User Reviews

Among the types of "extra features" available to DVD viewers, a particularly popular item is the Sundance series "ANATOMY OF A SCENE", produced for the Sundance television channel, wherein a close examination (about 28 minutes in this instance) is devoted to a scene taken from a significant motion picture. Here, for ONE HOUR PHOTO, starring Robin Williams, there is too little footage disparate from other "extras" for the DVD release, resulting in a somewhat less effective than is customary piece, this due to disc packaging, rather than for its content. This short film details the casting selection of Williams, the feature film's painstaking cinematographic processes, including lighting, and depicts rehearsal techniques, along with the varied skills of production, art, and costume designing. Those interviewed include writer / director Mark Romanek, leads Williams and Michael Vartan, director of photography Jeff Cronenweth, film editor Jeffrey Ford, costume designer Arianne Phillips, production designer Tom Foden, in addition to producers Stanley Wlodkowski, Christine Vachon, and Pamela Koffler, each of whom explains the film's artistic development. ONE HOUR PHOTO is a highly successful cinematic work in every manner, and a 20th Century Fox DVD offers, in addition to an engaging commentary from Romanek and Williams, several other features that make for a fair quota. However, if a viewer chooses to watch this ANATOMY following the other extras, it will become apparent that each included revelation will be less pleasing than might be expected, due to thoroughgoing discussion and analysis of the narrative. Nonetheless, ONE HOUR PHOTO is a top-flight achievement, and the raft of extras, among which is this ANATOMY OF A SCENE, makes for an above-standard DVD issue from Fox.