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Category:    Home > Reviews > Dance > Drama > Hip Hop > 3D > Musical > Documentary > Concert > Politics > Middle East > Rock > Pop > Hard Rock > 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

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


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