Extras : Scene index, Trailer, Deleted Scenes, Featurette: Caught in the
Camera's Eye, Outtakes, Production Notes, Music Highlights, Cast and
Filmmakers, Weblink, 2 Audio Commentaries
Director:
Ron Howard
(Apollo 13, Backdraft, Cocoon, EDtv, Far and Away, Grand Theft Auto,
Gung Ho, Night Shift, The Paper, Parenthood, Ransom, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,
Splash, Willow)
Producers:
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard
Screenplay:
Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel
Music:
Randy Edelman
Cast:
Ed Pekurny: Matthew McConaughey
Shari: Jenna Elfman
Ray Pekurny: Woody Harrelson
Jeanette: Sally Kirkland
Al: Martin Landau
Cynthia Topping: Ellen DeGeneres
Whitaker: Rob Reiner
Hank: Dennis Hopper
Jill: Elizabeth Hurley
John: Adam Goldberg
EDtv is what you get with no scripts, no
edits, 24 hours a day, in what is less
Truman Show
and more
Big Brother.
I first wanted to get the review of this DVD up online for when it was due
to come out in the shops, but circumstances such as a dead DVD-ROM decoding
card forced me to suspend all DVD reviews for a couple of weeks at the time
and some discs slipped into the back-catalogue round-up pile.
However, looking at the disc now, it proves that I could not have picked a
better time to review it and see the film for the first time.
Viewers of Channel 4 at the moment, mid-August 2000, have just experienced
the first half of the nine-week run for the UK edition of Big Brother,
a show that's taken the world by storm and in this country, one man, dubbed
"Nasty Nick", was evicted for breaking the rules and showing pieces of paper
to the other contestants one at a time, in a bid to vote out the right people,
but the whole thing backfired as he was plugging different names to different
people and a kangaroo court on Thursday August 17th put paid to his game,
causing him to leave later that day.
"I've... made a mistake", blubbed 33-year-old marketing man Nick
Bateman, to the Big Brother all-seeing eye. No you didn't, Nick, you just
bought yourself a shitload of TV contracts from now until doomsday, causing
the £70,000 first prize to be a drop in the ocean compared to your
potential earnings, even if you are most definitely a plant from Channel 4
however much he and brain-dead bimbo Davina McCall try to cover it up.
Well, since this review states EDtv at the top, I'd better talk about
the film itself too.
The real lives being tossed around here primarily feature video store clerk
Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey), his elder, fitness fanatic, brother
Ray (Woody Harrelson) and Ray's girlfriend Shari (Dharma & Greg's
Jenna Elfman). As the TV cameras roll, it transpires that all this
time Ed and Shari have fallen for each other and when they kiss for the first
time, it's broadcast to the nation, including Ray's TV.
Sally Kirkland plays their mother Jeanette, who laps it up for the
cameras at first but is eventually found baring her soul like all the rest.
Her wheelchair-bound husband - and the boys' stepfather - Al (Martin
Landau) is not long for this world and once the programme has begun,
punters are already putting bets on how long he's got left to go.
The show was the brain-child of wannabe-TV-exec Cynthia Topping (Ellen
DeGeneres), but naturally it's her boss, Whitaker (Rob Reiner)
who goes on to take the credit and you just know she's going to get her own
back even if it is incredibly cliched.
Amongst all this are brief cameos from Dennis Hopper as Ray and Ed's long-lost
father Hank, who turns up out of the blue after Ed begins his fame,
Elizabeth Hurley, also getting just a couple of scenes, as Jill, who
only wants to bed Ed as a way to further her onscreen career, the media-whoring
type that she is, Harry Shearer (The Simpsons' Kent Brockman)
as the host of Late Show-a-like ViewPoint and Adam Goldberg as
Ed's best friend John, who also took the role of Chandler's flatmate for a
time in Friends.
Add to this, cameos from people starring as themselves: RuPaul, Jay Leno,
Michael Moore and Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher.
The picture is almost perfect, looking great as it goes with a 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen ratio save for a few flecks on the print.
The average bitrate is a middling 5.34Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
I have no complaints with the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and everything is clear
as a bell, but apart from the opening "True TV" titles, a scene at an ice
hockey match and some of the musical tracks, there's not a great deal to get
too attached to here.
Extras :
Chapters :
Just 18 chapters for this two-hour film. Not enough and it'd be nice for
the extras to get some too.
Languages/Subtitles :
Dolby Digital 5.1 in English and German.
There are subtitles in 11 languages: English, German, Dutch, Swedish,
Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Hebrew, Polish, Czech and Greek.
And there's more... :
And it's packed with some good extras too - a Theatrical Trailer,
40 minutes of Deleted Scenes introduced by director Ron Howard,
a Featurette: Caught in the Camera's Eye lasting 31 minutes and mixing
cast interviews and film clips, 8 minutes of Outtakes, mainly concentrating
on ad-libbing when the actors' fluffed their lines, the usual Production
Notes, Cast and Filmmakers for many of the principal cast members,
Music Highlights a la
Out of Sight,
which took you to that moment in the film when the song plays and a
Universal Pictures Weblink for those DVD-ROM-capable.
Finally, there are Two Audio Commentaries, one from director Ron
Howard and the other from Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel,
its scriptwriters.
Menu :
Static and silent with stills from the film. No big deal.
Overall, since I've experienced the real
Big Brother
before I saw this, the differences between a programme that's really not
scripted compared with a film that will have had many treatments made stand
out a mile and while it was interesting to watch, it ultimately failed to
grab my attention as much as the TV show does, particularly because not all
of the actors are right for their parts.
Most of the male actors put their
tuppence-worth in, but Jenna Elfman doesn't work and makes you feel
she really wants to be as good as Renee Zellweger was as the wanton
woman in
Jerry Maguire.
And I must be the only bloke in the country who doesn't find Elizabeth
Hurley particularly attractive, but there we are.
Still, it has all the extras of the Region 1 DVD, save for promos from
Barenaked Ladies and Bon Jovi - so no real loss in the case of
the latter then - and if you're a fan of the film, it's definitely worth a
purchase.
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
