DVD Reviews: S1MONE

This film concerns the introduction of the virtual actor to the public, long before Squaresoft blew us away with Final Fantasy and even more recently The Final Flight of the Osiris.

I must admit that as a bono fide computer nerd, I found this movie hard to accept, especially when a virus is run on the computer. I can't go into detail without wrecking the storyline for you, however it's unrealistic yet I know that the movie is strictly fantasyland stuff.

Pacino stars as out of vogue director Victor Taransky who has messed up his last film to the point that he will never make a movie again. His leading lady has left him with a partially finished film and as far as the studio is concerned he is a liability to them.

Eventually however Taransky releases the film with a new lead actress, S1MONE, to much acclaim by both critics and public. She's beautiful, talented and immediately has the world entranced by her and wanting to know more. There's only one problem, she is extremely elusive which raises some questions, as does her absolute loyalty to Taransky. How does he have the world's most popular woman completely under his spell?

This disc looks and sounds great with very little in the way of low level noise or other noticeable defects. The movie does use all channels, however the subwoofer gets used very sparingly. The main strength of the disc is in it's extras where we get to see how the special and digital effects team went about the task of creating a digital person. Part of the progression of this field is glaringly obvious in one scene when one of the artists announces that one day they will be able to fully computer generate actors as opposed to taking a live person and then pixellating them. Since that footage was taken, we've already moved to that point, which makes this a nice snapshot in time in terms of technology.

The storyline is nice, although somewhat weak. I would still say that if you can suspend your disbelief for long enough, this is a good movie to curl up and watch on a rainy day.