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Latest DVDs with audio description
Transcript
30 March 2014
Roberta: One of the regular segments we have on this show is an update on the latest accessible DVDs released in Australia. DVDs with captions and audio description allow people with either a hearing or vision loss to enjoy the program along with their family and friends. Cinema and DVD Project Manager at Media Access Australia, Ally Woodford, keeps regular tabs on the availability of these and joins us today with the latest titles. Welcome, Ally.
Ally: Thanks, Roberta. Hi, everyone.
Roberta: Now, before we talk about the latest titles, I’m interested to find out if captions and audio description come as a package or will you sometimes get one without the other?
Ally: You’re more likely to get captions than audio description on DVDs, although it’s very rare that you’ll get audio description without captions. I can only think of one title in Australia that we’ve got descriptions on but no captions and it was an independent release. It was a documentary called Man on Wire and it was about a tightrope walker who infamously walked between the World Trade Centre Towers in New York many years ago. I don’t know how it happened but we ended that the distributor imported that title from the UK and it had audio descriptions but no captions and I’ve never seen that happen before.
Roberta: Let’s talk about the titles. Which genre would you like to take us through first, Ally?
Ally: How about we start with the ones that the kids can watch, all PG? Admittedly, there’s just three here but they are Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, Grown Ups 2 and lastly we’ve got Gambit. Now, Gambit stars a couple of screen favourites in Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz and it’s a remake by the famed Coen brothers of the 1960s movie of the same name. It didn’t actually get great reviews but if you’re a fan of Firth, Diaz or the Coen brothers then it could be worth checking out. They’re our PG titles.
Roberta: Cameron Diaz does a lot of that sort of work, doesn’t she?
Ally: She does. She’s of moving into sort of quirky, slightly offbeat comedies these days.
Roberta: So did any of the dramas get decent reviews then?
Ally: The one that probably stands out from the crows in the dramas would be Matt Damon’s Elysium. It was reviewed as “startling and brilliant” in the UK’s The Guardian. It is a bit top heavy on guns and bombs. Some people go for that, the science fiction drama, you might say. It’s set in futuristic LA which is now a mega slum where people aspire to live in the artificial world of Elysium. Aside from that one, with the dramas, we’ve got one called Lovelace. We’ve also got Parkland, which looks at the chaos behind the scenes in Dallas on the day JFK was assassinated. That’s based on a true story. We’ve also got The Look of Love and To the Wonder, starring Ben Affleck and Javier Bardem, and lastly The Promised Land, which is another Matt Damon movie.
Roberta: Yeah, he’s terrific, isn’t he? He’s come a long way too.
Ally: He is good, yes.
Roberta: How about some comedy?
Ally: Yes, we’ve got Thanks for Sharing, which stars Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow, Imogene, which stars the very funny Kristen Wigg and Annette Bening. There’s also A Case for Sharing, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Jennifer Aniston in We’re the Millers.
Roberta: There’s quite a few there then.
Ally: Quite a few.
Roberta: So what rounds out the list of audio described and captioned DVDs for the beginning of 2014?
Ally: Okay, we’ve got two horror movies, The East and The Conjuring; a few action movies in Man of Steel, which is a Superman movie, Pain and Gain, Rush, and that one stars Australia’s Chris Hemsworth. We’ve also got Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger.
Roberta: I saw that, you know?
Ally: Okay, any good?
Roberta: Yeah, it wasn’t bad but you tend to still have an image of the original Lone Ranger and it was a little bit different. He was really quite funny in this, actually, because he wasn’t The Lone Ranger. He was Tonto.
Ally: I just assumed he would be the Lone Ranger. There you go.
Roberta: Yeah, and it was very funny. I mean, I looked at it in a different light. I probably could see it again.
Ally: Okay, I might get that one out on DVD. I haven’t seen it myself. I’ve also got a thriller, which is called Passion, and Vin Diesel stars in the sci-fi movie, Riddick. This is the last one here. It’s a goody. It’s a documentary called The Imposter. This received universal critical acclaim and received prizes at pretty much every film festival it entered, including Sundance. It’s about an imposter, true story, and this one is a French guy who impersonates a kidnapped American child who disappeared in 1994. He emerges about three years later and after quite some time of being re-established with his apparent family he was found out to be an imposter. The documentary interviews the imposter and also members of the family he imposed upon, providing apparently quite a thriller of a documentary.
Roberta: Well, you can find all these titles plus more in Media Access Australia’s searchable DVD database at www.mediaacess.org.au or, if you would like to chat about captioned and audio described DVDs, Ally will be happy to take your call, 02 9212 6242 or via email on info@mediaacess.org.au. Thank you, Ally, for all of that.
Ally: Thanks, Roberta.
Roberta: I’ve been speaking with Ally Woodford, Cinema and DVD Project Manager at Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.