Paper Heart – Blu-ray Disc Review

Tags: Anchor Bay, Charlyne Yi, Demetri Martin, Digital Copy, Jake M. Johnson, Michael Cera, Nicholas Jasenovec, Starz

has an average rating of 6.5 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
Dolby 5.1 TrueHD
are ALL in Hi-Def with Digital Copy
–
– 2009
– 88 minutes
– Anchor Bay (Starz)
–
This uses 20.3GB for the movie out of 37.4GB total.
Street Date: December 1st, 2009

Overall Verdict – Recommended

Buy it for $29.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Danielle Byington —

Trailer:

The Movie Itself was both written and directed by Nicholas Jasenovec (a character portrayed in the film as Jake M. Johnson), with the additional writing credits of Charlyne Yi. The film is, as declared by its makers, a “hybrid documentary“, as it takes elements of a non-fictional documentary providing interviews with individuals whose experiences are relevant to the subject material, as well as also combining a fictional storyline.

The movie revolves around Charlyne Yi‘s quest to gather information on multiple levels regarding whether “true love” exist or not. The quirky comedian takes us through a random assortment of interviews ranging from the opinions and logic of professors on the biology of what our bodies experience as “love”, to the thoughts and testimonies of couples who have been married for decades. However, these tales of romance shared by the interviewees are not left to mundane dialogue, but are instead portrayed like a puppet-show, oddly enough with paper cut-outs of the characters and the settings of their stories.

While starting-off the project, she discusses the subject with several friends and fellow comedians at a party, unintentionally catching the eye of Michael Cera; this begins the fictional storyline involved in the plot as we not are given several examples of what “love” can be considered to be, but also witness a couple meet one another, commit the typical social interactions of courtship, and basically do exactly what Charlyne herself does not quite believe can happen — fall in love.

Overall, the “hybrid documentary” itself does hold your interest with both the portion of non-fiction opinions and testimonies from the interviewees, as well as the fictional on-screen relationship that develops between Charlyne and Michael. The paper cut-outs that bring the interviewees’ stories of personal experience in love to life is an interesting, and yet quirky sort of way of materializing what may have other wise been somewhat bland points of the film; being subjected to the mushy stories of others can happen anywhere, but seeing the silly paper cut-outs perform the actions of the story does add an unusual bit of entertainment value. The combination of the personal experiences and individual opinions that the crew is digging up for the documentary, along with the fictional relationship that develops within, is certainly an interesting turn on typical documentary style films, though it is rather predictable, but the light comic reliefs of Charlyne and Michael do make this movie watchable. Overall, the movie itself earns a “3.5 Star Rating” for, at the very least, being original in its own way.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte, dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The video on this release bares a really clean and crisp picture quality, even so through out its numerous settings which provide a variety of lighting sources, from interior shots within classrooms, the homes of the interviewees, and even a bar, to the exterior shots under sunny Los Angeles climate, to the diffused overcast weather offered by the Toronto and Paris settings. There is never a noticeable amount of film grain/noise present, however, there are no signs of DNR excessively used, as much of the definition of multiple textures do stand out rather well. The color palette retains a general stance of neutral tones, offering an appropriate level of vibrancy in several subjects, from the above mentioned various settings of the “documentary”, as well as the colorful paper cut-outs used to portray the stories of those being interviewed. Fleshtones are accurate and match-up well with the neutral color palette presented, also accompanied by a solid black level. For such an array of various settings with most likely lighting sources that were not thoroughly controlled, the video on this release stands firmly with a Hi-Def worthy cleanliness, and a pleasing quality of detail that remains consistent through out, and though pushing a half-star rating higher at times, the video on this release earns a “4 Star Rating“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround. The film itself is largely dialogue based, however, you will occasionally notice an effort from the audio track to make use of the 5.1 setup. Often, these small occurrences of panning, and assigned/full soundscape usage are accompanying the foley of on-screen subjects and actions, such as the passing of vehicles, the rumbling of a motorcycle, and other general public background casualties. These very small bits of flare from the audio track are quite seldom, leaving a rather basic presence within the soundscape at no fault of the audio track provided, but simply at the due of the very simplistic documentary-style content. The dialogue does bare nice clarity considering the style of “real” footage the filmmakers were aiming for, even being appropriately audible in their sort of fade-out moments as the individuals on-screen may wonder away or remove their microphones. Overall, for what the film’s content has to offer on the audio side, it earns itself a decent enough “3.5 Star Rating“.

Bonus Materials are presented in High Definition 1080i video, using Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround for the Theatrical Trailer).

• Digital Copy of the film is included on a 2nd (DVD-ROM) disc. This is compatible with both iTunes and Windows media portable devices, both Mac and PC. As always, these digital copies are only valid for one year after the release date, so this will expire on December 1st, 2010.
• “Featurettes” includes “Paper Heart Uncut” (7:27, HD), which consist of several edited clips of Charlyne Yi basically losing her train of thought in several of the interviews, as well as the featurette “The Making of ‘Paper Heart’” (10:44, HD) which highlights the “hybrid documentary” themes of the film.
• “Live Musical Performances by Charlyne Yi” (6:27, HD)
• “‘Heaven’ Music Video by Charlyne Yi & Michael Cera” (1:42, HD)
• “Love Interviews With the Comedians” (26:00, HD) includes interviews with Paul Rust, Jason Ritter, Bill Hader, Bobcat Goldthwait, David Krumholtz, Demetri Martin, Paul Scheer, and Rob Huebel.
• “Deleted Scenes” (31:05, HD) includes 17 scenes.
• “Theatrical Trailer” (2:02, HD)

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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