Umbrella Entertainment (Australia) Region ALL Blu-ray
Rescued from the jaws of Miramax is the Australian comedy COSI, on Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment.
Having decided to allocate what limited funds there are to "drama therapy" rather than other necessary resources, the director of a local asylum (Tony Llewellyn-Jones, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK), his head nurse Errol (Colin Friels, DARKMAN), and occupational therapist Sandra (Kerry Walker, THE PIANO) hire inexperienced Lewis (Ben Mendelsohn, ANIMAL KINGDOM) who is looking for a job after drama school to support himself and his law student girlfriend Lucy (Rachel Griffiths, THE ROOKIE).
Although Sandra believes a variety show would be best suited to their patients, exuberant and outspoken Roy (Barry Otto, HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS) surges ahead with his desire to stage a production of Mozart's comic opera "Così Fan Tutte" despite the fact that no one can act or sing, least of all in Italian. Lewis is indecisive but Errol - who is either very optimistic or looking forward to a train wreck - suggests they start with the dialogue and to gradually incorporate the music.
Although Roy disparages Lewis' decisions at every turn, Lewis needs the older man to whip his cast into shape which also includes timid Ruth (WENTWORTH PRISON's Pamela Rabe), soulful junkie Julie (Toni Collette, THE SIXTH SENSE), batty and violent Cherry (Jacki Weaver, SQUIZZY TAYLOR), stuttering Henry (HOME AND AWAY's Paul Chubb), and pyromaniac Doug (TOP OF THE LAKE's David Wenham). As they make their way with great difficulty through the play, its sexual politics shed light on their own pasts and relationships, not to mention that of Lewis and his suspicions about long-suffering Lucy and his more "successful" director friend Nick (Aden Young, 300). Working with his cast of mental patients also forces him to reluctantly confront his long-suppressed feelings about his own mother's mental illness.
Based on a semi-autobiograhical play by Louis Nowra (MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART), COSI was swept into production as a film by Miramax who were hoping to capitalize on the successes of their pickups THE PIANO, MURIEL'S WEDDING (also with Collette), and STRICTLY BALLROOM and Polygram's THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT amidst the nineties boom of independent films and indie majors. The film's frenzied staging and barnstorming performances get the laughs and wring out the drama off the stage. Unfortunately, the film also treats the actual staged production as a comic highlight of sight gags that turns the mental patients' efforts into a freak show for a howling audience before an ending wrap-up that feels a bit limp. Performances are overall good even when Otto, Weaver, and Wenham are required to chew scenery, making up for some of the more limp drama in the triangle between Mendelsohn, Griffiths, and Young.
Released stateside by Miramax and on DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and since sadly forgotten, COSI had an equally uneven home video history in its native Australia. Village Roadshow's original PAL DVD featured an anamorphic transfer and 5.1 audio while Umbrella's later 2018 DVD edition was derived from an anamorphic NTSC source with 2.0 stereo audio only, no extras, and no menus. Umbrella's new 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC widescreen Blu-ray is oddly-framed in the DCP aspect ratio of 1.90:1, trimming picture information visible on the top and bottom of the screen on the DVDs (the side information is absolutely identical). The colors are in keeping with the nineties saturation of primaries but shadow detail is better, blacks are truer, and there is a variegation of whites that help on appreciate the interplay of locations, settings, and character (for instance, Weaver's white feather boa against the slight green tinge of the asylum's white walls),
Audio is DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo – presumably the 5.1 track on the old DVD was a rechanneling of the Dolby Stereo stems – cleanly delivering dialogue, effects, and music with Stephen Endelman's scoring taking a supportive back seat to his interjections of Mozart. Optional English HoH subtitles are provided.
Extras start off with an interview with producer Richard Brennan (12:07) who recalls Mendelsohn sending him a ticket for the stage production, being transfixed by it, and optioning it the next day. He also recalls the difficulty of finding funding until Harvey Weinstein asked Collette what she wanted to do next and she mentioned COSI. He then details the attempts to get the film into production, finding a director – play author and screen adaptor Louis Nowara had first approval – including Peter Wier (GREEN CARD), and the many "one last thing" notes from Miramax including the suggestions of casting Ethan Hawke in the lead and model Elle McPherson (SIRENS) in the Jacki Weaver role! The "Excerpt of Oral History with film buff Paul Harris and Richard Brennan" (21:56) covers a lot of the same ground while also getting into more detail about Miramax and its Australian money man representative through which a lot of the early notes were conveyed to the production.
Nowra also appears in an interview (24:43) in which he describes the play's origins in the mental illness on both sides of his family – his maternal grandmother tried to kill him as a child – growing up trying to understand mental illness, working at an asylum while in college and it being suggested that he involve the patients in a play, with the musical the real-life Roy equivalent wanting to do being Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury". The idea to write a play about it came as a means of keeping himself busy during a depressing period in which he was taking care of a acting partner who had suffered a nervous collapse. He covers the workshopping of the play, the performances, the screen adaptation, and the various interferences from Miramax. The disc also includes a stills gallery (4:01).
No comments:
Post a Comment