Dio: Finding The Sacred Heart: Live In Philly 1986 (Eagle Blu-ray)/Pat Metheny Group: We Live Here – Live In Japan 1995 (Eagle DVD)
Picture: B-/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+/D Concerts: C+/B-
Now for
some new concert releases that both have their moments…
Dio: Finding The Sacred Heart:
Live In Philly 1986
is a very well shot concert with Ronnie James Dio and his band from his prime
era, filmed in 16mm that is one of the latter such productions I can think of
and includes some nice shots throughout.
Playing 16 of his most popular songs to that time, it is a remarkable
time capsule of his kind of Rock Music hitting its peak before hair bands
ruined everything.
The band
is in great form, Dio can sing as well here as I have ever heard him and even if
you are not a fan, it is worth seeing just as a historical document. Because they used film, they look better than
most of their contemporaries who settled for (or could only afford) old analog
videotape.
Extras
have more time capsule material, the Blu-ray case comes with a well illustrated
booklet on the concert film including informative text, while the Blu-ray adds
a Behind The Scenes featurette, more recent interview with Dio & Craig
Goldy, vintage featurette on the making of the concert film, vintage Music
Video for Rock ‘N’ Roll Children and
vintage 1986 interview piece.
Pat Metheny Group: We Live Here –
Live In Japan
1995 is the
latest of the ongoing Metheny video releases by Eagle that shows the band in
action and yet, no two are ever quite the same.
This program is 110 minutes with 13 tracks, but with interview pieces
sandwiched in between them, something you would never know by reading the back
of the DVD case. They can play very well
as usual, so no surprise there, but this taping had some good energy going for
it different from the other releases and though some of the vocal moments did
not work as well as others, it is a show that deserved this DVD release.
There are
no extras.
The 1080i
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Dio
comes from the original 16mm film materials.
We could not confirm if that was a 1.33 X 1 shoot of Super 16mm 1.85 X 1
shoot, but the image quality is usually really good, though some shots look
dated and some dark shots have a crushed look.
Otherwise, the footage usually looks great, proves yet again how fine
16mm film can look in HD and many shots look like they were just shot
yesterday. That means special kinds of
demo shots. I just don’t get why this
was not 1080p. The 1.33 X 1 image on Metheny is a color analog videotaping
that is just fine for its age, but
The DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Dio
tries to sound good, but somehow sounds too compressed, so the PCM 2.0 Stereo
option is the one I would recommend because it is less compressed and sounds
fresher. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo on Metheny is good for its
age, but still shows its age despite being well recorded.
- Nicholas Sheffo
