The Movie: Am I covering the C's or what? This movie was originally suggested to me by Clara, some six years ago. It comes from Italy, and she raved on about how great it is. I never did get a chance to see this movie, until Netflix came around... they have everything! (well almost... they don't have music video DVDs). DVDPlanet.com places this movie in the Foreign, Italian Cinema, and "Tearjerker". And well, that's exactly what this is... an Italian tearjerker.

In fact, it won the Academy Award in 1989 for best foreign language film for being an Italian tearjerker. The middle of the movie seemed to drag a bit, but I'll be damned of the ending didn't try its very hardest to jerk some tears out of these eyes. Are you feeling like being in a sappy mood tonight? Then go ahead and rent this movie, and you can tell all your friends in the morning that you watched a foreign film last night and they'll be like "oooooh you're so hip and artsy".

The DVD: I was actually rather surprised that this DVD was anamorphically encoded. A lot of time these "smaller" movies end up getting letterboxed. But then again, a lot of times they aren't. There were a number of choices for the soundtrack, including the original Italian soundtrack in mono, a remixed Italian soundtrack in stereo, and an English dubbed one, which I cannot remember if it was mono or stereo. The stereo soundtrack didn't seem to be Dolby Pro-Logic encoded (i.e. the dialogue didn't come out of the center channel speaker) so actually the mono soundtrack ended up being better. And of course, for maximum artsy effect, you'll wanna watch it with the Italian soundtrack and the English (or whatever language you speak) subtitles.

Special features included filmographies and production notes as well as the American market theatrical trailer, and that's about it.