#Sleepless in seattle dvds upgrade
#Sleepless in seattle dvds windows

#Sleepless in seattle dvds windows

This is more apparent in shots with darker landscapes, such as the office windows of Sam’s architecture firm in the opening scene.

#Sleepless in seattle dvds upgrade

The transfer to Blu-ray, while a noticeable upgrade from the DVD package released a decade ago, contains a slight degree of strobing. This limited-edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time has a 3,000-unit batch, a bafflingly small number for one of the most memorable romantic comedies of the ‘90s.

Ephron’s film may end up reifying the same romanticizing it tries to question, but why deny us a guilty pleasure? Image/Sound In the Blu-ray edition’s special feature “Love in the Movies,” a historian for the Empire State Building explains how popular the destination became for dates and marriage proposals after the success of Sleepless in Seattle. On the Empire State Building’s observation deck, anything is possible, including love at first (or second, or third) sight. The film ends in a romantic setting that once was a technological marvel, a monument and symbol of the immense power of American modernism. Annie and Sam may live on opposite ends of the country, but everything from the Internet to fax machines to airplanes to old-fashioned postal mail are vital in getting the two to finally meet. Annie first hears a reluctant Sam on the radio, after Jonah calls a psychologist’s radio show to get help for his grief-stricken father. Technology helps us become attracted to strangers (the central thesis in The Social Network), it gives us unprecedented access into their mysterious lives, it heightens our desire for those people. Like Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle acknowledges the ineluctable influence of technology in the idealization of love, which can be both positive and negative. When a co-worker asks, “What’s that thing, where everything intersects?,” his response is “the Bermuda triangle.” Annie believes in, but then is quick to dismiss such signs, though she still ends up taking dramatic steps in order to meet a total stranger she thinks she’s fallen in love with. Annie isn’t so much looking for signs as she is in denial about wanting to leave her goofy, oblivious boyfriend, Walter (Bill Pullman), which is why she falls victim to the game of kismet. For someone as impressionable as Sam’s eight-year-old son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), finding a new mom worthy of his father’s love isn’t dependent on her mutual appreciation for baseball player Brooks Robinson, but the fact that Annie mentions it in her first letter to Sam is symbolic, a sign of good taste in addition to being an omen. No matter how old, disillusioned, or unhappy these women are in their relationships, they recognize the potential of true love in An Affair to Remember, and want to believe the same fate awaits Annie. Children and women in Sleepless in Seattle are wont to believe in the magic of love, and every female character fawns over An Affair to Remember, the 1957 classic that Sleepless in Seattle is modeled after. Despite the characters’ attempts to be rational, there’s an irresistible urge to give into confirmation bias everything that brings Annie and Sam closer together is deemed either a sign or mere coincidence. The film is concerned with the internalization of social constructs about love, from a lifetime of witnessing portrayals of romance in popular culture, and seeing how those ideas manifest in one’s own real love life.

So, too, is the idea that couples are brought together cosmically instead of by random chance.Īre Annie and Sam meant to be together forever? Sleepless in Seattle is uninterested in that question, though on the surface it certainly appears to be affirming it. Love at first sight (or first listen, or first letter) is a myth. Indeed, the film ends before they can speak more than a handful of lines to one another. Yet Sleepless in Seattle never tries to hide the fact that the love between Annie and Hanks’s Sam-no matter how destined it appears to be-is imaginary and idealized. “You want to be in love in a movie.” Director Nora Ephron speaks indirectly to her audience in that single line the film, after all, is a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle that hews to rom-com tradition. “You don’t want to be in love,” Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) tells an infatuated, conflicted Annie (Meg Ryan) in Sleepless in Seattle.