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Hacks
Film Threat // Unrated
List Price: $19.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
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Hacks won over a bunch of film festivals, but it never got a shot to do the same to audiences theatrically. Although it's not tame enough to play to mall-faring moviegoers, I'd bet Hacks could've netted some decent box office, almost undoubtedly enough to push it into the black. Although even a limited theatrical run doesn't seem to be in the wings, Film Threat has given it an impressive release on DVD, enhanced for widescreen displays and sporting a monstrous pile of extras.
Video: The combination of digital video, its black-and-white appearance, and whatever processing might've been tossed on in post give Hacks a really distinctive look. I liked it -- it doesn't look quite like video and doesn't look quite like film. The DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen at an oddball aspect ratio, something like 2.13:1, and it looks great. A little underlying video noise is present, but nothing major or particularly unexpected. The closest thing to any sort of real flaw comes in the form of a couple of briefly glimpsed purple squares, presumably digital video blips of some sort, but they only pop up twice and for such a short period of time that it's not worth giving 'em a second thought.
Audio: The Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack, encoded at a beefy 448Kbps, is great as well. As is typically the case with documentaries, real or not, dialogue is the emphasis, and it comes through cleanly and clearly. There isn't an extensive amount of music, but when it rears its head, the songs roar from the main speakers, accompanied by a pretty hefty low-frequency thump. For anyone keeping track, there are no dubs, subtitles, or closed captions.
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With 62 hours of footage captured in total, a bunch of stuff obviously wound up on the cutting room floor, or I guess in the case of a digitally-produced flick, the Mac trashcan icon. Rockowitz unearthed forty minutes of excised material for this DVD, with the longer scenes introduced with a short title card. There are a few full deleted scenes, including parapalegic incest, the comics turning the clock back to the '50s, and an offscreen half-and-half (with, erm, the other half first), to rattle off a few. Jim Gaffigan also gets a big slab of screentime with footage snipped during his brief but apparently exceptionally memorable time on the set, and the rest of the footage is a barrage of very quick improvised bits. It's all hit or miss, but there are enough "hits" to make it worth wading through. I mean, how often do you get a chance to watch a bone break? Like the movie, it's all in anamorphic widescreen. It closes with a URL on the Hacks website to get another hour of material, but at least as of the writing of this review, that section isn't ready for prime-time.
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The RSDL disc comes packaged in a transparent keepcase, and the liner notes include a brief sidebar by Glenn Rockowitz and a rant penned by Film Threat's Doug Brunell. The DVD sports a set of 4x3 menus which seem to take a really long time to navigate, and the movie has been divided into eighteen chapters.
Conclusion: Although I thought it kinda petered out in its last act, Hacks is an enormously entertaining flick and essential viewing for anyone who's ever suffered through shoddy stand-up comedy. It's netted a first-rate release on DVD as well, worth every cent of the slim asking price.
Related Links: The official Hacks site has a trailer, along with a few other Flash-oriented goodies. I'm too lazy to dig up more stuff on most of the comedians in the movie, but I'll toss out links to Victor Varnado and Jim Gaffigan.
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