Sex and Death 101 Blu-ray delivers stunning video and decent audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu-ray release
Less than two weeks before his wedding, good-guy Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) receives a
mysterious email listing every girl he's ever had sex with...and the 70+ names of everyone he
ever will have sex with. But as Roderick begins enjoying all the strippers, porn stars,
stewardesses and celebrity lesbians on the list, he discovers that his ultimate date with destiny
may lay with the serial killer known as "Death Nell" (Winona Ryder). Is the luckiest man in the
world now doomed to face the final position of the Karma Sutra?
The who, the what, the where, and the when is never as important as the why.
Heathers is one of the finest dark comedies ever committed to celluloid, and holds nearly
infinite replay value for me. Unless I've just watched it last week, I'm always comfortable pulling it
off my DVD (hopefully some day soon Blu-ray) shelf for yet another screening. Sex and Death
101 is brought to us by the same writer that penned Heathers, Daniel Waters. His
career as a writer is an interesting one, with a wide array of projects under his belt, from
high-octane action (Demolition Man) to poorly received cinematic duds of epic proportions
(Hudson Hawk) with the likes of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Batman
Returns idling somewhere on the middle of his resumé. As an established fan of both
Heathers and Demolition Man, I went into Sex and Death 101 with
moderately high expectations; this film fits a genre I generally despise, but the promise of good,
funny writing, as evidenced in Waters' earlier works, curiously drew me to this, his latest script
(which he also directed).
Roderick ponders the deep, metaphorical meaning behind 'Meet the Spartans.'
Roderick Blank (Simon Baker, Land of the Dead) is
a
happy enough man with a steady job, good looks, and a wife-to-be. One day while speaking with
his secretary, she opens a mysterious e-mail (sent, we discover, by an all-knowing
supercomputer) that contains the list of the 29 women Roderick has
been with, up to and including his fiancé. The list also contains, to his astonishment, 72 more
names listed after his bride-to-be (which, conveniently, adds up to 101). When girl number 30
turns out
to be a dancer at his bachelor party and
girl number 31 is a centerfold model, Roderick loses himself in the quest to find and scratch off
every woman on the list, that is, until he discovers the identity of the last person on the list, a
person that just might be the death of him.
I'm trying very hard to discover the point of this movie, and if there is indeed a point or a
supposed lesson or significance here, I took it
as a lesson that tells us not to take fate at face value. Roderick rides an emotional roller coaster
throughout the film, a ride that he is taken on courtesy of one simple piece of paper that may or
may not truly hold the secret to his life (and, ultimately, death), but he begins to spiral out of
control as he lets fate, not himself, control his destiny. As two troubled souls struggle through
life and come together either by happenstance or cosmic intervention, Sex and Death
101 tries to convey that not everything can be taken as face value, and even if we were to
somehow catch a glimpse of our own destiny, the end journey may not take us where we expect
it to. I'm reminded of one of those old "deal with the devil" proverbs where you ask the devil to
heal your dog of its illness, and as it leaves the vet healthy and happy, it gets loose from its leash
and is run over by an 18-wheeler. Appearances, ideas, goals, desires, and destiny aren't always
as they seem, neither set in stone, nor, as in this case, printed on a sheet of paper, which, as
fate would have it, was one of the themes in Waters' superior film from the 1980s,
Heathers.
Sex and Death 101 debuts on Blu-ray in a 1.78:1 framed, 1080p high definition transfer.
Simply put, this is a mostly superb release from Starz. It has a video rather than film-like look
about it, looking like something that you might find filmed for and playing on late night cable
television. Nevertheless, detail and color reproduction are extraordinary. Colors are vibrant, rich,
and accurate. Both foreground and background objects are sharp and finely tuned, exhibiting
sometimes extraordinary depth and visible detail and nuances. Even the most mundane of objects,
such as a green door Roderick enters to visit with the men in charge of the supercomputer, allows
us to see every brush stroke from when the paint was applied and a few minor blemishes on it.
Close-ups of faces reveal blemishes, fine lines, and other nuances on actors. Even the buttons on
the telephone seen in
Roderick's office made me want to "reach out and touch someone" so clearly visible and tactile were
they. A fine layer of film grain covers the image. It's never obtrusive and adds a bit of depth to the
transfer, but never adds a cinematic flair to the image that retains that filmed-on-video appearance
noted above. This transfer is hands down the star of this disc, and it looks marvelous.
Sex and Death 101 is accompanied on Blu-ray by a PCM 5.1 uncompressed soundtrack.
The film's opening musical sequence is nice and clear, a solid way to begin the movie. Instruments
are often placed in discrete channels across the front, and the rear channels pick up much the
general beat of the music. It all blends together for a very pleasant, high-quality listen. Afterwards
and most of the way throughout, this is a mostly front-heavy listen with the occasional discrete
effect in the front and back, but there is very little ambience or excitement to the proceedings. The
music heard in chapter nine in the club offers up a bit of pizazz with some moderately deep lows and
some more rear-channel presence. There is some nice echoing and reverberations in the "white
room" where the supercomputer is located. Dialogue is clean and prominent; every syllable is
accurately rendered and reproduced through the center channel. Sex and Death 101 is
another one of those comedy soundtracks that never puts your sound system through its paces,
but for this style of movie, this soundtrack is an admirable one.
Sex and Death 101 arrives on Blu-ray with only a few extra materials, highlighted by a
commentary track with writer/director Daniel Waters. Waters delves into some of the nuances of
the script and lets us in on his deeper thoughts on the meaning of the film. Intertwined with the
more philosophical observations are some standard behind-the-scenes comments and pats on the
back.
Of note is his pointing out that the diner seen in the end of the film is utilized in many a Hollywood
movies. Suddenly, it hit me that it is the same diner seen at the beginning of Training Day. 101
Perversions (480p, 17:13) is next. As the name so obviously implies, this is a classic
behind-the-scenes feature that takes us into the minds of the cast and crew and they provide their
thoughts on the movie and the meaning behind it (Waters describes the film as coming from his
"Van Gogh" period). Concluding the supplements is the film's original theatrical trailer (480p,
2:17).
The beauty of movies like this, and any movie really, is that anyone can interpret it every which
way to Sunday. Sex and Death 101 is a vapid comedy that tries to muster some kind of
significance at the end of the film, and as to whether it accomplished that goal is best left to each
viewer.
The ridiculousness (generally in a Mystery Science Theater 3000-worthy production;
get
a load of the wholly generic "oracle") that preceded the film's all-too-touchy-feely ending
ruined the whole "dark comedy" angle the film seemed to be headed towards. While I
wouldn't necessarily say the film's writer needs to go back to scriptwriting 101, I would
label Sex and Death 101 as his teenage fantasy period rather than his Van Gogh period
as the film offers little more substance than the writer living vicariously through Roderick
Blank's numerous sexual escapades.
Starz presents Sex and Death 101 on Blu-ray as a fairly standard package with excellent
video quality, audio befitting this style of movie, and a predictably boring set of supplements.
Worth
a rental for the curious and not-so-easily offended.
Anchor Bay Home Entertainment has announced that they will bring the Simon Baker and Winona Ryder film 'Sex and Death 101' to Blu-ray on July 1st, day and date with the DVD release. The film come from Daniel Waters, the writer of the cult classic film ‘Heathers'. ...
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