The Movie: I think the reason why I wanted to see this movie was because this little independent film was actually the first movie shown in theaters on film that was originally shot in high definition 24fps digital format... a full year before Star Wars: Episode II was released. But as we've all found out by now, using new whizbang technology does not necessarily result in good movies!

Jackpot basically follows a guy around as he cruises through desolate western towns, hitting up karaoke contests trying to make a name for himself, while trying to live off his meager earnings. He's got his manager who takes a 15% cut with him, and they basically just live out of their hideous pink sedan. Oh, and he left his wife and kid behind to go chase this dream of his.

There is definitely an interesting filmmaking style used in this film, but I'm not really sure that it helped convey the story in a more effective manner, a story which pretty much completely falls apart at the end and left me wondering "what the hell just happened?"

Basically what you is a series of "road trip" scenes, leading up to karaoke scenes featuring terrible singing, leading up to hooking up with the groupies scenes, and then once in a while some scenes of some kind of remorse or something like that. Overall, a pretty terrible movie that leaves little emotional impact, and does not encourage any feelings of sympathy for any of the characters.

So... yeah. As excited as the digital filmmaking community was about Jackpot, I can't recommend this one. Sorry.

The DVD: This is a double-sided disc, with a widescreen anamorphic transfer on one side, and a pan and scan version on the other. The video transfer is actually quite spectacular... extremely crisp, with bold, saturated color, and very few artifacts to speak of. I wasn't really able to tell if the transfer was direct digital to digital, or if it was made from a 35mm film print, but either way, it's very nice.

Audio was just average, however. And the features? Well, all you really get is a commentary track and some trailers for some other movies. I think there are some text based filmographies thrown in there but you know what, none of this really matters because the movie was bad enough that no one should care.