Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind DVD Review

The movie is presented in it's original 2.40:1 Anamorphic ratio and varies in quality throughout. Heavy use is made of shadows and silhouettes during the opening of the movie, hiding the faces of our main characters for added curiosity. However these scenes suffer from pixelation and artifacts and even crushed blacks. Things do however improve and you soon realise that the colour pallet and film stock are deliberately inconsistent to add a stylised look. It is this attempt at looking slick that doesn't really help the picture, instead you are constantly reminded that the director is trying to be clever. Experienced directors (including Clooney's business partner
Soderberg) manage to do this without drawing the audience's attention to the fact, maybe Clooney was trying too hard? Overall there is quite a bit of detail present in the transfer with colours never displaying signs of blooming or bleed and flesh tones remain natural. Grain is present in the print here and there, which is deliberate but not too distracting, unlike the edge enhancement which is a constant problem.

Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 the soundtrack is more like a stereo mix to be honest. The film is dialogue driven with speech sounding natural and intelligible. There are no surround moments and the rear channels are mostly silent apart from the odd use of the score. There is also a distinct lack of any ambiance created by this sound mix with everything focused on the centre channel for the majority of the picture.

George Clooney and Cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel provide a very subtle and laid back commentary track which has it's interesting moments with Clooney offering some amusing stories regarding his first Directing job. Next is a making of feature containing 6 short featurettes with a play them all feature, altogether these run for about 22 minutes altogether and offer mild entertainment. Also included are 11 deleted scenes with commentary from Clooney and Siegel, a screen test, Sam Rockwell screen test, Interview with Chuck Barris and some cut Gong show acts.
There will be fans of this movie that will be happy with this disc; however I found the experience fatiguing and the film disappointing. I suggest a rental for those who want to see this.