Product: Blow [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 3.0
Buy it 'cause you like the movie, not for the "extras"
This is a review of the DVD, not the film itself--which has its own set of problems in this fascinating true story delivered in a very inconsistent, flawed fashion. But I digress...on to the DVD. "A" for concept, "D" for execution. It's hard to believe that anyone actually reviewed and checked the results before this went into production.Both Video and audio are quite good--a very clean, impressive job that truly makes watching this film enjoyable and worthwhile.It's on the Infinifilm extras where this DVD comes up extremely weak. Though a few are terrific additions--the interview/comments with the real George Jung, for example--others appear to be slap-dash efforts at filling up the disk and giving the impression that there's real quality within. A good example is the so-called "Fact Track," which is designed to play as subtitles in the Infinifilm version of the movie. "Fact Track?" Hah! Loads of typos/spelling errors (heroine instead of heroin in one passage, for example), factual errors (Woodstock Festival--"Three Days of Peace and Music" as it occurred in 1969--has an extra fourth day added here by the creators of the "Fact Track"), random "Facts" that come in places that often demonstrate little rhyme or reason for their location in the film and hop all over the map without any real sense of organization, bio subtitles about some of the cast but not others, a blatantly unbalanced anti War on Drugs message which is rendered so via tons of stats on (what I agree is) the huge waste of federal monies and effort in this regard WITHOUT ANY mention or statistics on the still ongoing devastation wreaked upon our country by cocaine and, by his involvement, George Jung.The Documentary on the effects of cocaine on Colombia is pretty good and important given the lack of mention in the film itself, but at times the people speaking (in Spanish with English subtitles) talk so rapidly that in some spots it's nearly impossible to both follow the dialogue and the picture without watching again. (Maybe that's the trick! "You'll watch it over and over again!")The Production Diary--short video excerpts on various random days of the 63-day shoot--includes an excerpt from one day which consists entirely of an audio track that is normal like the rest but accompanied by video which consists entirely of the camera pointed down at the pavement. Intriguing.Last but not least, the Infinifilm feature itself--think VH1's "Pop-up Videos"--is fabulous in concept but a failure too often in execution to really be worthwhile. Some extras (most deleted or alternate scenes, for example) appear exactly where logical, such as the alternate Intro. Others pop up in places that seem to be entirely random (Ted Demme's filmography, which pops up not with the opening credits, but instead somewhere deep within the film.) Some just don't fit where they are at all in a fashion that leaves one believing that the creators weren't even paying attention (or perhaps had just done some BLOW) when they inserted them (a jump to a spot about Otisville FCI pops up early in the film when George is sent to Danbury FCI instead of at the end when we see him in the Upstate New York slammer.)The most useful and enjoyable part of Infinfilm (an overall concept which has the potential to be phenomenal!) is the ability to see alternate versions of scenes in direct A/B comparison to the ones that made the final cut.Look, I don't HATE this DVD package and did enjoy the film and exploring the disk, but its features are WAY OVER-HYPED and fall short of the sell-job done on them. Unabashed fans of the film will probably love them all regardless of the "Facts." Do other Infinifilms have similar problems? This is the first Infifinifilm I've seen.One note about the film and its screenplay. Both contain an error early in the film (in the mid 1960's) when George, Tuna, and his other bud from Mass. are discussing the colleges back in Mass. where they can sell their weed. One school that they mention is Hampshire College, which didn't enroll its first class until 1970. FACT CHECKING, FACT CHECKING. Can't believe no one in production caught that, given the comparatively large number of Hampshire grads who work in the film industry. OK, OK, I'm done....