In short, both begin with promising musical careers but while Jackie becomes a famous cellist,
Hilary decides to get a husband and live on the farm with Kiffer Finzi (David Morrissey).
Jackie also gets married, to Daniel Barenboim (James Frain, Emily Watson's "Mill on the
Floss" co-star), but music isn't the only things these two share: the phrase "playing away
from home" should give you a clue. Life doesn't turn out well for Jackie though, since she
contracts an illness and then dies (being a true story, you'll know that already).
I skipped through this film to get the jist of it because this disc isn't
particularly watchable for reasons I shall divulge shortly. However, the story
doesn't seem a particularly gripping or plausible one but Emily Watson's
acting is superb.
The film was made in a 2.35:1 ratio (and is presented as such in a non-anamorphic
ratio on the Region 1 disc), but the print used here has been cropped to 1.85:1 (and
the box itself states "16:9" so it's wrong twice!), has a number of flecks on it and looks
a little dark. Apparently the recently-released Hideous Kinky suffered the same fate.
What's left is presented anamorphically, but is slightly off-centre so you can spot the
black bar at the top of the screen if you've reduced the overscan on a widescreen TV.
The average bitrate is 7.5Mb/s.
The sound quality fares better though, particularly for the scenes involving classical
music and one of my favourite pieces, Elgar's Cello concerto, Jackie's flagship
piece. It is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1.
Extras :
Chapters and Trailer :
Could certainly use more - 17 for the 117-minute running time - and the original
theatrical trailer, which, to add insult to injury, is presented close to 2.00:1.
Languages/Subtitles :
English Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in English for the hard of hearing.
And there's more... :
A mostly-musical five-minute Deleted Scene is here, but to add insult to
insult to injury, it's presented in the original 2.35:1 ratio, unlike the film.
The Canyon Dolby Digital Trailer is also included.
Menu :
A static menu with the two sisters, with a short, gentle piece of music from the soundtrack
and options to start the film, select a scene or the extras.
VCI are normally good at providing good-quality discs so it's unlike them to cock it up
in the way they have here. Even the credits look out of focus and the closing
ones speed by too fast in the same way ITV and BBC1 do when they're trying
to show them all but still get them out of the way in the quickest time
possible.
Hence I cannot recommend this disc to anyone, unless they must have their
widescreen TV filled, whatever the original ratio and there's a couple of them
around.
Best line from what I saw goes to Emily Watson as the sex-starved Jackie who
cries out :
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
