Video
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audio
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0... (more)
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English: Dolby Digital 5.1 French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Italian: Dolby Digital Mono (less)
Subtitles
English SDH, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Cantonese, Indonesian, Korean
English SDH, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Cantonese, Indonesian, Korean (less)
Fame Blu-ray offers solid video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
In Alan Parker's 'Fame', teenagers selected for New York City's High School for the Performing
Arts push their talents to the limit to make it big in show business. This episodic tale follows
savvy Coco (Irene Cara), timid Doris (Maureen Teefy), gay Montgomery (Paul McCrane),
macho Raul (Barry Miller), soulful Bruno (Lee Curreri), and others as they struggle to achieve
their dreams of stardom while coping with the universal teenage problems of loneliness,
insecurity, and embattled, mercurial identity. Cara, electric as the budding songstress Coco,
shines brightest.
Includes 4 song CD sampler.
For more about Fame and the Fame Blu-ray release, see the Fame Blu-ray Review
If you think of Fame as a cheery, bubblegum tale of teenage talent and aspiration, you're
probably thinking of the Fame TV series spin-off—a pop trifle if there ever was one—which
dropped the grim predicaments and dashed hopes of the original 1980 film, leaving only fun dance
numbers and a "You can do it!" attitude. The franchise's legacy has been further sullied by a
sanitary 2009 remake, a glossy 107-minute music video that seems more like a commercial for
itself than an honest look at the lives of gifted, troubled, and easily exploited youth. The original
certainly has moments of optimism and gleeful, almost orgiastic energy, but it also hones much
closer to the flipside: the pain of broken dreams, the pressures of being young and talented, and the
elusiveness of show business success. At the same time, the film's hard edge is slightly dulled by
some goofy-in-retrospect conventions of the early 1980s, including guys wearing t-shirts that barely
cover their nipples and a preponderancy for pastel tank tops and denim cut-off shorts.
Practice, practice, practice...
"All anyone ever promised you was seven classes a day and a hot lunch," is the unspoken mantra
at Performing Arts, a Manhattan high school for New York City's best and brightest future stars.
"The rest," goes the slogan's caveat, "is up to you." In Fame we follow the lives of seven
gifted students, from their awkward auditions to the pomp and circumstance of graduation day.
In between, of course, there's a lot of growing up to be done, talents to nurture, and painful
realities to face. Despite teasing from Ralph Garci (Barry Miller), a wannabe stand-up comedian
obsessed with Freddy Prinze, sensitive redheaded drama student Montgomery (Paul McCrane)
comes bravely out of the closet and stops underplaying his obvious homosexuality as an "issue
with women." Mousy actress Doris (Maureen Teefy) goes from buttoned-up and inhibited to
letting loose at a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Illiterate street
dancer LeRoy (Gene Anthony Ray) enters as a knife-carrying thug and ends up being hired by a
well-known choreographer. And Bruno (Lee Curreri), a synthesizer whiz, learns to unplug his
headphones and let the world hear his electronic compositions.
There are some modest successes here, but director Alan Parker isn't afraid to explore the
underbelly of fame and the darker aspects of ambition. In fact, that's kind of the point. Multi-
talented performer Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) is naively seduced by the siren of a screen test,
only to end up topless and sobbing on some imposter director's casting couch. One dancer
ponders suicide after being told she'll never be good enough to go pro, while another gets an
abortion so she can take a gig with the San Francisco Ballet. If all you remember from
Fame is the catchy title tune and the "Hot Lunch" sequence—where a cafeteria jam
session escalates into a wild, table-dancing disco number—then you might be surprised by the
bleak turns that the film takes as the students proceed through their senior year. This is real life
though—or a relatively close approximation thereof—where even the top graduating student in
the school is more likely to be waiting tables at a downtown diner than landing gigs as an extra
on a daytime soap, let alone singing his heart out in a Broadway musical or becoming a bona fide
movie star. Every one of these kids wants to be famous, but even those that have it—the talent,
the drive, the inherent good looks—are dependant on Lady Luck to smile upon them and make
the magic happen.
Fame isn't director Alan Parker's best film—he had previously made Bugsy
Malone, and would go on to make The Commitments, Evita, and
Mississippi Burning—but it's definitely better than all the spin-offs and remakes that
came after it, which are closer in tone and content to High School Musical than Parker's
original, more realistic vision. The main problem with the film—and this goes for the remake as
well—is that it seems simultaneously overlong and much too short to give convincing trajectories
to all of the characters that it follows. Still, the characters are much better realized than they are
in the impossibly bland remake, and several of the beats—like LeRoy smashing a row of glass
windows after a teacher presses him on his reading ability—are powerful and unlike anything
you'd see in a typical "teen" movie. The dance numbers are fun, the songs still worm their way
into your brain, and if nothing else, Fame is interesting as a product of its era, when
Times Square still seemed a little seedy and New York as a whole was as yet untamed. There's a
sense—and I'm paraphrasing here from an interview with Alan Parker—that the kids in
Fame walk a fine line between the promise of success and the potential for failure, that
they could get scholarships to Juilliard or just as easily end up dancing topless a few blocks away,
which certainly isn't a possibility in the kid-friendly remake.
The original Fame pirouettes onto Blu-ray with a decent but never outright impressive
1080p/VC-1 encoded transfer that looks about average for a film from the early 1980s. The film's
color palette is nicely reproduced here, characterized by bright, often pastel clothing set against
the neutral backdrops of the school's classrooms and practice spaces. Red and pink tones seem
especially vibrant, like Ralph's bandana, a dance instructor's borderline neon sweater, and an
actual neon sign that flashes outside of Montgomery's Times Square apartment. There's certainly
no wishy-washyness to the image, as both colors and black levels are deep and weighty, while
shadow details are relatively well-preserved. If there's one thing holding the film back on Blu-ray,
it's that a slight softness frequently pervades the image and keeps fine detail from being as
apparent as it could be. Director Alan Parker acknowledges in his commentary track that the
cinematographer often used fine smoke to diffuse the lighting, so this might have something to
do with it, but the softness could easily be attributed to any number of things, from the lenses
used to the way the film was transferred. Regardless, I don't want it to sound like a viewing
experience-ruining fault, because it really isn't, but the transfer isn't as sharp as some I've seen
from other films from the era. Grain is quite heavy at times—there are a few shots where it
spikes unexpectedly—but I noticed no DNR smearing, overemphatic edge enhancement, or any
other unnecessary tweaking. The print is also nearly immaculate, and aside from some
blotchiness in bright highlights, I didn't see any color, transfer, or compression anomalies.
In my review of the 2009 Fame remake, I noted how the film's powerful and immersive
audio experience was the highlight of its Blu-ray release. While the original doesn't nearly come
close to matching the remake's intricate sound design and stunning clarity, Fame's Dolby TrueHD
5.1 surround track sounds pretty good considering the film's more dated audio elements. As you
would hope, the music is clean, bold, and detailed. Bruno's synthesizers squeal and bleep in an
electronic orchestra of sound, the title song is as engaging as it is catchy, and the "Hot Lunch Jam"
is a raucous good time, even if it does seem strange when the sound of a guy tapping on a lunch
table with drumsticks morphs into the sound of a full-on drum set, high-hat, bass pedal, snares, and
all. The rear channels are sparingly used, but to good effect. You'll hear New York City street sounds,
school bells ringing, hallway chatter, an orchestra warming up, and other environmental noises, but
it's all kept fairly low in the mix. Though some of the ADR recording is a bit noticeable, the voices
are appropriately balanced, whether we're hearing quiet conversations or full-bodied vocal solos.
Commentary by Director Alan Parker
Alan Parker delivers a dry but insightful commentary track that will be appreciated by fans of the
director and fans of Fame alike. He does go quite in depth about the process of prepping,
auditioning, and shooting the film, and his memory for small details and anecdotes is impressive.
Well worth a listen.
Interviews with Cast and Crew (SD, approx. 23 min.)
If you turn this feature on while watching the film, and icon will appear periodically. Press enter
to bring up video interviews with director Alan Parker, and actors Maureen Teefy, Gene Anthony
Ray, Lee Curreri, and Laura Dean. You can also play the interviews individually from the disc's
menu.
On Location with Fame (SD, 11:56)
This vintage featurette includes interviews with director Alan Parker, choreographer Louis Falco,
and all the key members of the cast, as well as lots of behind-the-scenes footage.
Fame Field Trip (SD, 10:59)
In this brief documentary from 2003, we're taken into the Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of
Music & Art and Performing Arts—I know, quite a mouthful—to see how the school portrayed in
Fame operates in real life.
Soundtrack Sampler CD
Inside the Blu-ray case you'll find a sampler CD with four tracks: two versions of "Fame," the
film's famous "Hot Lunch Jam," and Linda Clifford performing "Red Light."
If you bought the remake of Fame for your ten year old last week, it's probably not a smart
move to pick up director Alan Parker's original version, which is fully loaded with cursing, nudity,
sexual situations and the possibility of failure. That is, very real things that often don't sit well with
parents of the Hannah Montana audience. If you remember watching the film in the '80s,
though, and you're in the mood for a time machine experience that seems realer than today's
bubblegum pop nonsense, Fame is definitely worth at least a rental.
MGM Home Entertainment in conjunction with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment have announced the technical specs and special features for the upcoming Blu-ray release 'Fame', which is scheduled to be released on January 12th. For this 2009 remake of the Alan Parker ...
MGM Home Entertainment, in conjunction with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, has announced that it will release 'Fame' on Blu-ray on January 12, 2010. This "reinvention" of the Alan Parker movie (which, in turn, is announced on Blu-ray for January 26) will ...
Warner Home Video has announced that it will release 'Fame' on Blu-ray on January 26, 2010. Note this is not the recent remake (still unannounced, but also expected for early next year), but the original 1980 movie, directed by Alan Parker. This Blu-ray edition ...
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