This So-Called Disaster (Stage Documentary)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: D Documentary: C+
In the last ten years or so, a group of smarmy elitist
know-it-alls who know nothing have been trying to show how smart they are by
deconstructing everything and exposing that all media and many interactions
between people are pretentious. “No
worries” is their motto, yet their lax attitude is a politically correct menace
that is helping to destroy cinema and other arts as we know it. Michael Almereyda’s This So-Called
Disaster (2004) is not totally so, disaster or pretentious mess, but it
seems to have been affected with this uppity without being uppity attitude
whether intended or not.
With several camcorders going, all he and his crew can
come up with is about 90 minutes of something that plays more like a rough cut
than a serious look at Sam Shepard developing his new play The Late Henry
Moss. Especially when you have Sean
Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, Cheech Marin and a group solid actors in
addition most are not familiar with, you would think much more could be pulled
and produced form the situation. He
only has one shot to get this right and he fails to capture what looks to be a
very interesting project, maybe even something landmark from Shepard. So the actors start to get on each other’s
nerves; we could see that with lesser-know (and usually far less interesting)
people in bad reality TV. The best way
to say this is that the cast has energy, but this documentary does not. What a disappointment.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image was taped in the NTSC format
and is nothing to write home about. The
stars are always interesting to see, but none of the four videographers seem to
have any idea of where they could go with the cameras. It feels like they used Phil Joanou’s muddy U2:
Rattle & Hum (1988), which tried to be an anti-documentary. This seems to want to be an exploration of
making a stage play without seeming like one and on the visual level, it is
least effective. The Dolby Digital 2.0
Mono is flat, yet clear enough to be able to hear the most important points the
actors and Shepard make. The only
extras are five trailers for other MGM DVDs, but then, what could have been
offered after this?
- Nicholas Sheffo
