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Fame: Extended Dance Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - MGM Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (17th February 2010). |
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The Film
 After the success of the “High School Musical” franchise (2006-2008) it only seems logical that studios would clamor for an answer, something that could bring them the sort of ridiculous revenue that Disney saw from a group of high school singing teens. The next logical step would be to look to somewhere that they could draw from an established name, either from a franchise or something in cultural memory that would give them an easy in so it didn’t look like an answer to “High School Musical.” And so an incredibly loose remake of the 1980 film “Fame” came about in the 2009 “Fame” of the same story of a number of teens in a performing arts school who will sing and dance throughout the film. Opening with auditions to join the New York High School of Performing Arts or P.A., some students fail horribly but some show some real talent and make it into one of the show’s programs in acting, dance and music. Over the course of their four years in the school, the students start to grow in talent or have troubles in their classes as they all try to follow their dreams. Malik (Collins Pennie) dreams of becoming famous, enrolling at the school to become a rapper/actor and becomes friends with Denise (Naturi Naughton), an incredible pianist who is secretly an incredible singer, but is terrified of her father finding out about her singing talent. Jenny (Kay Panabaker) is timid but in the acting program and shows real talent, but needs to relax. Of course there’s a huge conglomeration of other students who are either simply background in the film or just show up every now and then to fill out the storyline with added characters. Malik, Denise and Jenny seem to form the main crux of the movie’s story and are the most fleshed out characters, but they never really get any depth. Their stories are simply stock stories. Malik is a kid from the street, rough around the edges but with dreams of his own. Denise is from a more privileged background but her father has his goals set for her. Jenny is the timid one whose relationship with Marco (Asher Book) brings out her true talent. These are stories that have been told before and are bluntly lacking any sort of depth and the actor’s don’t do much to add more. Pennie, Naughton and Panabaker are fine enough but, along with the rest of their cast, they look slightly out of place in terms of age, but don’t do much more to their characters either. Plus all of the teachers are ripped out of former NBC lineups, with Kelsey Grammer, Megan Mullally and Bebe Neuwirth teaching music, singing and dancing respectively. Charles S. Dutton makes a nice appearance and does a good job as the acting teacher, but he has such a limited role it’s lost in the flurry of characters and their stock stories. Probably the two highlights of the film for me were the sightings of April Grace, aka Bea Klugh from “Lost” (2004-2010) and Michael Hyatt who was Brianna Barksdale on “The Wire” (2002-2006). What made it all the more frustrating is the fact that you have two good actors, in incredibly diminished roles when they’re far more deserving. Plus the fact that their characters don’t play large roles in the story and that smaller role just leaves it open to simple stereotype or base characterization. Malik’s Mom (Hyatt) doesn’t even have a name, but rather is just an oppositional force of a token black mother who has to work 3 jobs. Sure, none of the other characters really have any depth, but at least they tried. All of these character and characterization problems tie back to the scripting by Allison Burnett whose script treatment aims for a "PG" rating, and granted I’m surprised at points it got it from the MPAA. At the same time I’m disappointed that the film turned an "R" film about "real" high school problems into a moderately clean movie, sure there’s underage drinking and a tiny bit of swearing, but the fact that none of these teens even consider sex (and rarely go beyond the occasional kiss) is overlooking a big part of what could make characters more well rounded. The fact that they go to a New York Performing Arts School and there is no gay main character with a storyline is a bit disappointing considering how big that was in the original. If they had done it coyly and casually as they do with the other romances in the movie it would have been great, but it’s overt lack is a little perplexing. But what gets lost in the entirety of the film is a moderately good job of directing a film that obviously has some budget for lighting and filming by Kevin Tancharoen. There’s a nice look and feel to the film, but overall the content is so base, falsely attempting to be real that it brings down the entirety of the film. I’ve never seen the original, but looking at the surprising amount of Oscar nominations it got, this remake is obviously more of a market maneuver rather than a full fledged or creative remake/update of the original.
Video
The film’s 2.40:1 high-definition aspect ratio with AVC MPEG-4 encoding @ 28 Mbps brings a fairly clean look to the film, the colors and lighting schemes are very theatrical, which is fitting for the story, but it doesn’t really stun you visually. Tancharoen does a nice enough job, but the transfer throws some grain into the scenes and the lighting schemes sometimes lose some of the color quality that I would have expected on Blu-ray. Still it’s a fairly clean looking film, it just lacks a bit of the crispness that I would expect.
Audio
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit is nicely transferred, but some of the scenes with ADR or music superimposed have a bit of an issue with the levels. It isn’t glaring, but the problem just comes off as a little awkward and adds to the artificial feeling of the film. Most of the original score that’s supposed to help the dramatic moments of the film comes off as cheesy, especially when on the streets with the New York ambient noises added back in to the film. There are also French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, as well as the English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
Fox releases a 2-disc set entitled "Extended Dance Edition", there isn’t much to the extras besides two versions of the film, deleted scenes, a music video, character profiles and two featurettes, as well as a digital copy. DISC ONE: The disc comes with two versions of the film, the "Theatrical Cut" which runs 1 hour 46 minutes and 58 seconds, as well as the "Extended Version" which runs for 2 hours and 2 minutes. First up are the deleted scenes, 15 in all, playable together for 18 minutes and 11 seconds, they include: - “Jenny Leaves Home” runs for 54 seconds, Jenny leaves her house in the early morning to audition for school. - “Victor and Rosie in Stairwell” runs for 43 seconds, Victor comes and picks up rosie to go audition for the school, apparently they’re cousins. - “Joy Rebuffed by Malik” runs for 53 seconds, Joy compliment’s Malik’s kicks and he brushes her off after she bugs him, really really awkward. - “More Audition Flava – Neil interviews Kevin” runs for 1 minute and 10 seconds, Neil walks through the hallways filming and interviews Kevin while he’s stretching. - “Kraft’s First Audition” runs for 1 minute and 44 seconds, a group auditioning scene for dance. - “Neil Interviews Jenny” runs for 40 seconds, Jenny looks nervous and Neil films it. - “Marco Comforts Jenny” runs for 54 seconds, Marco tries to relax Jenny. - “Jenny and her Dad: Gets Letter” runs for 1 minute, Jenny explains to her dad how much she wants to go to school. - “Neil, Joy and Kevin in Times Square” runs for 58 seconds, the trio walk through Times Square and talk about getting laid. - “Neil’s Monologue – Dowd Pushes Malik” runs for 2 minutes and 49 seconds, Dowd calls on Malik in class after Neil’s monologue and asks him about his mom and dad. - “Joy on YouTube – Calls Neil” runs for 1 minute and 17 seconds, Joy gets angry after Neil puts her video up on YouTube. - “Joy goes to Audition” runs for 59 seconds, Joy auditions with a bunch of other Asian girls. - “Neil tries to get actress for his film” runs for 43 seconds, Neil tries to get girls to audition for his movie. - “Rosie Comforts Victor” runs for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, Rosie talks to Victor about missing out on the record deal. Next is the “Fame” music video which runs for 3 minutes and 29 seconds, featuring the remix of "Fame" used in the film, using clips of the movie and some original footage featuring the main actors. The “remember My Name – Character Profiles” is a collection of short featurettes on the different actors in the movie. They include: - “Anna Maria Perez de Tagle” runs for 1 minute and 41 seconds, she talks about her childhood in a performing arts school and working in “Hannah Montana”(2006-Present) and how she connects with her character. - “Asher Book” runs for 1 minute and 44 seconds, Book talks about Marco and how he actually went to the new york performing school and how he identifies with the character. - “Collins Pennie” runs for 1 minute and 24 seconds, Pennie talks about his relationships and his similarities to Malik, as well as his childhood. - “Kay Panabaker” runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, she talks about her childhood love of film and acting, as well as her big roles previously, also her character. - “Kherington Payne” runs for 1 minute and 31 seconds, Payne talks about her passion for dance and acting, as well as her character. - “Kristy Flores” runs for 1 minute and 37 seconds, Flores talks about growing up in the Bronx and all over the place, going through the callback process after hearing about the school. - “Naturi Naughton” runs for 1 minute and 36 seconds, she talks about singing in her choir growing up, working on broadway in hairspray and giving inspiration. - “Paul Iacono” runs for 1 minute and 42 seconds, he talks about surviving leukemia, going to the performing arts high school and how much he’s like Neil. - “Paul McGill” runs for 1 minute and 26 seconds, McGill talks about moving to New York at a young age, getting into broadway at 17 and going to the performing arts high school. - “Walter Perez” runs for 1 minute and 33 seconds, Perez talks about seeing the rest of the cast and making the movie after talking ab it about his childhood. - “Kevin Tancharoen” runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, he talks about directing the movie and how to put together the movie and his energy that he brings into the movie. “Fame Talent National Search Finalists” runs for 6 minutes and 49 seconds, this featurette goes through the finalists for the national talent search that they did where you can catch the 9 finalists who get to have their performance put on the DVD. Showcasing talents from dancing, to singing and beat boxing, the winning singing duo Craig Lewis has their entire performance put on the second half of the featurette. “The Dances of ‘Fame’” featurette runs for 6 minutes and 52 seconds, showing off some of the choreography of the film, though is disappointingly just ripped from the DVD and isn’t upgraded to HD quality for the disc. There’s a look at the dancing and choreography, how the tap dancing circle competitions got integrated into the movie. Bonus trailers on the disc are: - “Digital Copy” spot runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds. - “Whip It” runs for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. - “Post Grad” runs for 2 minutes and 11 seconds. - “All About Steve” runs for 2 minutes and 23 seconds. DISC TWO: This disc is simply a digital copy of the film.
Overall
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