AC/DC – No Bull: Directors Cut (Sony Music Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B+     Sound: B+     Extras: B-     Film: B

 

 

Having already covered the bands first entry into Blu-ray with Live at Donington, we were highly excited to get more material from this band; we already covered the previous Blu-ray here:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6172/AC/DC:+Live+in+Donington+(Blu-ray)

 

 

This time around we get the band’s Super 16mm film shot in 1996 called “No Bull”, which is released here in the directors cut format.  The concert was filmed in the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, which is in Madrid and runs a whopping 150 minutes of in your face hard rock from one of the more enduring bands of it’s kind.  There is no doubt that AC/DC still knows how to put on a concert, this time around they went for a slightly more flashy and almost overly produced show, which has mixed results.  As compared with Live at Donington, we were able to just capture the band raw and full of emotion and fans know that this is one of the special ingredients that makes this band still popular.

 

The tracks here include:

 

1 - Back In Black

2 - Shot Down In Flames

3 - Thunderstruck

4 - Girl's Got Rhythm

5 - Hard As A Rock

6 - Shoot To Thrill

7 - Boogie Man

8 - Hail Caesar

9 - Hells Bells

10 - Dog Eat Dog

11 - The Jack

12 - Ballbreaker

13 - Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

14 - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

15 - You Shook Me All Night Long

16 - Whole Lotta Rosie

17 - T-N-T

18 - Let There Be Rock

19 - Highway To Hell

20 - For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) 

 

 

It’s fair to say that this is just about every one of AC/DC’s hits and popular songs and just the material that fans love, but again a more theatrical performance here just doesn’t always feel right and the overall program suffers a bit from it. 

 

For this Blu-ray release we get the program in a 1080p transfer, which is taken directly from the 16mm film and put into a 1.78 X 1 widescreen presentation, which looks great and shows just how good 16mm can still be when used correctly.  Live at Donington was in 35mm and is still one of the best examples of true film being used for a concert and that particular Blu-ray is a must.  Here we see some of the limitations and when you do a direct comparison you can really see some of those more clearly.  That being said, the 16mm still looks good and even better than most of the poor digitally shot concerts that are over popular now.  Here we get loads of color, depth, and detail that digital sometimes just can’t handle correctly, especially darker scenes and in particular video red.  This makes it the only other 16mm feature of any kind besides the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (though in regular 16mm, reviewed elsewhere on this site) to make it to Blu-ray so far.

 

Since audio is so important in a concert release its great seeing wise choices being made and AC/DC gives us ‘no bull’ here as well, we get two options and both are equally good.  The first is a uncompressed 2.0 PCM mix, which I think sounds a bit more accurate in terms of positioning and a live-like feel, while the other track is a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix that is equally engaging and ‘bigger’, but seems to spread things out almost too much, which is a constant battle when it comes to doing 5.1 mixes from 2.0 sources.

 

The real extras here are some extra tracks from the North American tour, plus you can also access the ‘Angus cam’ which he wore on his head during the concert and is a fun little extra, but for the hardcore fans, just the concert in High Definition, plus lossless audio is the best treat of them all and serves as a must along with Donington for the AC/DC fan hidden in each of us.

 

 

-   Nate Goss