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Category:    Home > Reviews > Compilation > Industrial Films > Concert > Steel > History > British > Music > Comedy > Musical > Fashion > Ph > The Big Melt (2013/BFI Region 2 PAL Import DVD)/Funny Face (1956/Paramount/Warner Blu-ray)/Little Feat: Live In Holland 1976 (Eagle DVD/CD Set)/Muscle Shoals (2013/Magnolia Blu-ray)

The Big Melt (2013/BFI Region 2 PAL Import DVD)/Funny Face (1956/Paramount/Warner Blu-ray)/Little Feat: Live In Holland 1976 (Eagle DVD/CD Set)/Muscle Shoals (2013/Magnolia Blu-ray)


Picture: C+/A-/C+/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/B Extras: B-/B/C-/B Main Programs: B-/A-/B-/B



PLEASE NOTE: The Big Melt Region 2 PAL Import DVD is now only available from our friends at BFI in the UK and can be ordered from the link below.


Here are some distinctive new music releases...



The Big Melt (2013) is a remarkable music film that compiles many often amazing industrial shorts dealing with the the rise and thriving of the steel industry in England haunted by it fall in the 1980s as Margaret Thatcher dismantled it permanently to kill jobs, unions, progress, liberalism and history as intended. The great Jarvis Cocker of the great band Pulp, whose success in the U.S. is not what it should have been with great songs like Disco 2000, Common People and This Is Hardcore (with great music videos to go with them) as well as a solo career.


He is joined by Martin Wallace, members of his band Pulp and many more to create a mostly instrumental tribute to this history (Cocker is from Sheffield, where so much great music and steel came from) in a work that runs 71 minutes, but leaves you with an impact you will not forget and the films are as well chosen as they are well edited. I liked it best when it did not have vocals, but they are not bad, yet the film and instruments worked so well on their own. Impressive, everyone should see this one just once because it goes beyond just tribute.


Extras include another illustrated booklet on the film including informative text BFI includes in all their releases, while the DVD adds the film shown in its entirety performed live with a live audience and a Making Of featurette.



Stanley Donen's Funny Face (1956) has been issued many times and continues to be popular, if not rediscovered on the level I would like, but we now finally get a Blu-ray edition and it is up there with the best classic musicals on DVD we have seen to date. You can read about the film at these links for our coverage of the recent DVD releases of the film:


50th Anniversary DVD

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5980/Funny+Face+%E2%80%93+50th+Anniversary+Editi


Centennial Collection DVD

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8019/Funny+Face+%E2%80%93+Centennial+Collection


Not only can you see the detail and amazing picture, from great studio set-ups to the great location work in France, but you can see the money on the screen in ways a DVD could never reveal. It is one of my favorite musicals, favorite large frame format films and this releases confirms to me now more than ever that this is the most underrated later Hollywood Musical ever made. Audrey Hepburn is in great form, the legendary Kay Thompson shines in one of her all-too-rare movie appearances and Fred Astaire is at the peak of his powers, an all time song, music and dance man far ahead of anyone else in extraordinary turn after extraordinary turn that never ceases to amaze. I like it more than On The Town and think it comes closer to Singin' In The Rain than you might think.


Extras repeat most off of the last two DVDs including stills, the original theatrical trailer, The Fashion Designer & His Muse about the Hepburn/Givenchy relationship, Parisian Dreams about the making of the film and an examination of it, Kay Thompson: Think Pink! covering one of the most underrated and valuable careers in Hollywood history, This Is VistaVision! about one of the greatest film formats of all time and the mixed Fashion Photographers Exposed showing the business today.



Little Feat: Live In Holland 1976 is another Eagle concert release from the well-liked and respected band in the earliest of the three performances they have issued from the band to date. This is here as a DVD/CD Set and the CD actually has a few more tracks. If you are not familiar with the band, try our links to the previous releases for more:


Skin It Back 1977 Live DVD

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9058/Little+Feat+%E2%80%93+Skin+It+Back+(1977/Ea


Highwire Live In St. Louis 2003 DVD

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1381/Little+Feat+-+Highwire+Live+2003


Hard to believe they never had a Top 40 Pop hit, but between their diehard fans, album sales and the FM album rock channels playing them, they survived and thrived. You'll find overlapping tracks between the three releases showing the fan favorites, but I give them credit for not letting themselves become a self-trivializing legacy band. This is as good a performance as we have seen of them to date.


A paper booklet on the concert inside the CD case is the only extra.



Greg Freddie Camalier's Muscle Shoals (2013) talks about the great music that came out of an unlikely place in Alabama, suddenly creating some of the most important American music, influential music and hit music of the 1960s and beyond. Besides the musicians, producers and engineers who made up the scene, we get great interviews with Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, Bono, Keith Richards, Jimmy Cliff, Clarence Carter, Alicia Keys, Steve Winwood, Percy Sledge and Candi Stanton among the many who get to finally tell the story of this legendary music locale.


This is a pretty strong, rich, detailed work more than worth your time and I felt 111 minutes was just not enough. Of course, if you like the music or not will also effect your opinion, but the Fame Studios created a sound never heard before or again and with classics from Aretha, The Rolling Stones, Percy Sledge, Dusty Springfield and Etta James for starters, its legacy is inarguable. All serious music fans need to see this one.


Extras include Addition Scenes & Interviews, two feature length audio commentary tracks (one by the director, the other by Rick Hall, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood & Spooner Oldham) and an Original Theatrical Trailer.



Both DVDs happen to offer 1.33 X 1 presentations, with Melt made up of over two dozen classic industrial films and Holland an NTSC analog videotape shoot from its time, both with their softness and flaws, tying for last place, but looking as good as they possibly could on DVD. Melt is from an HD master and deserves a Blu-ray at some point. The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Muscle is a recent HD shoot with some vintage film and video materials (some film sources are down a few generations as DVNR (Digital Video Noise Reduction) causes unnecessary flaws and blur issues) used, but it is well edited throughout, though some of the HD shoot is a bit color drained too often for its own good.


The visual champ with total ease is from the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Funny Face, which very rarely show the age of the materials used (color might not match in a few sequences), but this is far superior a transfer to the previous DVDs covered and not only shows off the color you would also enjoy in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor versions of the film in now-very valuable film prints of it, but the detail and depth is nothing short of stunning in most scenes. Originally shot in the large frame VistaVision process (horizontally exposed 35mm film by Directors of Photography Ray June with John P. Fulton), this has a ton of demo shots, is one of the strongest back catalog Blu-rays of the last few years and only the definition of the Blu-ray holds it back slightly. This is the best I have seen it since a brand new 35mm print I screened eons ago. A real fiesta for any serious home theater system, HDTV or Ultra HDTV, anyone who loves film needs to own this disc.



In the sound department, both Blu-rays have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes, but the one on Muscle has an edge despite being interview based, the music featured comes from first-rate copies and shows how well recorded that music was from the start. Funny Face is using a 5.1 master from the later DVDs and that means despite being lossless, the sound is limited and a generation down, so music can be limited in range and the mix is also front-heavy. For Ultra HD, they need to go back and do a 7.1 lossless mix, but this is fine for now. If they do that though, we could get a nice isolated music track out of it.


Holland has a DTS 5.1 lossless that is a little better than the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and PCM 2.0 Stereo mixes also included on the DVD, but the recording shows its age, extending to the PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo CD also included, putting it on par with the 1977 live DVD. That leaves Melt with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that puts it in last place on the list, but it is fine for the format.



You can order The Big Melt Region 2 PAL Import DVD exclusively from BFI at:


http://shop.bfi.org.uk/the-big-melt-dvd-bluray.html#.U02brRyKzmY



- Nicholas Sheffo


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