Official Synopsis
Ed Wood is a high-spirited director who never let terrible reviews or hostile studio executives derail his big-screen dreams. With an oddball collection of showbiz misfits, Ed takes the art of bad moviemaking to an all-time low.
Ed Wood was a movie that needed to be made, and Tim Burton did a perfect job of making that happen. While you can argue that the content of the film pretty much couldn’t get screwed up (I mean, Ed Wood was known for bad films, so this could have been a case of art imitating life), Burton knew what he wanted to do and did it well. The choice of putting Wood’s story in black and white seemed like a no-brainer. Since Wood was known for films in this era, it was a natural fit for the story of his life. Not to mention, it also helped to magnify Wood’s favorite genres, sci-fi and horror.
Wood starts out by working his way into making his first full-length feature, Glen or Glenda. It’s a movie that directly refers to Wood’s own obsession with dressing in women’s clothing, which was frowned on back in the 50s. That pretty much sets up the tone for the rest of Ed Wood, where Wood’s outrageous, spontaneous ideas are put together to make bad movies. The joy of the film is how he gets to the point of Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s hilarious how he gathers all the players involved and especially how he convinces them it’s going to be a huge event. On the flip side to that coin, it really shows his desire to be a director, which was probably REALLY unfortunate for his audience. Burton does a great job with including all aspects of Wood’s journey and surprisingly it’s interesting from beginning to end.
What I particularly liked about this film is that Burton didn’t try to alter the path of Ed Wood’s journey to Plan 9 From Outer Space. He included an accurate picture of the many road bumps Ed Wood hit before finally directing his most infamous feature. Burton successfully told the story by showing how many failures Wood gathered up before his ultimate one. The pacing of this film, mixed with the awkward positive attitude from Johnny Depp makes this one of the greatest films about the failures of the most awful of filmmakers.
As for the acting, I’m not sure you could have put anyone else but Johnny Depp in the role of Ed Wood and made it work so well. Depp carries this film with his ‘head-in-the-clouds’ attitude and his awful decision making as Ed Wood. He is charming, goofy and just plain fun to watch onscreen. His performance is only rivaled by the very talented Martin Landau, who nails the persona of Bela Lugosi. Halfway through the film you’ll forget that it’s Landau, he’s absolutely stellar as the once huge horror star turned drug addict.
Overall, this was probably the peak to Tim Burton’s career, and the launching point to Johnny Depp’s move from a teenage rebel to a serious movie actor on the A list. Regardless, Ed Wood is one of the better movies that came out of the 90s, and the best film that Burton put together as a whole. If you haven’t seen Ed Wood then this might be the time to acquire it and enjoy.
As for the Blu-ray, it’s pretty darn good,but not perfect. Since the movie was done in black and white, there are about a bajillion chances for graininess and color banding to seep into the HD transfer. Thankfully, you just get some graininess here and there in some of the poorly lit shots. For the most part, though, the film looks pretty darn solid in the HD format. While there aren’t any colors to boast about, the grays, blacks and whites look almost crystal clear. The transfer really was a good one, and deservedly so for this film.
In the audio department, you get wonderfully old sounds (purposely so) in 5.1 DTS-HD mastering. The aspect ratio comes in at 1.85:1.
Finally, here are the special features that come with it:
– Deleted Scenes
– Making Bela
– Production Design Feature ‘Pie Plates Over Hollywood’
– Let’s Shoot the F#*%@r!
– The Theremin Documentary
– Audio Commentary
– Music Video from Howard Shore
For a $20 Blu-ray this isn’t half bad. The features are pretty darn solid, as the feature ‘Let’s Shoot the F****r!’ leads the way. You get to see some real behind the scenes material from the set, and good footage of Tim Burton giving directions. The audio commentary is priceless, as well as the ‘Making Bela’ featurette. All in all, you get some good stuff with this very inexpensive Blu-ray. Please take note that it’s all in SD.