Evans Above

During production, it sometimes seemed that most of the drama with Solo: A Star Wars Story was happening behind the scenes. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of The Lego Movie had creative differences with Lucasfilm over the standalone’s tone and direction and the production was then put in the hands of Ron Howard. Critics and fans had mixed reactions, but with Disney releasing 4K and Blu-ray versions on September 25th, you can take it home and decide for yourself. Father and son screenwriters Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan have done a good job of balancing new elements with the Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) backstory die-hard fans think they know by heart. We’re taking a look at the Blu-ray version.

The movie’s AVC-encoded transfer is released in the theatrical version’s 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Digitally shot, the transfer is full of detail, from the wear and tear on worn fabrics to the scrapes and dings on older vessels and droids. The underworld that Han Solo operates in is a dark place and the resulting colour palette is a bit flat with the occasional pop of colour from Lando Calrissian’s more colourful wardrobe. Black levels are a bit off witch means that details are sometimes lost in the darkest of scenes. There is also some occasional noise.

On the audio side of things, the disc offers an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack as well as Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, and Spanish. While the video presentation isn’t exactly reference level, the audio side is a blast. Like several recent Disney releases, the audio is a little quieter at usual volume levels but cranking it up a bit (not to 11, Nigel) solves those issues. Ambient sounds make excellent use of your surround speakers, enveloping the listener in laser blasts, reverberations and natural environments. The explosions and other fun moments make good use of your subwoofer. Music is of course an important part of the Star Wars experience and here it is given great clarity. Dialogue is also crisp and clear.

Besides getting a download code for a digital copy, Solo: A Star Wars Story also comes with a second disc full of extras. There’s a 21 minute round-table with the cast moderated by Rom Howard. The Kasdan’s discuss working together and their love of the franchise. We get to see the build process for the Millennium Falcon, as well as several timeline breakdowns of key scenes. We also get deleted scenes.

Solo: A Star Wars Story to your collection. Fire up the popcorn and have a good time.

Breaking In is a competent thriller about a mother (Gabrielle Union) who finds herself on the outside of her well-protected home while her children are facing threats from home invaders. In order to protect her children, she must break in to her own home, hence the title. The movie ticks off all the necessary genre boxes without much flair. The title is now available in a Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download combo pack from Universal Home Entertainment. Let’s look at this release from a technical perspective.

The disc contains two versions of the film, one 88 minutes and an 89 minute director’s cut. The 1080p AVC-encoded transfer is presented in the movie’s 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The transfer is quite flawless, with only a very rare amount of aliasing in some scenes. Details are crisp and clear, whether it’s natural surfaces, structural textures or facial features. The colours are natural and the black levels are excellent, which is important given the number of nighttime scenes. It’s an excellent video presentation.

Moving over to the audio side of things, we get an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack as well as French and Spanish DTS 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available in English SDH, French and Spanish. The 5.1 soundtrack is workmanlike. It gets the job done but you’re not going to be knocked off your feet by it. Dialogue is clear and centred, low frequency elements add some “oomph” when needed and the amount of ambient material in the surround tracks does its job.

The disc has a small collection of extras as well as a DVD copy and a digital download code. There are two versions of the film, the theatrical release and one more minute of action that qualifies it as an unrated director’s cut. The extras also include an optional opening with commentary from director James McTeigue and writer Ryan Engle, deleted extra scenes (again with commentary), a featurette on Gabrielle Union and female empowerment, a look at McTeigue’s take on the story, a piece on the action scenes, another look at Union and finally a full audio commentary track from McTeigue and Engle.

If you like having a very complete library and love Gabrielle Union, then you’ll want to add Breaking In to your library. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to catch the film on a streaming service.

Celebrating it’s 65th birthday, Peter Pan joins Disney’s Signature Collection with an Anniversary Edition Blu-ray combo pack.

Like many releases from the Signature Collection, Peter Pan has the same video and audio presentation of the classic film’s initial Blu-ray release (2013) but adds to the legacy extras with a new bunch of extra material.

The AVC-encoded 1080p transfer is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, just a hair off the film’s original ratio of 1.37:1. This was the ratio back then so those expecting a widescreen presentation can stop hitting their TVs. The presentation has been cleaned up, removing the film’s original grain, so purists will have something to argue over besides whether or not the M&M’s should go in the popcorn or not. Besides that quibble, the colours are rich and deep. There’s excellent contrast and the black levels are deep. The detail of the hand-drawn line art is well-preserved and there’s nary a moment of artifacts or other digital glitches.

On the audio side we get a Dolby Digital version of the movie’s original mono soundtrack as well as an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack and French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, and Spanish. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track does a great job of putting the film into a modern soundscape while remaining true to the original. The surround tracks do a good job of giving a 65-year-old film some ambient effects. The musical numbers sound great while the low-frequency parts give a little oomph when needed. Dialogue is clear and centred.

The Anniversary Edition also comes with a DVD version and a digital download code. As mentioned earlier, the Anniversary Edition includes a handful of new supplements that weren’t on the previous 2013 release. “Stories from Walt’s Office: Walt & Flight” is a featurette that looks at the filmmaker’s fascination with flight and love of airplanes. Then there’s “A Darling Conversation with Wendy & John: Kathryn Beaumont and Paul Collins”, which reunites two of the voice talent as they talk about their work and the live action scenes that were shot to help the animators. The disc also features sing-along versions of “You Can Fly” and the deleted “Never Smile at a Crocodile.” Legacy supplements include a look at deleted scenes, deleted songs, the making of the film, a look at Tinker Bell, audio commentary, sing-alongs and many others.

If you bought the first Blu-ray release in 2013 and the extra supplements don’t make you want to fly, then you can give this release a pass. But if this is the first time you’re discovering the original Peter Pan on Blu-ray and you want a complete Disney library, you’ll want to add this Disney classic to your collection. A warning to parents that I gave in the review of the 2013 release and that still isn’t addressed in the new supplementary material: this film is a product of its time and the film’s portrayal of Native Americans is stereotypical and viewed by many as racist especially in the “What Makes the Red Man Red?” musical number. Though there’s no revisionism in this release and we’re seeing the film as it was intended to be seen in the Fifties, I am a little surprised that Disney handled the controversy by ignoring it. Surely there could have been a small bonus feature on the disc that parents and teachers could have used as a discussion point.

A Wrinkle in Time is based on the classic Madeleine L’Engle novel and as an adaptation faced some critics who said it deviated too far from its source material. If you’ve never read the book, or can look upon it as a distinct piece separate from the book, you’ll find a tender story about a girl’s self discovery. It’s now available as a Blu-ray combo pack from Disney.

The AVC-encoded 1080p transfer is presented in the film’s original 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Shot digitally, the transfer is rightfully pretty flawless with nothing of note to report in terms of digital noise. The palette explodes off the screen but still doesn’t lose its nuance. The detail on everything from clothing to makeup to environment is crisp and textured. Shadow detail is excellent and black levels are very strong. If we were marking the video presentation, it would be at the top of its class.

On the audio side, Disney gives us an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack as well as French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, and Spanish. Like many of the recent Disney releases this disc is a little on the quiet side, so you’ll be turning your system up a bit. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find a soundtrack whose music fills the soundscape. Surround tracks pull you in to the otherworldly destinations and the low frequencies will give your subwoofer an appropriate workout. Dialogue is always clear and centred.

Besides the Blu-ray disc, the combo pack also comes with a DVD version of the film and a digital download code. There’s a half-hour featurette on the film’s production, deleted scenes, and commentary from director Ava DuVernay, screenwriter Jennifer Lee and other members of the production team. There’s also bloopers and music videos from DJ Khaled and Demi Lovato as well as Chloe X Halle.

A Wrinkle in Time has an excellent video presentation, a very good audio presention and a fair amount of extra material. Those willing to look past a less than perfect adaptation from the novel will enjoy adding it to their collection.

Black Panther was a huge hit and struck a chord with audiences, bringing to the screen the first superhero of African descent. This epic film is now available to take home an enjoy (and enjoy and enjoy) as Disney releases the Blu-ray on May 15th, 2018.

The 1080p AVC-encoded transfer is presented in the theatrical release’s 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Shot digitally, you expect the transfer to be clean and this presentation doesn’t disappoint with only the odd bit of macroblocking and digital noise. Details of environment, skin and fabrics, whether natural or computer-generated, are crisp and clear. The colour palette is wide-ranging but never muted or blown-out. Except for a few early issues, black levels are deep and crisp.

On the audio side, we get an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack as well as French and Spanish Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are provided in English SDH, French and Spanish. Like a few other recent Disney releases, the disc needs to be played at slightly higher volume in order to fully appreciate its dynamic range. The use of the full surround soundscape drops the listener into the middle of the action. Dialogue is always clear and positioned front-centre.

On the extras side, you not only get a digital download code, but also a good selection of behind-the-scenes featurettes. They include a look at Black Panther’s place in the Avengers, an exploration of the fictional kingdom of Wakanda, the prominent role of women in the story and the usual gag reels, commentary and deleted scenes. There’s also a look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its upcoming films.

All in all, Black Panther is a beautifully presented Blu-ray and a worth addition to your home theatre library.

It’s my last day of the 2018 Hot Docs Festival and I’m starting it off with Morgan Neville’s Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor. Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister who found his true calling working in children’s television. His TV wasn’t full of flashy graphics and loud music tied in with commercial merchandise. Instead he quietly spoke to the children, but never spoke down to them. While other shows helped with letters and numbers, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood helped with their emotional intelligence. The Vietnam war was going on, so the puppets in his imaginary kingdom dealt with territorial aggression. The civil rights movement was happening, so he illustrated racial harmony by taking the then bold TV move of sharing a foot bath with the neighborhood’s black police officer. When Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, he quietly talked to the children about the news and how it could be affecting their parents. From bullying to disabilities, Mister Rogers never shied away from a topic, yet he never treated them with anything but respect.

We see Fred Rogers warm the heart of a crusty Nixon-era Republican committee chairman who in turn gives public television the funding it needs. We hear how he apologized to a co-worker when he initially reacted badly to the co-worker’s homosexuality. Neville lets the stories and the clips play out in the same rhythm of Mister Rogers’ show.

Perhaps it was a mix of nostalgia and the stark contrast to today’s cynical, vicious, mean-spirited news cycle, but I wasn’t the only member of the audience to be wiping away the occasional tear. Definitely worth seeing.

My final film of the festival is Roll Red Roll, from director Nancy Schwartzman. It sheds a disturbing light onto the 2012 rape case that put Steubenville, Ohio in international headlines, when a girl was raped by high school football players. After a football game, “Jane Doe” accompanied friends to several post game parties. Intoxicated, she was later raped and only found out about the incident when she was shown a photo that had been circulated online. Initial investigation into the case was difficult by the toxicity of rape culture and sports worship. Many in the town blamed the girl’s intoxication and circled the wagons around the star players. The coach didn’t want to make his stars, Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, look guilty and hurt their futures. The disgusting trope of “boys will be boys” was heard.

The film tracks two important figures, detective J.P. Rigaud, who had to form a case with scant physical evidence but many text messages, and crime blogger Alexandria Goddard, who meticulously cataloged the team members and their social media posts to form a timeline of the evening. The texts and tweets are gut-wrenching but one of the most sickening bits of evidence comes in the form of a 12 minute YouTube video which shows Steubenville baseball player Michael Nodianos, discussing the texts and tweets he saw and laughingly describing the events. His complete lack of empathy makes him the perfect representation of how the story was playing out in the town.

Powerful and moving, Roll Red Roll is a gut-wrenching look at our culture and priorities.

That’s it for me and Hot Docs 2018. It’s an excellent festival and it has activities and screenings throughout the year. Don’t forget to visit “hotdocs.ca”:https://hotdocs.ca for more details.

The Game Changers, from director Louis Psihoyos, examines the benefits of a plant-based diet and uses examples from several elite athletes to turn the notion that a vegan can’t be strong on its head.

Our guide through this doc is James Wilks, a UFC fighter and special forces martial arts trainer, who turned to a plant-based diet after an injury. His experience showed a faster recovery time and he sets out to talk with other elite athletes who have made the jump. There’s ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek, heavyweight boxer, Bryant Jennings, strongman Patrik Baboumian, cycling champion Dotsie Bausch and weightlifter Kendrick Farris all of whom showed improvements in their strength, endurance and recovery when they switched to a plant-based diet. They tackle the myths and marketing of the meat industry head on. When strongman Baboumian’s friends asked how a man could be as strong as an ox without eating animals, Baboumian shot back, “When was the last time you saw an ox eat meat?”

A trio of football players are led through a series of tests by a doctor who shows them evidence that the pre-game ritual of eating platefuls of meat protein may in fact be hurting their game. Meanwhile, body building and entertainment icon Arnold Schwarzenegger suggests that those wary of going vegan try a meatless Monday and points out that the move has environmental impacts too. If you’re dead set against being vegan or vegetarian, you might not switch, but those who enter The Game Changers with an open mind will at least leave the cinema planning to give it a try.

We’ve all heard the odd news report or story passed from friend to friend about beloved actor Bill Murray suddenly joining a touch football game or appearing at someone’s house party. Is it true? Is it a myth? In The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man, director Tommy Avallone sets out to document sightings of this comedic Bigfoot.

Avallone tracks down several people who have been part of these encounters. There’s the wedding photographer whose engagement shots were added to by a surprise Murray appearance. The bartender who served Murray only to have him hop behind the bar and serve shots all night. Reporters and colleagues suggest that this is equal parts Murray’s improv training – you say yes to every situation presented – and his life philosophy. In an age where everyone walks around glued to their phones, perhaps Murray’s gift to us is to remind us to always be present and in the moment.

The doc meanders at times, but it is otherwise a sweet look at Bill Murray’s delightful traits.

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.

Today was a heavy day of documentaries, ranging from white nationalists and the alt-right, race-driven police arrest quotas, to the money and mob links in the Trump campaign.

Alt-Right: Age of Rage, from director Adam Bhala Lough, opens with archival footage of a Nazi rally from the 1930s. Except that the rally wasn’t in Hitler’s Germany but rather in New York City’s Madison Square Gardens. Fast forward to Charlottesville, Virginia, where the Unite the Right rally during Trump’s first year gives racist tools like Richard Spencer a chance to spew their hate. They may appear to be idiotic caricatures of basement-dwelling Nazis, marching with garden party tiki torches and practicing security detail stances in their Office Depot khakis, but their internet-fueled white supremacy march lead to the tragic death of Heather Heyer. Heyer died when a alt-right sympathizer drove his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters. The footage of that event here is much more grisly on the big screen than what we saw repeated on cable news.

Spencer, who appears to be the offspring of a Twitter troll and Tucker Carlson, is supported by the equally toxic views of Jared Taylor, who self-publishes books on hate and holds weekend seminars for like-minded supporters who hate but don’t have time for rallies. These two are confronted by Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of the One People’s Project, who has made it his life’s mission to shine a light and out these racist cockroaches, alerting the media and employers to the hatred in their midst. The alt-right try to paint him and Antifa as the bad guys in this situation, which of course leads Donald Trump to put the anti-Nazi protesters on the same level as the actual white supremacists. We also get to hear from Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups in America.

As Trump makes his comments, the doc leaves us wondering whether he’s as completely toxic as Spencer or just a shallow political opportunist throwing red meat to a hateful group to achieve his goals.

Crime + Punishment, from Stephen Maing, follows the story of the NYPD 12, a group of minority police officer who blew the whistle on discriminatory arrest quotas and faced internal retaliation. The doc is made all the more gripping by hidden microphone recordings of police superiors threatening the whistle-blowers and the warning to be careful because, ominously, “things happen.”

The practice of having quotas for arrests and summonses, which disproportionately hit minority communities, was outlawed in 2010. Many of these charges were later dropped, but they had the impact of putting people into the system who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The NYPD 12, Black and Latino officers, knew firsthand the outlawed practice was still ongoing. They were pressured by their superiors, given bad shifts, and told promotions would be withheld if they did not meet a revenue-generating quota of police interactions within poorer communities. These officers often felt a calling to enter the force and now they were being faced with corruption within the very profession they were proud to be members of. The doc also traces a private eye who is seeking to prove the quota system still exists and exonerate his client, whose false arrest could follow him for the rest of his life, affecting school and employment. Crime + Punishment is one of those chilling tales that shakes the public’s view of an organization that they are meant to trust.

I ended the day with Active Measures, director Jack Bryan’s look at Russia’s efforts to undermine democracy in the United States and beyond. Russia’s economy isn’t much of a powerhouse these days and in order to punch above its weight, it uses low-cost but effective means to destabilize its neighbours and adversaries using misinformation campaigns on the internet, staged protests, etc. Bryan interviews everyone from Hillary Clinton and John McCain to former ambassadors, CIA agents and security consultants to expose how Putin and his oligarch and crime friends channel money into these efforts.

Active Measures details Russia’s involvement in campaigns in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia. Some of these cases involve a familiar name, Paul Manafort, who worked on behalf of pro-Russian forces and this leads us to the guy the Kremlin viewed as a “useful idiot”: Donald Trump. The doc outlines how they began suggesting he run as early as 1999. It details how he was the perfect person to go after, as he needed money and was susceptible to flattery. Most importantly, Trump was involved in real estate, the perfect business to launder money through. The doc details how many of the units in Trump Tower and his properties in Miami were owned by either Russian oligarchs or mob and even mentions that when the Secret Service moved into Trump Tower they had to coordinate with the FBI that were keeping tabs on so many of Trump’s tenants. Even his cabinet are shown to have had done deals or favours for people that could be traced back to Putin. You’ll leave the theatre overwhelmed with the amount of detail presented.

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.

Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Our New President looks at the 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign from the viewpoint of Russia. Using both news clips from state news outlet RT and videos made by Russian citizens, we get to see what the election looked like from the vantage point of America’s Cold War adversary. The citizens see a populist who’ll improve relations with their country, while RT runs a constant stream of stories in support of Trump. They also attack Hillary Clinton endlessly, suggesting she was gravely ill or suffering from mental illness. While the big orange one denies there was any collusion with Russia, both late night comedians and private citizens openly make statements that they own this president. It’s a very interesting look at the election from another country.

I’ve always been a fan of Bachman Turner Overdrive and The Guess Who, so I was looking forward to seeing John Barnard’s Bachman, which looks at the life and career of songwriting and guitar legend Randy Bachman. Unfortunately, given the contributions he’s made to music and the interpersonal turmoil that ended both bands, we’re given a rather pedestrian documentary. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see Bachman playing and hear how great he is from Neil Young, Paul Shaffer and Peter Frampton, but his tumultuous relationship with songwriting partner and Guess Who bandmate Burton Cummings makes Cummings’ absence from the project a gaping hole in the project. Bachman has stated he feels betrayed by Cummings over ownership of their publishing, but I know that from newspaper articles, not this doc. Sadly, Bachman is not the definitive historical look at such an important musical icon.

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.

The Oslo Diaries, from directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, looks at the tense negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians that led to the 1993 Oslo Accord. The meetings between the two sides in Norway were top secret and the level of distrust between the negotiators was high. With all the secrecy, Loushy and Sivan don’t have footage from those meetings, but between contemporary videos and recent interviews with the principals (including Shimon Peres’ final interview) the filmmakers are able to put together a picture of that moment in time.

The negotiations continued and the men involved began to see the common humanity between them. Perhaps there was a way to end the conflict between the two peoples. When they finally came up with an agreement and their work was seen in the daylight, extremist forces on both sides began their campaign to see that it didn’t succeed. The road to the signing of the accord had potholes. The road to the accord’s implementation had land mines. One of then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s biggest opponents was Benjamin Netanyahu and after Rabin’s 1995 assassination his political star only rose. Twenty-five years later and Netanyahu is the current prime minister and the work of the negotiators is no closer to being implemented. It’s a sad resolution to be reminded that peace is harder to wage than war.

Directors Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting explore artificial intelligence in the doc More Human Than Human. The film looks at various stories involving AI while the film’s through line is Pallotta’s work with a team building a robot documentarian that will not only interview Pallotta but frame the shots as well. One story involves an autistic boy whose use of Siri helps his mother get a reprieve from a barrage of daily questions. Another shows a woman who keeps her dead fiance “alive” by interacting with a collection of his text messages and photos that she collected and compiled into a program. A psychologist realizes that the woman he’s been chatting with on a dating site is actually a chatbot and even his educated mind was fooled, while Pallotta’s pals Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke drop by to see if a robot is ready to replace Scorsese.

Though it’s not a gem of a doc and flits quickly from thought to thought, More Human Than Human does leave us with an important question. As we hand more decisions over to AI, what stops that AI from deciding that we might be the biggest threat?

I had a chance to screen Chuck Smith’s Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground prior to the festival. It opens tonight at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and is a fascinating look at a woman who was a huge connector between people in the early Sixties arts scene in New York and an artist in her own right.

Rubin was teen when she hit the scene and worked with experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas. She was everywhere, working with many, influencing many and shooting her own graphic art film, Christmas on Earth. She met Andy Warhol, introduced him to Lou Reed, got Bob Dylan interested in Jewish mysticism and inspired Alan Ginsberg, who began a relationship with her after seeing the controversial Christmas on Earth. She organized arts events. She was the ultimate muse and connector. Then, just as suddenly as she entered the scene, she left, stepping out of a car as she was passing a Jewish orphanage. She married an Orthodox Jewish man, soon divorced him and married another, moving to live in a religious community in France, where she died giving birth to her fifth child at age 35.

The people being interviewed don’t seem to have any insights into Rubin’s sudden exit, her mental illness and drug use perhaps seen as a catalyst for her art as opposed to an explanation for events in her life. While we may not get all the answers from this doc, it does give us a glimpse into a brief but vibrant period of an important arts scene.

For more information on the 2018 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and for tickets and showtimes visit hotdocs.ca.

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