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Permanent Midnight
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
To escape the cycle of drugs and excess, writer Jerry Stahl makes the move from New York to L.A. Smart move, Jerry. He quickly finds himself running down the same track, and this film adaptation of Stahl's "Permanent Midnight" chronicles his descent from a highly paid sitcom writer to working the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. "Permanent Midnight" uses the tried-and-true "frame story with a slew of flashbacks" to tell the story of Jerry's fall from grace (if you consider writing for "ALF" to be grace). Jerry (played by Ben Stiller) tells his drive-thru-lover Kitty about his time in Tinseltown, beginning with his marriage to Sandra (Liz Hurley), who pays him thousands of dollars to marry her so that she can secure a green card. He understandably accepts, and through her, his sitcom career starts to take off. At first, everyone seems to turn a blind eye to Jerry's drug use, but when it affects his work and his marriage, Jerry finds himself addicted, alone, and hopelessly broke...
"Permanent Midnight" got mixed reviews from the critics when it was initially released, but I found it tremendously entertaining. It's not as disturbing as "Requiem For A Dream" (I say that without having seen it, but I will! Really!), and it's more personal than "Trainspotting" (which seemed to me at least to be more about the group dynamic than Renton in particular). "Permanent Midnight" is intelligent, unflinching, and entertaining -- all I could hope for from this sort of film.
Video: When Artisan does it widescreen, they do it right. (If you put mental pauses between those last three words, it sounds a lot cooler. Try it!) With as much nitpicking as I've done about video quality over the past couple of months, I always feel like I'm missing something if I don't make any complaints. I guess I could say that one extremely brief shot early on (during a loooove scene) appeared to suffer from digital artifactin', but other than that...crystal-clear, razor-sharp, zero dust, accurate flesh tones, deep blacks, no grain, no visible edge enhancement... Some of the exterior day shots in particular are flat out beautiful. Excellent job.
Audio: "Permanent Midnight" is a dialogue-driven character piece, and music isn't ever-present, so there's not too much to comment on. The dialogue is very clear and entirely free of the usual audio-nasties. The rears in this 5.1 mix are used primarily for ambient sounds, and there are a couple of occassional effective audio fx.
Supplements: "Permanent Midnight" features four deleted scenes (all letterboxed, non-anamorphic, and clearly culled from a workprint) and a widescreen-enhanced trailer. The commentary with David Veloz is the usual sort of indie-director-only bit. It's rather dry and not exceptionally informative. Personally, I would've preferred to have Jerry Stahl in there (though he does contribute a bit to the liner notes) since the film was based on his life, after all...but I guess I'll have to buy his book to compare and contrast.
Conclusion: Artisan has knocked the MSRP on "Permanent Midnight" down considerably. I liked it quite a bit, and there aren't too many discs in this price range with this number of features. Although the subject matter may be a bit tough for some viewers to swallow, I very highly recommend "Permanent Midnight" as a purchase.
"Permanent Midnight" got mixed reviews from the critics when it was initially released, but I found it tremendously entertaining. It's not as disturbing as "Requiem For A Dream" (I say that without having seen it, but I will! Really!), and it's more personal than "Trainspotting" (which seemed to me at least to be more about the group dynamic than Renton in particular). "Permanent Midnight" is intelligent, unflinching, and entertaining -- all I could hope for from this sort of film.
Video: When Artisan does it widescreen, they do it right. (If you put mental pauses between those last three words, it sounds a lot cooler. Try it!) With as much nitpicking as I've done about video quality over the past couple of months, I always feel like I'm missing something if I don't make any complaints. I guess I could say that one extremely brief shot early on (during a loooove scene) appeared to suffer from digital artifactin', but other than that...crystal-clear, razor-sharp, zero dust, accurate flesh tones, deep blacks, no grain, no visible edge enhancement... Some of the exterior day shots in particular are flat out beautiful. Excellent job.
Audio: "Permanent Midnight" is a dialogue-driven character piece, and music isn't ever-present, so there's not too much to comment on. The dialogue is very clear and entirely free of the usual audio-nasties. The rears in this 5.1 mix are used primarily for ambient sounds, and there are a couple of occassional effective audio fx.
Supplements: "Permanent Midnight" features four deleted scenes (all letterboxed, non-anamorphic, and clearly culled from a workprint) and a widescreen-enhanced trailer. The commentary with David Veloz is the usual sort of indie-director-only bit. It's rather dry and not exceptionally informative. Personally, I would've preferred to have Jerry Stahl in there (though he does contribute a bit to the liner notes) since the film was based on his life, after all...but I guess I'll have to buy his book to compare and contrast.
Conclusion: Artisan has knocked the MSRP on "Permanent Midnight" down considerably. I liked it quite a bit, and there aren't too many discs in this price range with this number of features. Although the subject matter may be a bit tough for some viewers to swallow, I very highly recommend "Permanent Midnight" as a purchase.
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