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| Hank Ballard, Cholly Atkins, Chubby Checker,
Joey Dee |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Hank
Ballard: I was in Miami at the time, in 1960. And I was taking a
swim, when I heard this song 'The Twist' blasting across white radio.
And I said, 'Wow! I'm finaly getting some white airplay, I'm gonna be
a superstar!' And it was Chubby Checker! [chuckles] And I thought it
was me. He'd made such a beautiful clone of my record, and I'm grateful
that he did. It takes a master to emulate myself, and he did it, you
know?
A
documentary examination of post-war dance fads with special attention
devoted to the Twist.
 Documentary
filmmaker Ron Mann continues his playful examination of teenage popular
culture and the overblown adult reactions fads can provoke from concerned
parents and adults with nothing better to do than vent their outrage
at the changing times. In Twist, he has chosen an unlikely but
highly rewarding subject, resulting in a fun, swinging and surprisingly
meaningful film that takes something as seemingly trivial as a dance
fad and usese it to chart the major cultural shifts from the 1950s into
the 1960s. He also manages to set the record straight on the extent
to which white music and dance crazes were essentially sanitized carbon
copies of elements from black popular culture. The film is stuffed to
the brim with great tunes, hilarious archival footage, and highly illuminating
new interviews with a great many colorful characters whose music helped
define a generation. Twist is toe-tapping fun! |
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Only
available on DVD as a Region 0-coded release distributed in North-America
by Home Vision Entertainment.
The
widescreen image is framed non-anamorphically at an aspect ratio of
approx. 1.85:1. The transfer provides a stable, solid image in spite
of the absence of anamorphic enhancement, and it is unhindered by compression
artefacts or edge enhancement. The source print is in fine shape and
apart from the letterboxing issue, this solid transfer will elicit few
complaints. The only real oddity is that the deleted concert footage
is anamorphic while the feature itself is not.
The soundtrack is presented in straightforward Dolby Digital 2-track
stereo, without any Dolby Surround or ProLogic encoding. As most of
the film consists of interview footage alternated with mono (or early
stereo) music tracks, this is quite adequate for this presentation,
making as it does for a perfectly satisfactory soundtrack.
Here's
yet another Ron Mann documentary brought to DVD with some modest but
nicely judged extra features on board. An eight-minute interview
with the director (originally taped for a TV broadcast in 2001) sheds
some light on Mann's ambitions with the project, and talks engagingly
about how the larger themes of Twist fit in with his other works
dealing with public hysteria about teenage lifestyle habits. He also
effectively introduces the concert footage that was recorded
at a special Twist 'musical reunion' organized especially for the film,
but never used in the final cut. It's understandable how this recently
recorded musical get-together of most musicians featured in the film's
interview and archive footage failed to find a place in the final cut,
but it's great to be able to view it as a bonus on the DVD (even if
the footage is somewhat damaged and hasn't been color-corrected). For
those who can't help swinging their hips as they listen to the golden
oldies on the score, there's a four-minute instructional video
on how to do the Twist. Finally, the film's trailer along with
those for Comic Book Confidential and Grass are also on
board.  The
animated main menu page incorporates stock footage of teenagers dancing
the twist, and the playful, colorful navigation offers clear, nicely designed
access to the DVD's features.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: August
5, 2002
Click
here for IMDB info on Twist.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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