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Friday Night Lights
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Universal Pictures Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (10th March 2009). |
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The Film
 For some, sports are the lifeblood of their existence; every move has to be followed every player action has to be considered and every little decision made by the team is scrutinized by the huge body of fans. Looking at the size of cities and towns, then comparing that with how many local teams they have you can see the level of fanaticism change as well (or at least in the U.S., being a stereotypical American I know next to nothing about soccer except for that the L.A. Galaxy paid a lot of money for David Beckham and the World Cup is a big deal everywhere but here). Towns and cities that have one team make that team their own, it can become the driving force for sports fanatics, just look at the renowned crazed ‘Cheeseheads’ fans of the Green Bay Packers or even the fanaticism that emerges for the Utah Jazz. This isn’t to say that similar levels can’t exist in big cities and big markets, but when you get down to being the only game in town in your field, it pulls all the attention to the team. “Friday Night Lights” (2004) and the book it’s based on took a look at what High School football does to a small town, in this case Odessa, Texas, in terms of generating such a rabid fanaticism that school and work all become secondary. James “Boobie” Miles (Derek Luke) is a high school football all-star in the making, a natural athlete that seems to be able to single-handedly defeat other schools’ teams easily and isn’t afraid to let everyone know how good he is. With the whole town fanatically obsessed with the team, even to the point of some protesting that the schooling of the student players was taking away from their football ability, Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) starts depending on Boobie too heavily, over using his ability until Miles gets seriously injured early in their season. Soon the town is calling for his Gaines’ resignation while he tries to pull the team together. It’s not that the team is bad, but with the entire town depending and looking to the state championship, the pressure mounts on Quarterback Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund) and the rest of the team. Billingsley’s father is especially rough on his son, going so far as to beating him when he can’t hold on to a ball in practice. Soon the team is in the run for the playoffs with the pressure mounting, the team makes a final push for the state championships with Miles still sidelined due to injury. It’s hard to really summarize the movie based on the sports plot alone since there’s a great deal of sub-plots running through the film. Like the town of Odessa itself, the whole film centers on the football team, but takes more time to focus on the emotions and reactions of these students to their lives as athletes. What Peter Berg and David Aaron Cohen do a great job of with the script is capturing the emotions of the young men; keeping in mind that though these football players are superstars in their small town football world, they are still in high school and still growing up. The emotions and tears that emerge from Miles after his injury keeps him from football or the breakdown of Winchell after he blows a game winning pass bring a more realistic picture without any kind of everythings going to be okay resolution immediately afterwords. The secenes aren’t overplayed or ignored through the rest of the film, but are allowed to sit in their own space. Similarly the portrayal of the obsession of the town does a great job of getting to the obsession of the town, dealing with issues of race or status are still present within the film though dealt with more subtly. On one hand it’s nice to see that the racism and issues of race within the town are salient IN THE FILM, but it almost feels like more time is spent villianizing the final opposing (predominantly black school) than looking at the racism present in the small town that H.G. Bissinger looked at in the book. However I’m still not sure where I fall on Berg’s directing, the hand held style does a great job of giving a more documentary feel in some of the scenes, but in all reality it works with the tone of the film, especially in the football scenes. There are some great helicopter landscape shots of the town giving a picture of the bleakness of the town, but just like with watching “The Kingdom” (2007) it can get frustrating at times when the steadiness of the camera gets almost unnecessarily shaky. Overall, “Friday Night Lights” is a fine look at small town sports, especially high school football in Texas. At the same time though, it does brush over some of the major issues like the obsession of the town, as by the end of the film the film commits to becoming just another sports movie dedicated to seeing the team lead to victory or getting absorbed into the game itself. Which may be the point that as the team gets further and further into the playoffs that the town itself starts to disappear behind the team, but the way the scene starts to play into the more stereotypical sports movie by the end with the changes that were apparently made to the real events, such as Permian getting to the finals when it apparently only made it to the semi-finals. However the film itself represents a mostly a-typical sports film that has a great cast of characters and does a great set of actors who are mostly unknowns.
Video
Presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio in 1080p 24/fps with AVC MPEG-4 encoding, visually the film looks really good and crisp. The colors in the film are probably the biggest beneficiaries of the transfer, especially in the sports scenes where team colors come into conflict so often. While there are times when you can visibly see the camera quality change as the grain or minute focus changes become fairly blatant, it’s still a good transfer.
Audio
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, there are optional audio tracks available in French of Spanish DTS 5.1 as well. The DTS-HD track sounds good especially in the sports scenes where the levels and the movement of the football games themselves. Plus there are some great music cues in the film, especially the use of Public Enemy in the opening scenes in the movie, though later on some of the choices become less impressive, while the original score of the film does a good job adding to the mood of the film itself. There are English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.
Extras
The set comes equipped with most of the same special features from the HD-DVD and DVD releases of the film with an audio commentary track, 10 deleted scenes, 6 featurettes along with some new BD-Live features. First up is the audio commentary with director/co-writer Peter Berg and H.G. Bissinger where the two discuss the overall making of the film as well as reminiscing about the town of Odessa and Beissinger’s experiences writing the book in the 80’s as well as the presentation in film form. It’s an interesting conversation about the town, sports in general and adapting the book, with some funny moments (like when Beissinger says the Cardinals will win the 2004 world series over the Red Sox, which they wouldn’t), though there are some awkward pauses that stick out between the sections of very active banter between the two. Next are the deleted scenes, 10 in all, which get more at some of the aspects of the film that got brushed over a bit more in the movie like racism or . The scenes aren’t available separately, but instead play all together for 21 minutes and 48 seconds; all times below are approximate: - “Don’s Middle Finger” runs for 1 minute and 4 seconds, Don leaves for the party but notices some black kids hanging out across the street while making out with his girlfriend and gives them the finger. - “Extended ‘Sincere Warfare’ Speech” which runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, which is an extended version Coach Gaines’ speech to get the team ready for the season. - “Janitor Gives Gaines Advice” runs for 50 seconds. Here the janitor gives Gaines some advice about the team and training. - “Teachers give Gaines Advice” runs for 36 seconds. Teachers give Gaines advice on coaching the team. - “Gaines in Car with Coaches/Shotgun Scene” runs for 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Gaines talks with some of the other coaches, they talk about Miles, with an extended version of some of the players shooting rocks. - “Comer Hops” runs for 1 minute and 50 seconds. In this early scene Comer is in training to try and get into good condition to take over for Miles, learning to take contact. - “Extended Midland Lee” runs for 5 minutes and 10 seconds. An extended cut of the game against Midland Lee. - “LV Shows Up at Gaines’ House” runs for 2 minutes and 20 seconds, where Miles’ uncle shows up to talk to the Coach about his Nephew’s injury and future. - “No Gear Training” runs for 3 minutes. A training montage of the players training without pads. - “Extended ‘Dare You to Beat It’ Scene” runs for 2 minutes and 18 seconds, where the trio talks football and their futures and how big it got. The first featurette is “Peter Berg Discusses a Scene” runs for 1 minute and 9 seconds; here Berg talks the ‘Buddy Burger’ scene briefly, followed by the scene itself which runs 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Next up is the “Player Cam” which runs for 4 minutes and 19 seconds. This featurette goes into some of the extra football players preparing for filming, as well as some on set goofing around between Berg and some of the main actors “Tim McGraw: Off the Stage” runs for 6 minutes and 11 seconds. McGraw spends the featurette in a brief interview, which also talks with Berg and other major players involved with the film, in terms of the casting and the role he plays in the film. Not a bad featurette on his transition from country music to acting, but not terribly interesting for me either. “The Story of the 1988 Permian Panthers” runs for 23 minutes and 32 seconds. This extended featurette talks about the town, the novel and the inspiration for the film itself of the team. It’s an interesting look at the film itself, talking with the author, Berg, and even some of the actual players that the characters inspired. It’s always interesting to see how similar some of the actors are from their characters, as well as how dissimilar some are, along with another look at the history of the season itself. “Gridiorn Grads” runs for 14 minutes and 11 seconds. This featurette deals with the choreography of the football scenes for the film, mostly in terms of the casting of the football team who would run the plays outside of the major actors in the film, covering tryouts, mapping out plays, etc. An interesting featurette in terms of showing how the sports scenes were created, with an interesting look at the extras casting. “Behind the Lights” runs for 26 minutes and 51 seconds, which covers similar ground to the “Story of the Panthers” featurette in terms of talking about the town itself and the history of football in the town, but also dealing with some of your more generic making of aspects. It begins with the production of the film and putting together the production, including the failed attempts to make the film earlier along with all kinds of behind-the-scenes footage when the film actually got produced. It’s a nice featurette that covers the casting of all aspects of the film, though covers a fair amount from some of the other featurettes. Finally there are BD-Live features for profile 2.0 players, which require an internet connection to access allowing viewers to create bookmarks vis "MyScenes" feature and send them through BD-Live with the "MyScenes sharing" option.
Overall
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