Permanent Midnight
Artisian
1.85:1/16x9/Dolby Digital 5.1
Reviewed on a Panasonic A110
The Film:
Ben Stiller stars as Jerry Stahl, former TV writer("Alf"), who went through a heroin addiction that only got worse as he got more successful. The film
is based on Stahl's autobiography, which is at times funny, disturbing and touching. The film marks Stiller(There's Something About Mary)'s first
leap into serious drama. It only works somewhat.
We get a film about drug abuse every so often now. There are the electric ones("Trainspotting"), the sad ones("Leaving Las Vegas"), etc. Usually,
these films are predictable and it takes the power of the actors and the strength of the storytelling to lead us through the sort of formula
these films usually take: the good guy is good, the good guy tries drugs, the good guy decends into a drug addiction and ruins ties with
family and friends and finally, someone convinces him/her to clean up her act.
"Permanent Midnight" doesn't quite work for a few reasons. Stiller's performance, for all the electricity he brings to the role and all the
humor and sadness, he fails to make the character as sympathetic or interesting as either Cage's performance in "Leaving Las Vegas" or
Ewan McGregor's in "Trainspotting". The only performance that is interesting and funny is Owen Wilson("Armageddon")'s. Wilson, who plays
a drug addict friend of Stahl's, who has the hilarious line, "If I was percodan, where would I be?". Elizabeth Hurley, Jeaneane Garofalo
and a few other performances are not written fully. These are interesting characters, and the film just doesn't have enough time(only 88 minutes)
to cover either the outside characters fully, or even include many of the scenes that made Stahl's biography so funny and saddening. The
film just doesn't have enough time to spark. The film seems like a trailer for the events that really happen. You feel as if you're just
getting clips of the bigger picture of Stahl's life.
Stahl's character in the film stars off the film by meeting a girl and spending a few days with her talking. The girl is a made-up character
who's not in the book and the scenes between the two seem forced and just there to set up the flashback structure of the film. The structure
seems unfocused and amazingly, even at 88 minutes running length, "Permanent Midnight" wears out its welcome before the credits roll.
The DVD:
Picture Quality: The 16x9 picture has its pros and cons. The streets of LA are rendered beautifully, such as the begining of chapter 3 when
Stahl goes out for a drive in LA with Owen Wilson's character. Images are vibrant, detailed and quite sharp during these scenes out in the
daylight of LA. During some of the darker/low light scenes though, I did see some compression artifacts making themselves known. There was also
a strange instance where in one of the early scenes, the transfer seemed to have a problem where movement left "trails"(now that's something I've never seen before). It wasn't noticeable
until I took a closer look at the screen. There are no instances of shimmering though at all in the disc. When the transfer looks great, though, the picture quality is up there with some of the better discs I've
seen lately. The sky of LA looks perfectly realistic: that sort of blue-grey that only happens when the smog strangles the blue out of the sky.
***NOTE: On a second, closer viewing there were other instances of the sort of problem with motion that I saw with the "trails" being produced during movement in images in that early scene. There is a scene where a car comes to a complete stop and there seems to be that same sort of blur that accompanied the trails in the early scene. As Stiller walks into a room to answer the phone in one of the other scenes, closer inspection reveals some blur in the wall in the background.
Sound Quality: Dialogue is produced well with crystal clarity, but there really isn't anything else of interest in terms of sound on this film;
there is no action at all in the film, it's totally dialogue driven. Music sounds clear, but I felt it lacked impact.
Extras: The great trailer, 4 deleted scenes that are quite interesting(but aren't of real great video quality) and a commentary from first
time director David Veloz that is interesting when he talks. Occasionally, there are some fairly long pauses in the commentary, but there
are some great instances where he talks about what it took to produce some scenes(like the scene where Stiller and Peter Greene's character
run into a plexiglass window over and over again.
Menus: Interesting menus with slight animation and the sound of Stahl's typewriter going in the background. The scene selection provides
full motion animation.
