SIDE BY SIDE
(2012, Blu-ray released March 5, 2013 – MSRP CDN$ 37.99)
THE FILM:
- “Join Keanu Reeves on a tour of the past and future of filmmaking in SIDE BY SIDE. Since the invention of cinema, the standard format for recording moving images has been film. Over the past two decades, a new form of digital filmmaking has emerged, creating a groundbreaking evolution in the medium. Reeves explores the development of cinema and the impact of digital filmmaking via in-depth interviews with Hollywood masters, such as James Cameron, David Fincher, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many more.“
WHO SHOULD BUY:
Keanu Reeves hosting a doc on the revolution of digital film? Stranger things have happened than Side by Side. Unusual as this combination of actor and content might seem, the resulting doc is actually worth a look, particularly if you’re keen on the topic of the death of film and the rise of digital media.
The substance of the conversation is a gripping one for me. I never tire of it. And the directors and photographers interviewed in Side by Side are extremely watchable. In fact, my only issue with the entire film is that it’s edited too heavily for my liking. Perhaps it’s a “taste” thing or maybe it’s just because I’m such a raging fan of a lot of the participants but every time the doc cuts to another interviewee after a few tidbits of opinion, I die a little. I mean, I would’ve been satisfied to watch the entire conversation between Reeves and quirky filmmaker extraordinaire David Lynch, instead of settling for the short glimpses of it sprinkled throughout the film’s way-too-brief 99-minute runtime. It’s super frustrating for a movie nut like me. In the end, though, my criticism is a really a complement. I just want more of Side by Side. It should have been a TV series.
THE BLU-RAY DISC:
Side by Side looks pretty decent on Blu-ray but doesn’t possess the depth or texture of a big budget film. It’s a movie comprised, for the most part, of talking heads shot on a couple of nice, but not super-high-end, digital cameras. The digital-to-digital transfer to Blu is perfect but there’s little pizzaz here to make the content pop. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 gets the job done quite handily but, again, there’s little beyond the sound of a friendly chat to allow it to flex it’s muscles. There’s also a 2.0 track available, for those less adventurous viewers.
I don’t quite understand the separation of the two supplements on the disc as both simply offer more footage of the interviews in the feature. I’m not complaining, of course, but it’s seems redundant to split them up. All in all, there’s nearly 17-minutes of additional footage to drink in, most of it well worth a look. My perfect extra would have been each interview presented in full but I know that’s way too much to ask. I’ll settle for the 17-minutes, thank you very much.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Deleted Scenes
- Additional Interviews with Filmmakers
