One For The Road

The DVD features are some of the best I've seen. They're not trying to get a bit more mileage out of the stuff that fell to the cutting room floor.

The five extra features are a good three hours view and build an intimate and distinctive portrait of the film's creation. There are two full-length commentaries, one by the production team and the other by the three main actors. The short film, Shifting Units, that inspired One For The Road, follows the main feature with a further optional commentary. It can be coarse, although obviously this is an early attempt and the quality elements of One For The Road are here.

The next feature is Map Of The Scars, a strange mix of travelogue and social documentary, and Chris Cooke's first funded short film. The next section is a series of intense talking head type "web virals" that deepen the characters and breathe something extra into them. Each actor performs a short definitive monologue to the camera and we see them even more clearly.

Why I Hate Parties could be brilliant, were it not done so tentatively. If you hate parties, this will ring bells. It does look a little amateur, but it's a good character driven effort, nevertheless. The package is rounded off with the main adult trailer.

I spent a lot of time with this DVD - way beyond the film's 96 minutes. It makes a hugely refreshing change from the usual "Here's how we spent £millions" show and would-be filmmakers will gain a lot from it, especially the commentaries. You might get the perception that Cooke and his team are justifying their approach by including so much material and commentary, but I don't think that's their intention. Rather, they're enjoying their work and want to let us know about it.