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Lonesome Dove: 2-disc Collector's Edition
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (8th August 2008). |
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The Show
 Blurbs on movie posters or the covers of DVDs are known to be bold, vague statements of “amazing” or “spectacular.” So when a blurb proclaims “Lonesome Dove” (1989), a made for network-TV miniseries, to be “The Greatest Western Ever Made” it takes overselling a bit too far, especially considering that the Sergio Leone westerns had been out for years and Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (1992) was yet to come. The plot is a very general western about former-Texas Rangers Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall) and Woodrow Call (Tommy Lee Jones) turned ranchers living in Lonesome Dove who decide to head north to Montana after hearing about it from old friend Jake Spoon (Robert Urich) in search of a different life and an old flame. They decide to steal horses and cattle from across the Mexican boarder and leave for Montana with some of their ranch hands and old friends. Along the way they go through troubles dealing with bandits and old enemies. At the same time Spoon is being sought after by an Arkansas sheriff (Chris Cooper) for killing his brother. This journey quickly turns into a sprawling epic, with each installment nearly an hour and a half long it’s definitely in epic length territory. The visual language of the movie is fairly beautiful, and the restored widescreen version of the movie looks really good, bringing out a lot of the beauty of the western United States. However other than the epic aspect, the style is fairly mundane, it captures much of the scenery and the scope of the western setting, but Simon Wincer’s directing doesn’t have the same kind of draw as Eastwood or Leone. There are a lot of awkward beats left in the film that could have been cut, which could be a result of the TV miniseries format or just directorial choices. Either way, the film is fairly plain, but has great sense of scale in terms of the setting. The story itself is surprisingly uninteresting for me, despite the Pulitzer Prize the novel the miniseries is based on received. It’s a fairly humdrum classical western story about cattle ranching, wrangling, southern cowboy talk and fighting with those nasty savages. Though there’s no circling of the wagons, there’s a fairly negative portrayal of American Indians holding to classical western stereotypes, even going so far as to having Frederic Forrest play Blue Duck, the old “half-breed” American Indian arch nemesis of Gus and Call. Similarly problematic is Danny Glover’s role as Joshua Deets fulfills the “Magical Negro” archetype, the black man who through some mystical or natural connection has abilities to pull white protagonists out of danger, but has little to no past or characterization of his own just acting as a deus-ex-machina to warn of storms, track people down when needed or just smile in the background. Overall the problematic aspects of the film outweigh a lot of the good visual language with the scenery. There are some fairly solid performances from Duvall, Jones, Anjelica Huston and Chris Cooper, but for me the story only rises to the level of routine western territory and doesn’t become anything too special. That combined with some really awkward beats and near ridiculous dialogue, “Lonesome Dove” is far below the level of great westerns. Here’s a brief rundown of the four episodes included in this 2-disc set, along with a quick summary of the episode: - Part 1: The Journey to Montana begins and the gang packs up the ranch, steals cattle and horses, and meets some new friends and head towards Montana. - Part 2: Sean dies of snakebite after crossing the river and the group finds a new cook after Bolivar leaves; meanwhile Blue Duck kidnaps Lorena after Jake abandons her. - Part 3: Gus rescues Lorena and they reunite with the group. Jake falls in with a bad group of people and pays for what that group has done by association; Gus gets closer to his old flame. - Part 4: Deets is buried and mourned, the journey for the new ranch continues, Gus gets mortally wounded and Call prepares to make a new life in Montana, not before taking Gus’s body back to Texas for a proper burial.
Video
Considering it’s been nearly 20 years since it originally aired, the video transfer of “Lonesome Dove” is spectacular, presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, the film is impressive to watch considering the scenery and colors. The transfer looks good, no noticeable grain, very clean and keeping the colors in good condition.
Audio
The English Dolby Digital 5.1 sound track for “Lonesome Dove” is good, all the levels are in order and all the sound comes through clearly. The soundtrack seems like standard montage music but works with a good extent of the scenes but over the 6 hours of the made for TV movie it gets incredibly tiresome. There are also optional French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio tracks. There are no optional subtitles included on this miniseries.
Extras
Genius Products has released this 'Collector's Edition' with a collection of five featurettes and a documentary. Below is a closer look at these supplements broken down per disc. DISC ONE: On disc 1 there’s an assortment of featurettes that includes interviews, some made at the time the miniseries was made, other brand new. “On Location with Director Simon Wincer” featurette runs for 15 minutes and 4 seconds. This new interview discusses the creation of the film and how he was brought into the project, generally covering the production of the movie and is a good retrospective. “Blueprints of a Masterpiece: Original Sketches and Concept Drawings” featurette runs for 3 minutes and 37 seconds, here Wincer goes through some of the blueprints and concept designs for the ranch in Lonseome dove, different ranches seen in the film, and some of the original script. Interesting that he’s kept it around nearly 20 years later it’s a nice look at a lot of the storyboards and everything that goes in to a TV miniseries, “Remembering Lonesome Dove: Vintage Interviews with Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall and the Rest of the Cast” featurette runs for 13 minutes and 37 seconds, this featurette of interviews interweaves the actors talking about their individual characters and their general feelings about the movie. A good featurette, well preserved as is the film, however it also would have been interesting to get a retrospective look at their characters. “Lonesome Dove Montage” featurette runs for 3 minutes and 13 seconds, this short featurette is exactly what it says it is, a montage of footage from "Lonesome Dove" set to the score from the miniseries, though with the montage and the music it feels more like an in memoriam montage from the Academy Awards. “Interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Larry McMurty” featurette runs for 6 minutes and 50 seconds, the original author of the book discusses the origins of the book, and the evolution of the characters. He makes some interesting notes like about how the book was originally a screenplay or where the name "Lonesome Dove" comes from, however the audio quality is incredibly poor as it echoes around the room and the author’s voice is quiet yet the interviewer’s voice will boom out occasionally. DISC TWO: “The Making of an Epic” documentary runs for 49 minutes and 26 seconds. Though a lot of information has been covered in other parts of the special features on Disc 1, there’s some discussion with people that haven’t been seen elsewhere on the disc. It looks to be made around the time of the movie and features cast and crew discussing the inspiration of the book and the characters in the movie. Overall this feature is nearly long enough to be a full-length documentary, but caps off a great round of special features considering the show is nearly 20 years old.
Overall
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