Tim Janis: Beautiful America

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Program: C

 

 

Is it a concert or a special interest title?  Shot in High Definition, give or take certain footage, The Tim Janis Ensemble play their Yanni/Enya-type music over about an hour of footage that shows “sweeping” footage of various lands in the United States.  There is especially a focus on parks and mountains, thus the title, Beautiful America (2004).

 

George Clooney narrates parts in between, which also mixes in actual concert footage (band and audience) with all the outdoor footage.  The problem is that if you like this music, does it need images?  As for the outdoor footage, it is the same camera angle of an airplane and/or helicopter filming fly-overs, so it is more repetitious than the limited music genre could ever be.

 

It is prominent that the program was sponsored by clothing r(e)tailer L.L. Bean, who saw a safe package with a name actor’s participation and jumped on it.  It is the kind of thing I would expect to find at one of their stores as part of a special offer, but not as a stand-alone DVD.  It is not to say corporate-sponsored titles are always going to be bad, automatically shallow or cheap, but the safe part is the issue.  Nothing here is extraordinary and you can see great footage without the camera moving all over the place on many a DVD, including ones reviewed all over this site.

 

As for the HD shooting, the DVD is not even anamorphically enhanced, so it cannot possibly take advantage of the higher format’s superior picture quality to the extent of which DVD can capture it.  The only sound is Dolby Digital, but only in a 2.0 Stereo mix with healthy-enough Pro Logic surround information, which will make fans of such music happy.  There are minute extras not worth discussing.  The result is a DVD that is safe and safe means boring.  Only the most extremely curious should apply.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo