Battle
Of The Year (2013/Sony
Blu-ray)/Black Lips: Kids
Like You & Me
(2013/MVD Visual DVD)/'83
US Festival: Days 1 - 3
(MVD Visual DVD)/Roman
Zaslavsky: Ingenious Opposites, Volume Two
(2013/EuroArts/Naxos Blu-ray)/The
Rutles Anthology (1978 -
2013/VSC Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
B-/C/C-/X/B- & C+ Sound: B-/C+/C+/B-/B- & C+ Extras:
C-/C/D/C+/C+ Main Programs: D/C+/B-/B-/C+
Now
for a very diverse new set of music releases...
Benson
Lee's Battle Of The Year
(2013) will be in a battle for worst musical of the year, worst 3D
movie of the year, worst dance movie of the year, worst Hip Hop/B Boy
movie of the year and worst melodrama of any year in this horrid,
useless and long
110 minutes wasting a bunch of dancers, failing to rehabilitate the
ever-troubled (and boring and abusive, et al) Chris Brown turing in
another Razzie-worthy would be acting performance and a script that
has obnoxious Jewish jokes, dancing jokes, battles between countries
dancing, an alcoholic coach and every cliché you can squeeze into a
mess like this.
The
opening scene tells it all, setting the tone for the disaster that
follows as a business meeting talks about Hip Hop dancing as tired
and something new youths might think of as something their parents
did, then suggests they find a fresh (that word is so abused in that
community) way to make this interesting. To say the makers of this
dud fail is a huge understatement, as they lose the battle and the
war. Why, it is almost like being a passenger trapped in a speeding
car where a sick, crazy, stupid, ignorant psycho start to kick you,
bite you, punch you and try to throw you out to your death, but you
somehow survive the ordeal. Don't let this happen to you! You won't
be a hater if you pass on this one.
Three
behind the scenes featurettes (one a Blu-ray exclusive) and Extended
Dance Sequences are the only extras.
Bill
Cody's Black Lips: Kids
Like You & Me (2013)
has the band touring with Lebanese opening act Lazzy Lung as the Arab
Spring in the Middle East where they happen to be touring and other
socio-political upheavals happen to occur as the tour unwinds, but
the editing unintentionally suggests their music is causing the
changes! Outside of that, this is a short 74 minutes and can show
the band at their best, but being sloppy and short hold back what
could have been a better showcase for the band, the music and our
times. Too bad. It at times plays like The
Rutles (see below) even
down to unintended manias.
Bonus
tour and backstage clips, an overseas MTV appearance and trailer are
the only extras.
Better
and often more forgotten than many might have through 30 years ago
when it happened, the '83
US Festival: Days 1 - 3
features some of the best-known music acts of the time in prime, even
rare form including bands with members we lost too soon (DiVinyls,
INXS, Quarterflash) reminding us how great and vital the music
industry used to be. Now, the Festival is a portrait of what sadly
turned out to be the beginning of the end of the fun and how great
the labels and indie companies used to be.
We
get Day 1 performances by DiVinyls (The
Boy In Town), INXS (The
One Thing), The English
Beat (Jeanette),
The Stray Cats (doing 2 songs; sad to see them getting along here
before their ugly, permanent break up), Men At Work (better than you
remembered doing Who Can
It Be Now? and It's
A Mistake from their huge
selling back to back albums) an d most remarkably, The Clash singing
Should I Stay Or Should I
Go? Yup, it was one of
those days. Day 2 has Judas Priest, Triumph and The Scorpions and
Day 2 has Berlin (singing their somewhat banned Sex
(I'm A...), Quarterflash
(Find Another Fool),
a very young U2 (Sunday
Bloody Sunday, Electric
Co.), the underrated
Missing Persons (Words),
Triumph (Magic Power)
and an unstoppably solo Stevie Nicks introduced by her dad (Stand
Back, Outside
The Rain). This program
was compiled in 2009 and features original MTV VJ Mark Goodman
commenting on the various acts throughout doing his usually good job
and he should have been allowed to say more.
There
are no extras.
Roman
Zaslavsky: Ingenious Opposites, Volume Two
(2013) is the audio-only release by the ace pianist running 63
minutes as he performs key works by Sergei Rachmaninov and Sergei
Prokofiev in pretty good style, with consistent energy and you don't
have to have experienced the first volume (we didn't) to appreciate
it. The recoding is not as spectacular as an audio-only offering
should be, but it is at least professional. I look forward to
comparing it to other Zaslavsky releases in the future.
Extras
include on camera performances of some of the material with decent if
not great visual quality and a nicely illustrated booklet on the
music including informative text.
The
Rutles Anthology
(1978 - 2013)
is the latest updated issue of the now cult classic spoof of The
Beatles created by Eric Idle with some of his Monty Python friends,
plus Lorne Michaels and his original Saturday
Night Live
cast. The telefilm spoof was entitled All
You Need Is Cash
(1978) and we reviewed it a few years ago in an import DVD box set.
Here is what I said at the time:
...a
TV movie that was as much a U.S. as U.K. production with the original
producer (Lorne Michaels) and the original Saturday Night Live
cast. Everyone is good here in this spoof of The Beatles written,
co-directed and starring Eric Idle in more than one role. The idea
is to imitate as a joke the entire history of the rise and fall of
the actual Beatles with their Pre Fab Four imitators (Idle is the
reporter doing the fake documentary as well as the clone of Paul
McCartney) that is more hit than miss. The more you know about
actual Beatles history, the funnier it is, but the illusion it is a
parallel version is thrown off every time SNL actors (as good as Bill
Murray, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, et al are) show up. There are
also missed opportunities for more jokes and this does not go all the
way. The belated sequels did not make up for this either.
Co-Director Gary Weis also worked as a producer, did the
cinematography (which is sometimes amazing in reproducing the look of
classic Beatles footage long before the digital era) and George
Harrison makes a great cameo. Michael Palin and Al Franken also show
up.
Extras
this time include a brand new feature length audio commentary track
not noted on the back of the package (?), new Eric Idle interview,
Original Saturday Night
Live clip promoting the
telefilm and the weak 2004 follow-up sequel Can't
Buy Me Lunch, which is
under an hour, recycles too much of the footage of the first film and
is not even shot on film but analog tape. However, there are extras
from the import DVD missing here including a songs-only option
and outtake interview footage with Mick Jagger and Paul Simon (who
appear as themselves in the film) that should not be missing.
Of
the three Blu-rays, Roman
is audio-only and has no image save its menu, so that brings it down
to the 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Battle
(originally shot in 3D on Sony HD cameras) and he
1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Rutles
(originally shot for TV on 16mm film in the 1.33 X 1 frame) evenly
matched as the best performers on the list. Battle
(also on Blu-ray 3D, which we did not get) has what seems a
restriction issue in that the dancers had to do their moves to get
them to look as 3D as possible, but it flattens out the look
throughout in other ways and the Sony cameras have too cold a look
despite the color range we get at times.
Rutles
might show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a
transfer to all previous releases of the film, is a long-overdue
upgrade and some of the aged aspects are on purpose, of course to
imitate various eras of Beatles footage. The telefilm also joins
Night
Of The Scarecrow,
Regan
(the pilot to the original Sweeney
series in the UK, both TV movies reviewed elsewhere on this site) and
The
Gambler
as the few classic filmed telefilms to make it to Blu-ray so far.
The transfer is cropped a bit with some footage bookended cleverly
with the sides of the square frame reproduced in a few cases. I
liked it just a little more than Battle,
which does not translate as well to 2D, offering more than a few
flaws throughout.
The
anamorphically enhanced Rutles
DVD has the same aspect ratio and is the best-looking of the three
DVDs. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Kids
has some rough news footage and alias error-ridden newer footage
mixed throughout, plus fake black and white video (turning off the
color does not make it black and white) making for a very average
presentation, but the otherwise colorful 1.33 X 1 image on US
has severe motion blur and other major encoding errors that render it
often unwatchable. Needless to say this footage deserves better.
As
for sound, the three Blu-rays all have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
lossless mixes, but all with their own issues. The 5.1 on Battle
has its location audio issues and inconsistent soundfield, the 5.1 on
Rutles
is an upgrade from its original monophonic sound and some sound has
to remain as such to be a faux documentary so that limits its
soundfield and the 4.0 96/24 mix on Roman can be more restrictive
than I would have liked despite being a good recording.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on The
Rutles
DVD has the same issues with less warmth and fullness than its
lossless Blu-ray counterpart, so the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
on Kids
(with
mixed simple stereo with location audio that can be like monophonic
sound and rough audio from the rough video) and US
(with mixed simple stereo with location audio that can be like
monophonic sound) ironically have some of the same issues but waste
less tracks suffering them.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
