Extras:
Making of Phone Booth, Director's Commentary
Director:
Joel Schumacher
(8MM, Bad Company, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, The Client, Cousins, D.C. Cab, Dying Young, Falling Down, Flatliners, Flawless, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, The Lost Boys, On The Road, Phantom of the Opera (2004),
Phone Booth, St Elmo's Fire, Tigerland, A Time To Kill, Veronica Guerin)
Producers:
Gil Netter and David Zucker
Screenplay:
Larry Cohen
Music :
Harry Gregson-Williams
Cast :
Stu Shepard: Colin Farrell
The Caller: Kiefer Sutherland
Captain Ramey: Forest Whitaker
Kelly Shepard: Radha Mitchell
Pamela McFadden: Katie Holmes
Felicia: Paula Jai Parker
Corky: Arian Ash
"Ha! Missed me!"
Phone Booth
was a movie held back from release for a while because it held chilling
similarities to the Washington sniper, although I recently saw comedian Jim
Jeffries say "Is it just me, or does anyone else miss the Washington
sniper?" and then go on to say that muggings down markedly in the state
because the muggers were too scared to set foot outside their own door!
Publicist and wise-cracker Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) has a mobile
phones, so why should he need to use a phone booth to call potential actress
Pamela McFadden (Katie Holmes)? The movie utilises split-screen shots
to attempt to increase the tension, but that didn't quite cut it for me.
I really thought I would find this a lot more engaging, but what started with
an interesting premise didn't develop like I thought and from early on I
didn't care whether Stu was gunned down or not, although you knew he wouldn't
come to much harm because he was the star of the film... so from where was
the suspense meant to come?
Somehow, the end result didn't gel with what I was expecting. The problem was
down to the total lack of conviction in the voiceover from Kiefer Sutherland
as "The Caller". I understand he wasn't the original choice and actually
recorded it close to the film's completion as a last-minute change - and it
shows. Kiefer's a tour-de-force in
24
but here, his vocal performance leaves me cold. They should've gone
for an unknown in that role.
Oh, and if he's calling via a phone, it should SOUND like he's calling
from a phone. You know how that sounds... and it does NOT sound like he's
calling through a set of speakers all around the viewer(!) Hence, this
totally removes any potential atmosphere.
Given the real-time nature of this film, had it been the plot of a single
hour of '24', for example - since the siege end-to-end lasts almost exactly
an hour, we'd have had a great little one-off and we'd have had time to build
up knowledge of the characters and to empathise with them, but as it's
standalone movie I couldn't really care less who lives and who dies as we're
not given the chance to get to find out anything important about them.
Katie Holmes and Radha Mitchell.
Does movie totty get any better than this?
The film is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen and has no problems,
while the Dolby Digital 5.1 doesn't get much of a workout because the film
is largely set in one static location.
The extras are... not much to shout about:
The Making Of Phone Booth (28 mins):
Nearly half-an-hour of talk about how the film was put together over an
unusally brief 10-day-shoot. It's okay but nothing out of the ordinary.
Director's Commentary:
If you like that sort of thing.
The film contains 28 chapters which is quite a lot for such a short film,
subtitles are available in English only and the main menu has little noticeable
animation and is scored with a looped piece of incidental music and words
from The Caller.
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
