many spoilers.
Sundance: Anatomy of a Scene (27 mins):
A deeper look at Sy's meeting with Will in the PC/Mac aisle, for a while as
the rest is like an extended version of the Cinemax featurette.
Audio Commentary:
A feature-length commentary from director Mark Romanek and actor Robin Williams complete with subtitles.
The film contains 32 chapters, subtitles are available in English for the
hearing-impaired only and the menus are animated with subtly-creepy music
from the film.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
