Under the Cherry Moon (1986); Graffiti Bridge (1990); Purple Rain (1984) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVDs|Purple Rain – Blu-ray Disc

UNDER THE CHERRY MOON
***/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Prince, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jerome Benton, Steven Berkoff
screenplay by Becky Johnston
directed by Prince

GRAFFITI BRIDGE
*/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Prince, Morris Day, Jerome Benton & The Time, Jill Jones
written and directed by Prince

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's something cinematic about the artist known as Prince, and it's not just his effeminate charisma (though there's that) or his flair for theatre (though there's that, too): The whole sensual package that is his deliciously weird sensibility–a blend of satin-laced fetishism and self-loving exhibitionism–all but cries out to be photographed. The question is, was The Artist himself filmmaker enough to bring that to the screen? Making for a split decision are the two films that bear his directorial stamp, both of which have finally hit DVD. In one corner stands Under the Cherry Moon, a savagely-underrated romance that suggests that with someone else's script, he's got the right stuff; in the other corner sits Graffiti Bridge, a grotesque white elephant that suggests Prince left to his own devices turns from funk idol into sadly inebriated schoolgirl.

First, the good news: Under the Cherry Moon manages to capture everything that's good about the Purple One's pop while also skirting camp. The film deals with Christopher (guess who?), a gigolo working the bored housewives of the French Riviera. After hearing of a 21-year-old heiress about to inherit a huge trust fund, Christopher and partner-in-crime Tricky (Jerome Benton) arrive on the scene ready to sponge. But the heiress in question is Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas), not just another meal ticket; Christopher begins to fall hard for her, and she responds in kind. Unfortunately, Mary's father (Stephen Berkoff, in the archetypal Stephen Berkoff role) would rather marry her off to a rich bore in order to merge their fortunes and power, meaning that a peasant like Christopher is in serious danger of losing his head.

Not exactly a paragon of originality, but such a narrative is merely a line on which to hang episodes of random pleasure, something at which the film excels. Becky Johnston's script is full of witty banter and asides that Prince no doubt wished he could come up with himself, and as an actor, he rises to the occasion with a performance that is a one-of-a-kind blend of macho strut and feminine preening. Thus as he, Benton (the perfect foil), and the unusually wilful Thomas romp through the Riviera doing desperately glamorous things, the gender definitions blur just enough to make this time-honoured narrative seem like something from the planet Mars: the tone is sober and classic but the details are pure Paisley Park, resulting in a semiotic smash-up that simultaneously loosens the collar on the stuffy plot and gives the Princely flourishes an uncanny resonance.

Of course, one could argue that much of the work had been done for him: Prince fired director Mary Lambert a week into production, leaving him to take over a design and production team assembled by other people. But Lambert's other work (e.g., Pet Sematary, Madonna's "Like a Prayer" clip) doesn't have this movie's sense of felicity–one has to give our man credit for being able to direct the actors in his flamboyant style, faultlessly maintain the retro Astaire-Rogers atmosphere (with a little B&W help from Scorsese DP Michael Ballhaus), and assemble a shot list that doesn't cast him as a rank amateur. To everyone's unwarranted surprise, Under the Cherry Moon keeps the atmosphere as thick and as steamy as it ought to be in a pop film. The elements all come together, the seams don't show–not bad for a man written off in many quarters as a velveteen freak.

But wait, there's more. Prince has proven himself a fine studio director, putting his signature on material that wasn't all his. Is he a true auteur, able to put all the pieces together by himself and call it a masterpiece? Graffiti Bridge–not only directed but also written by our man–would have you believing otherwise. The intrigue picks up where Purple Rain left off: once again we have The Kid, played by Prince, now running the Glam Slam club so that he might play his vaguely profound music to dwindling but appreciative crowds. Morris Day, who owns a half-interest in the club, yearns to take it over and replace the Kid with his own, less introspective brand of music. Meanwhile, a spectre/love interest shows up (stunning Ingrid Chavez, the film's one real virtue) to egg the Kid on and be coveted by Morris, à la Apollonia. Guns come out, songs are sung, and the movie kills 91 minutes with nothing but padding.

Where Under the Cherry Moon featured a lively and playful Prince, Graffiti Bridge's Kid is a glowering, self-serious creature who petulantly demands to be taken seriously. Thing is, we take him more seriously when he's not being serious–he's most subversive and potent when he's deflating the pretensions that we seek to crush on the dancefloor. That's not good enough for him here–he's got to be an artist, and he's got to do it all by himself. Out are Becky Johnston's tart witticisms, Michael Ballhaus's crisp cinematography, and Richard Sylbert's lush sets. In are some astounding Prince-penned banalities that fish for compliments, some garish and assaulting colours, and many cringe-inducing early-'90s fashions. It all takes place on a suffocating soundstage that suggests One from the Heart on a sadly-reduced budget. One must conclude that total artistic freedom is nothing without an articulated voice–one that Under the Cherry Moon's colony of talent had but that lone-wolf Prince does not.

THE DVDs
Warner's Under the Cherry Moon disc is acceptable, if nothing more. The1.85:1, 16×9-enhanced black-and-white image has reasonable definition but stays a little soft; graininess is a problem, though not a fatal one. Typical of an Eighties mix, the Dolby Digital 2.0 surround sound lacks real potency and fullness. Extras include videos for "Girls and Boys" (a scratch remix of footage from the film), "Mountains" (essentially the film's credit sequence in colour and intercut with shots of Kristin Scott Thomas), "anotherloverholenyohead" (a staged in-concert affair), and "Kiss" (come on, you remember this one). Capping off the package: the film's trailer.

The Graffiti Bridge DVD does slightly better for itself. The anamorphic video transfer (again letterboxed at 1.85:1) is largely clear and sharp, rendering some beautifully-saturated colours and maintaining definition even under soft-focus conditions. While the Dolby Surround audio is slightly flat and unremarkable in dialogue scenes, it jumps to robust life during the numerous musical numbers. As for extras, in addition to the film's trailer we have videos for "New Power Generation," "Thieves in the Temple," and "Round and Round" (all of which are heavily dependant upon clips from the film), as well as one for "The Question of U," an in-concert segment.

PURPLE RAIN
**/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day, Clarence Williams III
written by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn
directed by Albert Magnoli

by Bill Chambers They took the Prince songs out of I'll Do Anything and were left with a picture that at worst seems a little cagey. Take the Prince songs out of Purple Rain and you'd be left with a car on blocks. Between its point-and-shoot aesthetic, laboured naturalism, and story-driven tunes, Purple Rain practically begs consideration as the last blaxploitation movie; it's hard to imagine something so odd earning so much money in 1984, though back then I suppose it just seemed like the latest extracurricular activity for MTV junkies. Come to think of it, it's only natural that repressed suburbanites gravitated towards a sub-genre of non-musical musicals about unrealized talent battling oppressive forces without and within–and Purple Rain is at least more endearingly idiosyncratic than either Flashdance or Footloose. No hand puppets pop out of paper cups in those movies.

In a thoroughly impenetrable if finally repugnant performance, all of pursed lips and skittish looks, Prince stars as The Kid, a nouveau funk singer-songwriter whose steady gig at First Avenue in Minneapolis–the real Prince Rogers Nelson's old stomping grounds–is apparently not drawing the crowds it used to, never mind that the place is packed like a can of trick snakes whenever The Kid is on stage. (The thing to remember is that you can say Prince is floundering, but to actually show it is to contradict the essence of the term "vanity project.") When Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero) barges her way into the nightclub one evening, she becomes the apple of The Kid's eye, the chew toy of his ego, and the stakes in The Kid's not-so-metaphorical guitar duel against lounge act-cum-promoter Morris Day for the soul of First Avenue. The Kid, like Prince, also has a jazz musician father (Clarence Williams III)–am I sensing me a roman à clef?–who in this scenario puts the "temper" in artistic temperament, and the movie gravely miscalculates the amount of magnanimity we'll have left for The Kid after he succumbs to heredity by slugging Apollonia. It's not as though this pathologically self-absorbed misogynist is ingratiating in the first place. Undeniably compelling in its tawdriness, Purple Rain nevertheless shares a trump card–its setlist–with casual Prince fans, who are advised to reach for the soundtrack album instead. But then, no true Prince fan would deprive themselves of this singular experience.

Warner's 20^th Anniversary DVD reissue of Purple Rain is actually pretty marvy, even if His Royal Badness steered clear of the festivities. Making its widescreen debut, the film often looks sensational here, with that particularly coarse 'Eighties grain' beleaguering the 1.85:1 anamorphic image only in dark or low-contrast scenes. I've read disappointed reactions to the Dolby Digital 5.1 remix and all I can say is, Huh? The sound may be lacking in quadraphonics, but so are the original recordings, which in my opinion have never been replicated with such clarity. Bass booms without distorting the music and dialogue has none of the tinniness we've come to expect from pre-digital cinema. Director/co-writer Albert Magnoli, co-producer Robert Cavallo, and cinematographer Donald E. Thorin team up on a second audio track to basically tell you whether a shot was captured in Minneapolis or Los Angeles; I eventually became convinced they were trying to hypnotize the listener with their Jim Garrison-like refrain ("Minnesota… L.A…. Minnesota…") and to the best of my knowledge checked out before going Raymond Shaw on any innocent bystanders. Also on the first platter of this Two-Disc Special Edition is a selection of trailers for Prince's three forays into narrative filmmaking: Purple Rain, Under the Cherry Moon, and Graffiti Bridge.

Disc 2 contains three of New Wave Entertainment's more gratifying featurettes of late, starting with "First Avenue: The Road to Pop Royalty" (12 mins.), an eyewitness account of the titular Minneapolis venue's humble beginnings through to Purple Rain's double-edged repercussions on its popularity. Each member of The Revolution resurfaces to honour their former bandleader in "Purple Rain: Backstage Pass" (30 mins.), an oral history of the production proper wherein Magnoli, a hairdresser type, goes on a crying jag as soon as he recalls Prince's on-screen heart-to-heart with Williams. (How many tears will Magnoli shed when the topic turns to American Anthem?) While "…Backstage Pass" and "Riffs, Ruffles and a Revolution: The Impact and Influence of Purple Rain" (10 mins.) are fine nostalgia pieces, for a true acid flashback nothing beats the time capsule that is the "MTV Premiere Party" for Purple Rain (28 mins.). Then-VJ Mark Goodman hosts this SCTV-skit-that-never-was from the summer of '84, in which the worlds of Prince and Pee-Wee Herman (pulling up to the theatre in a toy car) mingle uneasily and John Cougar Mellencamp and "Weird Al" Yankovic are seated together at a table. Goodman's invasive questioning is almost as squirm-inducing as eavesdropper Eddie Murphy's ridiculing of the answers a pious Little Richard gives moments before in his own interview with Goodman. That's entertainment! Well-scrubbed videos for Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," "Take Me With U," "When Doves Cry," "I Would Die 4 U/Baby I'm a Star," and "Purple Rain," The Time's "Jungle Love" and "The Bird," and Apollonia 6's "Sex Shooter" round out the DVD. Originally published: August 26, 2004.

THE BLU-RAY DISC
When the telecine operators have the courage to put away the noise-reduction filters and abandon old-school, analogue "enhancement" techniques (edge haloes, overblown contrasts), a movie has a fighting chance at evoking the theatrical experience at home. This is true of DVD and even truer of Blu-ray, where the resolution is closer to that of film than one thought possible; with the latter, grain–the celluloid equivalent of pixels–becomes something observably constructive as opposed to obstructive. To me, the irony of Blu-ray, this most superior of digital formats, is that it's capable of producing the least synthetic images I've ever seen on the proverbial small screen. On BD, Purple Rain sends the viewer hurdling back in time to 1984: it looks just like a film print on opening weekend. With the exception of a tiny bit of crush (that's where the darkest areas of black take on a mushy, velvety appearance), there is no doubting that any deficiencies in the presentation are endemic to the cinematography, the film's low budget, the lax standards of the era, or some combination of all three. Once again I find myself thinking more highly of Purple Rain's soundmix than other reviewers do, maybe because it responds so well to amplification. The most damning statement that can be made about both the Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack options is that not only do they sound alike, but neither appreciably upgrades the DD 5.1 audio of the SD release. Every last supplement of that two-disc 20^th Anniversary edition meanwhile resurfaces here, though the documentary extras have been upconverted to (albeit not remastered in) 1080i, effectively enhancing them for 16×9 displays.

• Under the Cherry Moon
  100 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English Dolby Surround; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
• Graffiti Bridge
  91 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English Dolby Surround; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
• Purple Rain
  111 minutes; R; BD: 1.85:1 (1080p/VC-1), DVD: 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); BD: English 5.1 Dolby True HD, English DD+ 5.1, DVD: English DD 5.1, French DD 1.0; DVD: CC; BD/DVD: English, French, Spanish subtitles; BD-25/DVD-9; Region-free/Region One; Warner