Final 24 Hours Series (Anna
Nicole Smith/David Koresh/Gianni Versace/John Belushi/Janis Joplin/Keith Moon/Nicole Brown Simpson/Sid
Vicious/MVD Visual DVDs)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C+
So called
“reality TV” is so tired that sooner or later, someone doing a show would not
hide their tabloid and quasi-sleazy approach.
The Final 24 “final hours” series is a cheesy new series of wacky
biographies, as long as it is the last day anyone popular died. Screaming “tabloid” and wanting to be hip (it
indirectly wants to be the TV hit 24, down to the corny use of a countdown
clock), it is pretty bad and the covers of each of the first eight titles we
cover here usually have purposely bad photos to match. Photoshop never looked so bad.
Figures
as diverse as Anna Nicole Smith (victim), David Koresh (terrorist), Gianni
Versace (genius), John Belushi (genius), Janis Joplin (genius), Keith Moon
(genius), Nicole Brown Simpson (innocent victim never avenged) and Sid Vicious
(genius) are the first batch, so there is no moral standard for who to
cover. Just as long as there is enough
to dig up and fill in empty spaces with no-name re-enactors.
This is
not to be taken seriously, but too many will.
The shows are also a bit dumbed down, as you can tell where the
commercial breaks are from that goofy clock and how simple items are repeated
over and over again. Yes, you get
treated like an idiot, even when the shows are not always stupid.
However,
the best way to show the limits is in the Sid
Vicious installment, which concludes like the recent and superior Who Killed Nancy? documentary that Vicious may not
have killed Nancy Spungen after all.
This episode on it handles it in a cold, distant manner, while the
earlier documentary is invested and smart throughout, as you can see at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9725/Who+Killed+Nancy+(2007/Region+Zer
Except as
a time killer or if you really must
watch, this is trash TV, unashamed of it and only for the curious.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image originates on digital video (maybe older
High Definition) with the occasional older clip or still, so it is uneven like
a documentary, but worse like reality TV with its purposely blurred images and
other dumb visual clichés. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 sound is barely stereo and often flat or compressed, then it can
also be harsh, so don’t expect much from the sound either, as all of it is done
on the cheap and hacked together. None of
these DVDs have any extras either, proving they are quitting while they are
ahead.
- Nicholas Sheffo
