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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > Concert > Folk > Pop > Counterculture > Progressive Rock > Musical > Judy Collins Jonas Field: Winter Stories: Live From The Oslo Opera House (2020/MVD/Cleopatra DVD w/CD)/Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets: Live At The Roundhouse (2020/Sony Blu-ray)/Valley Girl (2020 M

Judy Collins Jonas Field: Winter Stories: Live From The Oslo Opera House (2020/MVD/Cleopatra DVD w/CD)/Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets: Live At The Roundhouse (2020/Sony Blu-ray)/Valley Girl (2020 Musical Remake/Orion/UA/Warner Blu-ray)



Picture: C+/B/B- Sound: C+ (CD: B)/B/B Extras: D/C+/D Main Programs: C+/B-/C-



Here are some more music titles, all with video and a mixed bag....



In the late 1960s, Judy Collins became a leading voice in Folk music and had several hits that were also part of the counterculture wave, albeit the peace and love section, including Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, Amazing Grace and a version of Send In The Clowns so good, it charted twice. A non-stop presence in music since, still touring and making records, it is a pleasant surprise indeed to see her still in action live and now on DVD. Judy Collins w/Jonas Field: Winter Stories: Live From The Oslo Opera House (2020) shows the icon still able to sing and play as well as ever, even if it is now with some 'I told you so' without saying or trying irony.


Songs include Mountain Girl, City Of New Orleans, Winter Stories, Sweet Refrain, Northwest Passage, Wildwood, When Morning Comes To America, Hum Kom Som En Engel, River, Angels In The Snow, Highwayman, Frozen North, Bury Me With My Guitar On, Both Sides Now and Amazing Grace. This runs about 75 minutes and that's fine, but it would have been nice if it ran longer.


The Chatham County Line also joins the duo for what is a solid eventing of her kind of music and the kind of civil discourse (in and out of music) we do not see as much as we would like. The songs are good and Collins finishes on two of her best-known hits. It is a nice record of her later abilities and work, she was always about the music and it is nice to see her again. As we keep losing singers of her era (Helen Reddy and Mac Davis passed away the same day as we posted this) and the most prolific era of music ever, we cannot have enough vital materials on these artists.


There are no extras, though anything would have been nice.



With a length that is more like it, Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets: Live At The Roundhouse (2020) has the Pink Floyd drummer in a fine solo show with energy, some good music, a good audience and people who actually have music talent. Doing just fine without Roger Waters, the band's one-time drummer and his band deliver these songs:


  • Beginnings

  • Interstellar Overdrive

  • Astronomy Domine

  • Lucifer Sam

  • Fearless

  • Obscured by Clouds

  • When You're In

  • Remember a Day

  • Arnold Layne

  • Vegetable Man

  • If

  • Atom Heart Mother

  • The Nile Song

  • Green is the Colour

  • Let There Be More Light

  • Childhood's End

  • Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

  • See Emily Play

  • Bike

  • One of These Days

  • A Saucerful of Secrets

  • Point Me at the Sky


Some people try to say Rock Music is dead, but this is yet more solid work to disprove that with ease, a consistent show with the energy and tone you would expect from a veteran with superior talent and more than holding his own against some younger newcomers in the genre who are not as good as they think they are. Of course, Floyd fans will want to get this one immediately, but anyone else interested will be pleasantly surprised. Not bad at all.


A colorfully illustrated book with text is the only extra.



Finally, there have been several attempts at 1980s nostalgia, especially with music, but they always miss the point with phony, feel-good, fantasy versions (often whitewashed) of the era instead of dealing honestly with the decade. Rock Of Ages was a bad attempt with some commercial success, but it just was not that good. However, MGM thought it was time to try again (as if their Fame remake worked, it did not) and they decided to try to make a 1983 Nicolas Cage curio into a musical.


Rachel Lee Goldenberg's Valley Girl (2020) is that catastrophe and it features a bunch of young non-name singers (if that is not some of them being sung over by anyone else) and dancers in a horrid 102 minutes of taking a few dozen 1980s pop hits (as if someone just punched up a list of popular songs on a computer, picked ones they could wedge into a would-be storyline and come up with this) and every remake being as awful as you could imagine.


Judy Greer shows up, but she cannot save this mess and whether we see leads Jessica Rothe and Josh Whitehouse remain to be seen, but they can only go up from here. This thing has mostly valleys and no peaks, so skip this one and take a peak at something else. No, they do NOT have the beat!


Digital Copy is here, but there are really no extras. No sleep lost on that one.



Now for playback performance. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Collins looks good for this older format, but is a little soft as expected, though this is shot well enough and the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (why no 5.1 mix?) is passable, but only so good. Fortunately, the PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo CD that is included sounds really good.


The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Mason looks the best of the three releases with a more colorful and more stable presentation than most of the HD-shot concerts we have covered (classical releases included) and the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is warm, has a fine soundfield and is very enjoyably mixed and presented.


Finally, the HD-shot 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Valley is a little softer than it should be and though you can see good color, some of this is a little underwhelming and we get motion blur. A few patches are sloppy. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is professional at best allowing you to hear very clearly how badly all these remakes of 1980s pop music classics are.



- Nicholas Sheffo


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