SuicideGirls: Guide to Living Blu-ray features mediocre video and solid audio, but overall it's a poor Blu-ray release
Through a series of titillating vignettes, the infamous SuicideGirls create a useful guide to their edgy lifestyle. These segments show how the provocative SuicideGirls handle life's challenges such as performing a strip tease, faking an orgasm and skinny dipping. Also included is a never-before-seen sneak peek at the Girls' first theatrical release, Suicide Girls Must Die!
For more about SuicideGirls: Guide to Living and the SuicideGirls: Guide to Living Blu-ray release, see SuicideGirls: Guide to Living Blu-ray Review published by Dustin Somner on December 18, 2010 where this Blu-ray release scored 2.0 out of 5.
SuicideGirls: Guide to Living Blu-ray Review
Boring, pointless, and a waste of precious time...
As a word of warning, this Blu-ray release and the website described below contain extensive nudity geared toward adults. The screenshots provided throughout the review have been carefully selected to avoid inappropriate displays on this family friendly site, but a word of caution regarding the programming and subject matter of the review is warranted.
SuicideGirls.com emerged almost a decade ago as a community for the celebration of non-traditional beauty. Women chosen as SuicideGirls are often covered in tattoos and piercings, displaying an indie-punk look that runs contrary to societal norms. Prior to my review of Guide to Living I had zero knowledge of the site or the online community it attracts, so this Blu-ray release was essentially my primer on the phenomenon.
Surprise!!!
SuicideGirls: Guide to Living is one of the more pointless films to hit the Blu-ray market over the past year. Following a brief introduction to the website, we're taken to a kitchen setting where several "SuicideGirls" are found sitting around a table in loungewear. Each girl takes a turn introducing various "how-to" segments for the audience, which I've outlined below:
Create a Love Spell Do the Sun Salutation (yoga) Start a Fighting Club Cure a Hangover Prepare Absinthe Ditch My Wedding Fake an Orgasm Roll a Joint Kill a Vampire Tie a Tie Strip Tease Skinny Dipping
As I'm sure you can tell, these topics are about 5% educational and 95% risqué. Anyone with knowledge of the website probably assumed this would be the case, but I personally had no idea there would be such a tremendous focus on nudity. In fact, it quickly became apparent this is little more than an alternate media venue for the display of the website's top girls, masked by a lame attempt at something marketable to the masses. Each of the educational clips inevitably turns into a striptease of sorts, with text-based instructional cues flashed onscreen. As a result, we're left with something more akin to soft-core reality television, begging the question "what's the point?"
Considering most people will approach a purchase decision based solely on a promise of titillating displays of nudity, it's worth mentioning you'll likely come away disappointed. Most of the women are plenty attractive and have no problem playing the seductive card during their bits, but there are simply too many elements working against the film to offer a recommendation. As an example, there are lengthy periods spent with individual half naked models who describe their history with the site and why they chose various tattoos. This is clearly a stab at delivering value-added material for longtime fans of the website, but the conversations offer little insight worth listening to, and grow stale within a matter of seconds. Likewise, we're given the pointless introductions by kitchen dwelling girls in jumpsuits, who steal what little life is left from the film. The banter between models is anything but clever, and often makes them seem rather unintelligent.
Taken as a whole, this straight-to-video production is little more than a cheap marketing ploy for the SuicideGirls website. If you're already a member of the fan community, there's a chance you'll find at least minimal value in the interviews and interactions, but all others will soon grow bored with the juvenile portrayal of excessive nudity, hidden under the guise of informational entertainment. I'm all for celebrating the beauty of natural women that don't fall for the usual trappings of the modeling industry, but future film offerings should strive to escape the weak trappings of soft-core entertainment.
Presented in 1080p utilizing the AVC codec (at an average bitrate of 19Mbps), Suicide Girls: Guide to Living is relatively underwhelming by Blu-ray standards. The primary culprit appears to be the unfortunate incorporation of excessive digital noise reduction, which saps the finest details from the image, leaving the trademark waxy texturing on the surface of skin. Given the varying level of clarity from shot to shot, I'd suspect a portion of the problem is also related to the use of soft focus photography to lessen the appearance of any blemishes (though I find it odd that the worst offender is fully-clothed footage during the kitchen introductions). From a color standpoint, the film maintains a natural palette that rarely demonstrates a specific push in any single direction. There are several gothic themed sequences that appear slightly monochromatic, and the fight club segment looks intentionally dingy (yellow-green), but with the exception of these specific moments, color accuracy looks spot on (especially skin tones). Moving along to black levels and contrast differentiation, the film rarely skips a beat. Most of the model interviews occur with the girls set against an all-white backdrop, but there's never an ounce of brightness boosting, and the dark graphics carrying the individual bios show excellent depth. This impressive separation of contrast extremes adds to the success of the overall visual presentation, though we still have the pesky presence of DNR working against us.
The default audio track on the disc is a lossless English offering with 5.1 separation. Taking into account the nature of the program, I expected a front heavy experience with little to no immersion. What I found instead is a collection of excellent indie rock tracks played during each "how-to" segment, which exhibit excellent clarity, bass response, and surround incorporation. The volume balance between the dialogue-heavy moments that populate the rest of the track and the musical numbers is a little extreme for my taste (the music was louder than I expected at my normal listening volume), but it wasn't to the point where I found myself constantly reaching for the remote to make adjustments. All in all, this is a proficient audio experience that adds enough value to bump the technical elements of the disc into marginal territory.
The only extra included on the disc is a standard definition preview for Suicide Girls Must Die, which appears to be a lame stab at "Blair Witch" style filmmaking.
Though I can't say I despised the film, Suicide Girls: Guide to Living is a pointless production that fails to excite, educate, or even entertain. If you're someone who frequents the SuicideGirls website and you're desperate for additional naked footage of your favorite starlets, you might find enough value to make this budget release worthwhile. For all others, I'd recommend you steer clear and spend your hard-earned cash elsewhere.
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