Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow: Black Masquerade (1995/Rockpalast/Eagle DVD)/Simon Rumley Trilogy: Strong Language (2000)/The Truth Game (2001) and Club
Le Monde (2002/MVD/Jinga DVDs)
Picture:
C+/C-/C/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C/C/C+/C+ Main Programs: B-/B-/C+/C+
Now for
some new Rock and Pop Music oriented releases that have their moments…
Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow: Black
Masquerade is
simply a solid 1995 appearance on the great German music TV series Rockpalast and this 17-song,
103-minutes-long set of songs is here on DVD from Eagle in as good a DVD as we
are likely to see of the show. With
Blackmore more than able on guitar and Doogie White the lead singer, the band
does a great job on songs like Too Late
For Tears, Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll,
Man On The Silver Mountain, Ariel, Since You’ve Been Gone, Burn
and Smoke On The Water. Though the show is a more recent taping
relatively, it has the energy, feel and richness of the 1970s and is another
welcome Rockpalast DVD release.
The
actual taping is not bad, more kinetic than many HD concerts we have seen of
late and is a pleasant surprise. Even
non-fans of the act or the music will be impressed.
An
illustrated booklet with text in the DVD case it the only extra, but you can
see more on Blackmore by looking up our many Deep Purple reviews or seeing a
great concert they performed Live In
Munich 1977 on DVD at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4283/Rainbow+%E2%80%93+Live+in+Muni
Next we
have three independent feature films on the 1990s clubbing, dating and wild
behavior day in Britain
on three separate DVDs that make up the Simon
Rumley Trilogy. Each are worth a
look and include Strong Language
(2000), which is 80 minutes of nearly a dozen 20-ish people talking about life,
love, insanity, annoyance and hilarity on the fast-paced scene that also marked
the last big Brit Pop music cycle (Blur and Pulp are rightly celebrated, while
Oasis is rightly mocked often) and other subject covered include favorite
albums, favorite movies, sex, AIDS, politics, sex and the lack of opportunity
for their generation in the UK. It is
the best of the three entries and the most purely British of the trilogy. A shame this took so long to get to the U.S. market.
The Truth Game (2001) is more of a narrative
film as several couples get together for dinner and all have suppressed
feelings, secrets, activities and even desires that will all happen to come to
the fore as they get together for a meal that none of them will ever
forget. Rumley says he was inspired by
Richard Linklater to become a director and that is apparent here and in the
next film, in part because of the laid back feel of the two films and worse,
the Britishness prevalent in Strong
starts to dissipate and wear away here, though this never becomes a formulaic
mumblecore film. The racing cars in
between some of the scenes look like a knock-off of a good Blur Music Video and
is overdone.
Club Le Monde (2002) is wilder taking place at
the title club complete with stupid behavior, goofy drug use, high risk
behavior, betrayals, drag queens, wacky comment (and commentary) and a host who
speaks to the audience in the opening and closing of the film that backfires in
some ways. In all three cases, the
mostly unknown actors do a great job playing their parts, though this hardly is
trying to be Italian Neo-Realism, yet they are key works of a time and place
ignored by stuffy British TV and too few great independent films coming out of
that great country and its often great cinema.
Be sure to catch them all.
Extras on
all three Rumley DVDs include
Premiere Featurettes, while Strong
and Club add Original Theatrical
Trailers, Truth and Club add feature length audio commentary
tracks and Club also has Deleted Scenes aka Out
Takes and an unlisted Stills Gallery.
The 1.33
X 1 on Rainbow may be slightly soft
and color might bleed at times from its original PAL analog taping, but it
looks pretty good for its age and being taped when it was likely helped. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
Strong was shot on digital video and
this looks like a rough second generation copy with its share of aliasing
errors and staircasing, which disappoints.
That leaves the letterboxed 1.85 X 1 on Truth and letterboxed 1.66 X 1 image Club better, both originating on Fuji 35mm color film stocks, but
not going anamorphic leaves Truth
softer than it should be too and Club
at almost as much of a disadvantage while both print show some dirty.
The DTS
5.1 mix on Rainbow should be the
best sonic presentation here, but it is a rough one since the original source
is simple stereo at best and a little compressed, which can be heard on the lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and lossy Dolby 5.1 mixes. All three Rumley DVDs have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mixes that have
their own audio limits (partly due to budget and recording circumstances) and
are the equal of the older concert DVD, so all audio is equal in these
releases.
- Nicholas Sheffo
