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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.78:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Full Frame
  • Dual Sided
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  • French: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
    French, English - Hearing Impaired
  Extras
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Cast/crew biographies
  • Outtakes - 2 scenes, 6 min.

Singles

Warner Bros./Warner Home Video . R4 . COLOR . 99 mins . M15+ . NTSC

  Feature
Contract

Having found himself with not only a bona fide success but also an inadvertent cult classic on his hands with his directorial debut Say Anything..., former rock journalist turned novelist and screenwriter Cameron Crowe suddenly had a new career - as a film director. A bona fide auteur director, no less - writing his own screenplays and, from this point on, producing them as well. Major studios were now taking him seriously; Warner Bros put up the cash for Crowe’s eagerly-anticipated follow-up to Say Anything..., and it looked like Crowe was well and truly on his way to bigness. Until, that is, Warner saw the finished film and got cold feet - if not for the global emergence of grunge music in the early ‘90s, in fact, Singles may not have gotten the studio’s attention at all.

As it was, Singles was released on the back of its soundtrack album, not on the undeniable merits of its creator or stars. In Australia, the album had become hot property long before the actual film showed up in May 1993, largely because Crowe, ever the insightful spotter of cutting-edge music, had stacked the film with Seattle’s finest, most of them relative unknowns at the time the movie was shot, as well as other key alternative rock bands - Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone, Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, Jane’s Addiction and Mudhoney are all here on the soundtrack, with most of Pearl Jam very amusing on screen in dramatic roles as fictional band Citizen Dick (Eddie Vedder is, in case you were wondering, the drummer!) and Alice in Chains performing.

A bit more of an ensemble film than Say Anything..., Singles nevertheless primarily focuses on the path of the relationship between a mid-20s couple - traffic control expert (!) Steve Dunne (played by Campbell Scott, who’s stayed away from mainstream films since and has been dabbling in directing) and environmentalist Linda Powell (Kyra Sedgwick). Both of them have been burnt by the eternal dating rituals and unexpected heartaches of relationships and are resolutely single - until they meet each other. It’s not long before they’re as close as a couple can get, but life has a funny habit of falling apart when you least expect it to. Meanwhile, the other residents in Steve’s apartment block have their own unique ways of dealing with single life; David Bailey (Jim True) lives his life by a French-movie credo to avoid emotion, preferring instead to offer bad relationship advice to Steve; Debbie (Sheila Kelley - remember LA Law?) goes through date after date like a bulldozer desperately trying to find her soul mate; Cliff (Matt Dillon) is the frontman in rock band Citizen Dick, but since the critics aren’t biting it’s just as well he has a backup job delivering flowers; and Janet (Bridget Fonda) lives her life in the hope that one day she can convince Cliff to love her as much as she does him.

If you’re thinking it all sounds a bit Melrose Place you’re not alone - it was compared to that TV soap back in 1992, even though Singles was edited and ready for screening months before Melrose (in its original, “serious” form) even went to air. But don’t be fooled - like Say Anything..., Crowe has populated his story with characters that could have been cut from real life, and their thoughts, words, wry humour and emotions all ring completely true. There seems to be a lot of Crowe’s own self in his screenplays - many of the characters across all of his films share traits that are recognisably “Crowe-esque” - in that they’re so recognisably human. As with Say Anything... there’s plenty of wide-eyed optimism and unrestrained - but not overtly theatrical - emotion, as though we’re seeing inside the hearts of these people, not merely watching their actions. It’s helped by a pair of terrific performances from Scott and Sedgwick (who have both always been vastly underrated actors) with the usual subtle Crowe humour brought into sharp relief by Matt Dillon’s winningly goofy take on the kind of grungy guy that everyone knows at least one of.

Crowe tries this time around to get inside the characters’ heads quite literally on occasion, too. His scripts have always had characters thinking out loud and working through their feelings; this time the occasional short vignette tries to illustrate the more humorous moments quite literally (one very funny one was left on the cutting room floor but can be seen on this disc - more on that in the extras section). It’s something that Crowe himself feels he didn’t get right, but the added quirkiness ultimately adds to the film’s charm and does help prevent it from skating too close to sentimentality (something Crowe seems pretty much incapable of doing).

Along the way there are countless cameo and guest appearances; many of Seattle’s finest pop up here in some capacity, though at the time the film was made they would have been unfamiliar faces to most outside that city. Watch closely, too, for Tom Skerritt, Tim Burton, Crowe himself as a music journalist (surprise!) and Crowe’s mother Alice Marie as a nurse. Eric Stoltz makes his regular Crowe-movie guest appearance, playing a mime that won’t shut up. And those in Australia who were so frustrated by the constant stream of infomercials for “Mr Mega-Memory” Kevin Trudeau will be amused to see that back in 1992 he was terrorising Seattle television...!

The cleverness with sound that was such a wonderfully subtle element of Say Anything... (remember the many cameras at the graduation ceremony!) continues apace in Singles. “I used to be a DJ,” says Steve to Linda, showing her his collection of vinyl records. “The DJ sucks,” sings Michael Stipe of REM on the soundtrack where that band's Radio Song has been perfectly timed to fit the scene. Elsewhere, a crying baby can be subtly heard during a close-up of a pregnancy test kit. Janet screams around a corner on a pushbike, and Crowe cheekily adds screeching tyres to the soundtrack. And an instant emotional attachment is made to Say Anything... during a quick scene on an airplane, which opens with the same seatbelt-sign “ping” that ended the earlier movie. It’s these little details that make Crowe’s films so special - that, and the fact that the characters themselves are similarly finely drawn.

In the end, this is not at all surprisingly a film about people, not a music scene, and perhaps if it had been marketed at the time on its dramatic strengths rather than its soundtrack album (a plug for which remains on the artwork to this day, implying that you’re watching the film of the record rather than the other way around) it may have been treated more kindly. Crowe certainly felt misunderstood; Greg Mariotti’s excellent web site on all things Cameron Crowe, The Uncool, quotes the director reflecting eight years later on his second film:

Singles didn't aspire to define a generation. It aspired to be my tribute to Manhattan. So there's a little frustration there. I hope that someday, as time goes on, it can live on as a snapshot of that period, because Seattle is not the same anymore.”

  Video
Contract

This DVD of Singles is one of Warner Australia’s cut-price, under-$20 releases that are making their debut in this country, but the fact that it’s an NTSC-format disc should clue you in as to what we’re getting here - yep, this is indeed the exact same disc as the region 1 release that arrived in the US back in February 1999 - indeed, the original 1999 file date survives on many of the disc’s control files, along with the copyright screen in the menus. Now dual-coded for regions 1 and 4, this NTSC version of Singles is the only one the world’s going to see for the time being; there does not seem to be a PAL equivalent in existence. It’s the region 1 disc at a bargain local price, effectively.

So how does it look? Well, not awful, but certainly not state of the art either. Contrary to overseas reports, this is not a recycled Laserdisc tape. We can say that for certain because we’ve got the US laserdisc right here - and while they both look to have been sourced from the same master telecine transfer, the Laserdisc is letterboxed at the theatrical 1.85:1 while this DVD opens the matte slightly for a 16:9 enhanced 1.78:1 aspect ratio, with the extra open-matte area almost always at the bottom of the frame exclusively.

The transfer would have been considered almost state of the art ten years ago (and as far as the Laserdisc was concerned, at the time it was) but doesn’t stand up to the quality levels that we’ve come to expect from DVD. However, it looks substantially better than the Laserdisc in terms of resolution, colour stability and saturation and contrast.

But there’s a down side, of course - mainly the problems typical of early-’90s video transfers. There’s a fair amount of grain, and it’s not always clear whether that’s coming from the film itself or from the telecine process; experience would suggest it’s the latter. Sharpness isn’t always at its best, though it’s never dreadful; and there are quite a few flecks of dust and other bits of film damage near the top of the film (not surprisingly, mostly during the opening-credit opticals) along with a tiny bit of the dreaded gate wobble early on.

Like the region 1 release, this disc is double-sided - no, it’s not a “flipper” (though the Laserdisc was!) but instead offers a full-frame version (open-matte, offering varying degrees of extra top or bottom coverage, or both) along with the 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer (with the widescreen version on side B, tellingly). To our eyes the widescreen one looked a little nicer in quality terms, but one fact does remain: if this indeed is the same transfer done in the early '90s (and it almost certainly is) then it’s surprising that the widescreen side is anamorphically enhanced at all!

Overall, it’s a reasonable transfer for a film of this vintage, but certainly not a great one; it’s the best you’re going to see this film look, though, until someone coughs up the money to do it over in hi-def.

  Audio
Contract

Presented theatrically in good old Dolby Stereo and still sporting that same matrixed surround soundtrack, the audio mix for Singles sounds as good as it gets here, crystal-clear and free of any problems. This soundtrack was about as good as matrixed surround could get at the time, as it had to be to support the huge range of music used in the film. Dialogue is firmly anchored to the centre channel, with the surrounds used extensively for music and occasionally for other effects, especially during club scenes.

Frequency response is a little lacking at the bottom end, but separation is better than you’d expect from a matrixed track; it’s a pity it wasn’t offered, though, as a discrete 3/1 stream. You do, though, get a French-language dubbed audio track, also in Dolby Surround, which is a rather odd experience if you’re familiar with the film!

With the Dolby Surround flag correctly turned on, these audio streams will automatically play back in Dolby Pro-Logic mode on many decoders.

  Extras
Contract

Yes, there actually are some extras! Cameron Crowe is reportedly planning a Special Edition of Singles for DVD release sometime in 2003, and going by the other special-edition efforts he’s done so far (some of which, sadly, will likely never be seen in Australia) it should be a cracker. For now, what’s in Warner’s vaults will have to suffice...

Outtakes: A pair of three-minute deleted scenes that were also included at the end of the original Laserdisc release (that’s the LD’s “Outtakes” screen and extra credits list you’re seeing here). One of the scenes expands on Steve’s second encounter with the magazine stand where he met Linda, then goes to her house to find she’s moved out; it’s a good idea, but a little stodgy in execution and you can see why it was excised. The second outtake is also obviously out of the “mood” of the film as a whole, but it’s pricelessly hilarious - we see Bailey’s French-movie fantasy first hand, as he sits in a cafe and has a conversation in French (amusingly subtitled) with an angry poetess played by Lara Harris. This is given added amusement value thanks to the fact that you can, if you want, watch the whole movie in French with subtitles on this DVD if you choose! The outtakes are letterboxed with stereo audio but are not 16:9 enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer: Warner digs up a trailer that is mysteriously presented at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and as a result is rather heavily cropped visually. It’s a fun and surprisingly low-key trailer, though, and worth a look; it’s 16:9 enhanced.

Cast and Crew: Done back when Warner first started their policy of listing some names but not offering their filmographies, this naturally only covers the actors here up until the end of 1998 when the disc was produced.

Incidentally, special mention must be made of the simple but completely intuitive and user-friendly menu authoring on this disc. They don’t make ‘em like this any more, and that’s kind of a shame.

  Overall  
Contract

It’s been almost exactly a decade since Singles was made, and Cameron Crowe’s come a long way since (Jerry Maguire would be his next film; it would become a massive success and catapult Crowe into the major league). What came to be known as grunge has come and gone, the bands have broken up and some of the scene's key voices are now gone (Kurt Cobain and more recently Layne Staley, amongst others) and Seattle has moved on musically and socially. Flawed it might be, but Singles captures the atmosphere of the time perfectly and offers characters that mean something as a solid base. It hasn’t dated like a lot of similarly-themed movies and TV shows have done, and as with Say Anything... we think there’s a reason for that. It’s because like its predecessor, Singles wears its heart on its sleeve - and it’s got a big, warm heart.

When we excitedly bought the Laserdisc of this film years ago it cost AUS$70 - and you had to flip the huge disc half way through the movie. Though it’s not the world’s greatest video transfer - and it’s in NTSC, so you’ll need equipment that can handle that - Warner’s Singles DVD gives us the Laserdisc’s content with better picture quality, greater durability, and smaller size. And at less than $20, that makes this stopgap Singles a rather appealing prospect.


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      And I quote...
    "...wears its heart on its sleeve - and it’s got a big, warm heart"
    - Anthony Horan
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