Extras :
Blossoms and Blood, Scopitones, Theatrical Trailers, Mattress Man Commercial,
Deleted Scenes, Art
Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson
(Boogie Nights, Cigarettes & Coffee, The Dirk Diggler Story, Hard Eight, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, TV: Couch)
Producers:
Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi and Joanne Sellar
Screenplay:
Paul Thomas Anderson
Music:
Jon Brion
Cast:
Barry Egan: Adam Sandler
Lena Leonard: Emily Watson
Dean Trumbell: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Lance: Luis Guzman
Rico: Rico Bueno
Rhonda: Hazel Mailloux
Elizabeth: Mary Lenn Rajskub
In Punch-Drunk Love,
Barry Egan is a single man who works in a warehouse which sells bizarre
novelty toys, he has seven sisters, who snipe at him and call him "Gay Boy"
because he threw a hammer at a sliding door window when he was younger and
one of his sisters, Elizabeth, is trying to set him up on a blind date, or
rather arrangement at a dinner party.
He has an obsession with collecting airmail vouchers from copious amounts of
purchased pudding and also an incredibly violent temper, stemming from a
bad experience with a phone-sex chatline which triggers him off and where
does the D&D Mattress Man company come in to all this?
To detail more than that would rob the film of its shock value at times.
This is an engaging and unpredictable one, but at 83 minutes before
the end credits roll it ends too quickly and too many elements are left
unresolved.
However, while you're caught up in it, this might sound a cliche, but it does
have funny and touching moments. To see Adam Sandler in a film like this
is a real find. Normally, he's wasted in one flaccid so-called comedy after
another which, sadly, he gets paid at least $20m apiece for, so he has no
reason to stop making those for now since he won't have made a bundle from a
movie like this, but it would be nice to see him diversify because he
certainly can cut it here. Emily Watson keeps to her English accent
and is simply gorgeous.
Visuals are employed with a fantastic 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen canvas, on
which to paint an early morning scene during which Barry comes to own a
strange harmonium left at his place of work, and later the clean and cold
emptiness of a supermarket.
There's excellent use of cutting sound at key moments in the film, which
surprise when delivered - so I won't spoil these here - but which punctuate
the tension perfectly. Fast-percussion background music heightens the tension
of each required scene.
All the extras come on disc two, but aren't as abundant as one would've thought
for requiring a second disc. Any film clips are non-anamorphic:
Blossoms and Blood (12 mins):
A montage of film clips, including some taken from different perspectives not
seen in the main feature. Probably the closest thing to a music video, in a
way, but still something you'll watch once only.
Scopitones (4 mins):
Brief music snippets of around 15-60 seconds each that don't really work on their
own. Had they done so, the interesting way the video's cut together would've
had the desired effect.
Trailers (7 mins):
Three here. One standard one (2.20, anamorphic 2.35:1), one abstract one
labelled "Jeremy Blake's Love" which more resembles the DVD main menus (1.23,
non-anamorphic 2.35:1) and a shorter one, "Eat Tomorrow", that highlights
the romantic part of the plot (30 seconds, non-anamorphic 2.35:1).
Mattress Man commercial (45 seconds):
Philip Seymour Hoffman in a 'commercial' for his own company.
Deleted Scenes (7 mins):
Two here. The first, "The Sisters Call" (7:17), shows them doing just that, endlessly
and we also get an insight into Barry's madness but it does go on too long.
The second, "Are You From California?" (2:22), centres around the cashpoint
machine, but I'll say no more.
Art (2½ mins):
More of the main menu-style images set to an old tune (Anne Kerr - I've Gone
Native Now), which just seems a bit pointless.
Overall, some rather disappointing extras that don't make a whole lot of sense.
The director can get away with such abstract behaviour in the film but it
just looks odd outside of that.
The main menus are nicely animated and scored, in keeping with the effects used
in the movie at times and there are subtitles in English, Arabic, Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Russian,
Slovenian and Turkish. What a bizarre selection? Perhaps if they'd cut down
on those and not had as many DD5.1 soundtracks, all the extras could've fit
on disc one. The film has but 22 chapters to divide it.
Strangely, subtitles for the extras are in English, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.
Why use different ones for the extras alone that aren't used for the movie
itself?
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
