Again, I reiterate that the themes in the story are worth our notice, but the movie is an embarrassingly bad effort.
Video:
The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen video image looks rather soft for a new movie. Usually, soft focus lenses are used to make actors look glamorous. However, since neither Moore nor Streep is beautiful in the conventional sense and since Kidman has a slightly cross-eyed look throughout her scenes in "The Hours", the soft focus approach annoyed me. The movie also looks dirty to me because the way that the film was lit led to the camera to pick up the dust flitting in the air. The source print is in good condition, but the way that the film was shot yielded a less-than-attractive picture presentation on DVD.
Audio:
Since "The Hours" isn't an action extravaganza, its sound mix--done as a Dolby Digital 5.0 English track--doesn't even have a 0.1 subwoofer feed. The audio does a good job of dispersing the music score throughout the room, though I must reiterate that the music and the movie make a poor match. Dialogue is mostly intelligible, though wherever the sound mixers dialed-up the volume for Philip Glass's score, the actors' voices require your utmost attention in order to be understood. For the most part, the audio track feels like a mono mix because the movie is dialogue-driven.
Those of you without digital sound set-ups should view the film with the included DD 2.0 surround English track. There's also a DD 5.1 French track, but my guess is that 0.1 subwoofer feed is inactive since the film's native English mix is a 5.0 design.
Optional English subtitles as well as optional English closed captions support the audio.
Extras:
Billed as a Special Collector's Edition, the "The Hours" DVD offers a decent slate of extras in terms of quantity. However, as I didn't like the movie, I found the bonus materials to be rather dreary, too.
There's an audio commentary by Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. It would seem that the actresses were recorded separately, an act that makes sense since they don't really interact with one another onscreen. The actresses are too busy being polite and complimentary towards the other filmmakers to say anything substantive about their craft.
The audio commentary by director Stephen Daldry and novelist Michael Cunningham isn't much better, either. The two men are so convinced of the film's greatness that they talk about the project as if they've never seen a better collection of geniuses in their lives. I'm sorry, but "The Hours" isn't even a good film, much less a great one.
There's a "Filmmaker's Introduction" featuring video footage of the director talking about how wonderful his movie is. I wonder why Mr. Daldry feels the need to insist on his film's greatness. Aren't movies supposed to be able to speak for themselves?
Next up are four featurettes: "Three Women", "The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf", "The Music of 'The Hours'", and "The Lives of Mrs. Dalloway". "Three Women" offers footage of Streep, Moore, and Kidman fawning over each other--a waste of most people's time. The actresses also talk about some details concerning the production, but this featurette covers a lot of ground already visited by the actresses' audio commentary. "The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf" is a fairly lengthy biography of the author. This is the best extra on the disc since it discusses Woolf rather than the movie. "The Music of 'The Hours'" trumpets the achievements of composer Philip Glass, though I would like to re-iterate one more time that the music is very good but NOT suited to what the filmmakers made. Finally, "The Lives of Mrs. Dalloway" looks at how novelist Michael Cunningham found Woolf's tome when he was 15-years-old and how he came to adapt "Mrs. Dalloway" into his book "The Hours".
After a number of recent releases that arrived on DVD sans trailers for the feature presentation, Paramount finally came to its senses and included the trailer for "The Hours" on the DVD edition of "The Hours". There's also a preview for the upcoming DVD release of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days".
--Miscellaneous--
A glossy insert provides chapter listings.
Film Value:
A friend of mine recommended "The Hours" to me, and the fact that he was willing to watch it a second time added to my eagerness to see this widely-praised project. However, the movie was one of the most disappointing experiences of my cinema-going career. I haven't read either Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" or Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway", but I suspect that reading either novel will be far more rewarding than watching "The Hours". At the very least, I won't have my attention divided between listening to Philip Glass's music and watching indifferent actors.
The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen video image looks rather soft for a new movie. Usually, soft focus lenses are used to make actors look glamorous. However, since neither Moore nor Streep is beautiful in the conventional sense and since Kidman has a slightly cross-eyed look throughout her scenes in "The Hours", the soft focus approach annoyed me. The movie also looks dirty to me because the way that the film was lit led to the camera to pick up the dust flitting in the air. The source print is in good condition, but the way that the film was shot yielded a less-than-attractive picture presentation on DVD.
Audio:
Since "The Hours" isn't an action extravaganza, its sound mix--done as a Dolby Digital 5.0 English track--doesn't even have a 0.1 subwoofer feed. The audio does a good job of dispersing the music score throughout the room, though I must reiterate that the music and the movie make a poor match. Dialogue is mostly intelligible, though wherever the sound mixers dialed-up the volume for Philip Glass's score, the actors' voices require your utmost attention in order to be understood. For the most part, the audio track feels like a mono mix because the movie is dialogue-driven.
Those of you without digital sound set-ups should view the film with the included DD 2.0 surround English track. There's also a DD 5.1 French track, but my guess is that 0.1 subwoofer feed is inactive since the film's native English mix is a 5.0 design.
Optional English subtitles as well as optional English closed captions support the audio.
Extras:
Billed as a Special Collector's Edition, the "The Hours" DVD offers a decent slate of extras in terms of quantity. However, as I didn't like the movie, I found the bonus materials to be rather dreary, too.
There's an audio commentary by Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. It would seem that the actresses were recorded separately, an act that makes sense since they don't really interact with one another onscreen. The actresses are too busy being polite and complimentary towards the other filmmakers to say anything substantive about their craft.
The audio commentary by director Stephen Daldry and novelist Michael Cunningham isn't much better, either. The two men are so convinced of the film's greatness that they talk about the project as if they've never seen a better collection of geniuses in their lives. I'm sorry, but "The Hours" isn't even a good film, much less a great one.
There's a "Filmmaker's Introduction" featuring video footage of the director talking about how wonderful his movie is. I wonder why Mr. Daldry feels the need to insist on his film's greatness. Aren't movies supposed to be able to speak for themselves?
Next up are four featurettes: "Three Women", "The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf", "The Music of 'The Hours'", and "The Lives of Mrs. Dalloway". "Three Women" offers footage of Streep, Moore, and Kidman fawning over each other--a waste of most people's time. The actresses also talk about some details concerning the production, but this featurette covers a lot of ground already visited by the actresses' audio commentary. "The Mind and Times of Virginia Woolf" is a fairly lengthy biography of the author. This is the best extra on the disc since it discusses Woolf rather than the movie. "The Music of 'The Hours'" trumpets the achievements of composer Philip Glass, though I would like to re-iterate one more time that the music is very good but NOT suited to what the filmmakers made. Finally, "The Lives of Mrs. Dalloway" looks at how novelist Michael Cunningham found Woolf's tome when he was 15-years-old and how he came to adapt "Mrs. Dalloway" into his book "The Hours".
After a number of recent releases that arrived on DVD sans trailers for the feature presentation, Paramount finally came to its senses and included the trailer for "The Hours" on the DVD edition of "The Hours". There's also a preview for the upcoming DVD release of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days".
--Miscellaneous--
A glossy insert provides chapter listings.
Film Value:
A friend of mine recommended "The Hours" to me, and the fact that he was willing to watch it a second time added to my eagerness to see this widely-praised project. However, the movie was one of the most disappointing experiences of my cinema-going career. I haven't read either Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" or Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway", but I suspect that reading either novel will be far more rewarding than watching "The Hours". At the very least, I won't have my attention divided between listening to Philip Glass's music and watching indifferent actors.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]10903[/release]