Burning Palms (2010/Image Blu-ray)
Picture: B- Sound:
B- Extras: D Film: C-
Talk
about an anthology project backfiring.
Christopher Landon’s Burning
Palms (2010) has five separate shorts with sick, bizarre, perverted stories
built around sexual violation and even disease.
They never intersect, so any comparisons to Crash are odd and there is nothing too memorable about any of the
shorts save the talent wasted.
Dylan
McDermott and Rosamund Pike are a couple dating, but his daughter keeps showing
up and she may be more involved with her father than she should be and vice
versa. A wild, taboo sex request goes
wrong for a young lady (Jaime Chung) who wonders if she is permanently damaged
from the experience. A lonely, pretty
young lady (Zoë Saldana) is raped by a masked man (Nick Stahl), but when she
finds his wallet, looks him up for something no one is expecting. A gay couple adopts a young African American
female child in a goofy, quasi-stereotypical installment that goes nowhere and
we also get a child-in-jeopardy short where children are playing terrorist
hunter games.
The Chung
piece does not know how to end, Pike/McDermott piece also almost a
child-in-jeopardy work considering the daughter is supposed to be 15 years old
and the Saldana/Stahl piece had the most potential if the script had more time
and more maturity to deal with the subject matter. Maybe this would have been more shocking in
the 1980s, but with the Internet, this is just too self-impressed and adds up
to boredom and a waste of everyone’s time.
Mr. Landon should understand human sexuality and/or be able to translate
it to a script page before trying this again.
It also seems desperate too often.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image is a little soft throughout, but is well
shot enough to make sense for a Blu-ray release, while the DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) lossless 5.1 mix is only so impressive, dialogue-centered and has a
limited soundfield along with limited fidelity (likely the budget). A trailer is the only extra, which is no
surprise.
- Nicholas Sheffo
