Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus – Best Of Both
Worlds Concert
(Blu-ray/3-D/Disney)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C- Film: C-
Revenge
and the return of the repressed take many forms, but did Miley Cyrus have to be
one of them? Hijacking the audience
Britney Spears gave up in her self-destruction, Miss Cyrus and her Hannah
Montana persona are inexplicably a hot moneymaking machine that can only
reflect how banal things have become in the music business since the major
labels went spiraling out of control.
With hit records (you can still call them that) and TV show that is one
of the worst sitcoms of all time, we now get a bizarre concert feature called
the Best Of Both Worlds Concert.
In the
most unintentionally bizarre, schizophrenic entertainment moment since The Patti Duke Show had the actress
(she could act) playing dual roles,
the Montana/Cyrus thing is not exactly Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde, but is enough
to drive many viewers to Manic Depressive illness or something too similar to
think of. Director Bruce Hendricks is
responsible for this mess and it is now one of the worst theatrical concert
releases in cinema history. If it was
not for the attempt at 3-D and just how hilariously bad this gets, it would be
a total nightmare.
Cyrus (or
is that Montana, or is that Cyrus) gets ready for her concert as they slap
make-up on her and then she appears like a cut-rate Madonna and starts to…
dance (?) following some stage dancers whose idea of motion would only place
them above the weekly cast of The Lawrence
Welk Show (bubble machines are more entertaining than this, too) and the
show kicks in… all while you feel as if you are being kicked in the head… by a
rabid horse!
Besides
her fans who she is a role model for and has not let them down (yet anyways)
there is her father Billy Ray, whose one-hit wonder Achy Breaky Heart killed line dancing and was the final nail in the
coffin of real Country Music until The Dixie Chicks took on the second Bush
Administration, was nice about not having another hit record, but always
visibly unhappy his career did not continue.
Maybe if he continued to have hits, this ‘Montana Mania’ would not be
upon us. I bet more than a few DJs are
now sorry they never played another Billy Ray song. You will be too if you suffer though this
horrid act of music many real singer sand musicians just may dub musical
torture porn!
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is available in a weak 2-D presentation
that is too soft for its own good, so we expected that it would be the junk
version and the 3-D would be superior.
It did some business at the box office and likely the 3-D was the
reason. Well, if this is any indication
of what was being projected, we can say with no doubt that this is a big
disappointment and some of the poorest 3-D we have seen anywhere.
The
effects are very limited, it always looks phony and the 3-D looks like it was
reproduced at the last minute as an afterthought like the sillier old GAF
View-Master reels we have seen over the years (they were introduced in 1939!)
and stays phony throughout, with additional problems like not being able to
hold the 3-D and even having issues with color like color shifting or even loss
of color. This new technology can’t hold
the color?
Then
comes the choices of sound codecs. You
get a PCM 16/48 2.0 Stereo mix that is flat and adequate at best, then there is
a DTS-HD 7.1 Master Audio (MA) uncompressed signal that tries to be more
dynamic, but this poor excuse for multi-channel sound is like a boring lesson
in ambiance with boring music to match.
Even if the music was actually good, the mix could not cut in the
monophonic era. Combined, picture and
sound in any combination is a dud.
Extras
include four pairs of cardboard 3-D glasses, additional songs (noooooooooo!), a
sing-along feature (if you can understand the lyrics) and personal tour
featurette with The Jonas Brothers trying to get as much additional exposure as
possible. Now, I need to listen to
Little Eva and The Murmaids as an antidote to this mess!
- Nicholas Sheffo
