COPYING BEETHOVEN

DVD Review by David Blackwell

DETAILS: 104 minutes/ audio commentary/ deleted scenes with optional audio commentary, featurette

AUDIO: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Widescreen)

AUDIO: English 5.1, Spanish 2.0 Dolby Surround

Subtitles: English, Spanish

STUDIO: MGM/ Sidney Kimmel Entertainment/ 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

RELEASE DATE: 4-3-2007

Beethoven was a musical genius- the rock star of his time. Ed Harris may shine as Beeethoven, but Gary Oldman's take on the deaf musical genius (in IMMORTAL BELOVED) still reigns supreme. COPYING BEETHOVEN concerns a young composer Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) who comes to copy Beethoven's very hard to read music notes into readable music sheets on the eve of the premiere of the Ninth Symphony. About an hour in the film is the premiere of that great piece of music and then the film starts to falter to never recover. One of the big problems is that Diane Kruger is woefully miscast in addition to her character being one I didn't give a fig about. I rather had even more time with deaf Ludwig Von Beethoven is his vulgar and insulting glory. He was appreciated while some just thought he was a brute with his behavior while being deaf. The film has his nephew Karl who wants to be a cavalryman and has no interest/talent in music. COPYING BEETHOVEN does paint a small part of his life through a historical fictional context and yet Harris does breath life into Ludwig (still he is no Gary Oldman).

SPECIAL FEATURES: The feature audio commentary with actor Ed Harris and director Agnieszka Holland is dry but yet informative. Sample it if you want, but you might want to have great reserves to listen to the entire track. The five deleted scenes include character development scene for Anna Holtz which were thankfully cut (but the director does praise DVD for including the deleted scenes on the audio commentary). The 20 minute making of featurette, ORCHESTRATING BEETHOVEN, touches on a few things mentioned in the audio commentary.

FINAL ANALYSIS: COPYING BEETHOVEN is an interesting misfire which crashes after the big moment about an hour into it. rent it.

this review is (c)4-5-2007 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission (except for excerpts and a link to the review). Look for additional content at http://enterlinemedia.livejournal.com and send all comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com