The Movie: The Piano was highly acclaimed the year it was released, winning many awards, and opening many people's eyes to artsy independent film. It's about a mute woman who loves her piano. She's shipped off to New Zealand to be married to a man she hasn't yet met, and brings her daughter along. She falls in love with another man, and the rest of the movie revolves around this tumultuous situation.

This movie failed to truly engage me and draw me in, and what kept my interest more was seeing what this seemingly neurotic woman was going to do next. I do have to admit that the 11 year old Anna Paquin did a wonderful job playing the daughter (and she won an Academy Award for that performance), but yeah, this movie had a hard time keeping my interest.

But I did stay in it through the end, and the last ten minutes, frankly, made my brain hurt. It completely lost me and just got really weird and... spiritual -- which is just fine with me, except that it didn't seem to match the rest of the movie. I think I was supposed to be moved with emotion, but I was too confused by the shock of this sudden contrast in style.

I can see how some people would really like this movie, but at the same time, I can see how many more people would not.

The DVD: This is a horribly produced DVD, though in it's defense, I will say that it was produced in 1998, so it's pretty damned old by DVD standards. This single-sided DVD has both 4:3 and widescreen versions, which adds up to about four hours of total video... which adds up to some pretty low bitrates, resulting in some pretty poor video. What you get is murky, grainy video with poor contrast, and crushed blacks, and all kinds of compression artifacts. Color was actually not bad considering how bad the video looked overall, however.

The audio was equally murky, with some attempt at including some poorly mixed surround effects that distracted me from the film when they were used. As far as special features go, you get a trailer in 4:3 pan-and-scan, and some text-based filmography info on the principal actors and the director.