| This Week's Highlights |
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analysis w/e 14.5.11 |
DVDs out 9.5.11 |
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@ DVDfever Youtube |
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May 11 2011 
DVDfever co uk
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Director :
Producers :
Imagine
Sheryl Crow,
but without the annoying inclusion of All I Wanna Do, since there's not
a duff track ever written/performed by Ms Colvin. Sadly, though, this is not
a DVD that does her justice and will not bring her any new fans, for a great
number of reasons.
Firstly, your twenty quid gets you a mere 52 minutes of music and chat in what
amounts to no more than a VH1-style "Behind the Music" programme as Shawn
gets back to nature in the back of beyond. A full concert would've been much
more appropriate, comprising of her many great classics such as Steady On,
Get Out Of This House, One Cool Remove, her excellent slightly-adapted
cover of the Police song, Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic, plus the
timeless, laidback melody, Sunny Came Home, the only one of these
tracks to feature here.
The other musical highlight is a cover of Crowded House's easy-going, but
little-known, Private Universe. However, you rarely get FULL songs
because they're interrupted with Colvin waffling on about the place she's
gone to for a free holiday.
Secondly, what exactly is she doing in Bora Bora? The billing states that she
wants to discover the culture, history and spirituality of both Bora Bora and
Tahiti. Fine, save that for a regular TV documentary, but here it just gets in
the way of the music.
The full list of tracks included are :
Third problem. While it's been filmed in 16:9 widescreen, it's not anamorphic. Non-anamorphic widescreen went out with the ark when it came to DVD - it's just not done anymore. It happened a number of times in the early days of DVD back in 1998/99, but now we've embraced a new century it's time to get with the times. It's also a bit on the blurry side at times because of a mediocre NTSC-to-PAL conversion. That probably explains why it's non-anamorphic because widescreen TVs are not prevalent in the US. The sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, but for the soft, undemanding music Shawn Colvin is playing, it's not one that demands all six speakers and so wouldn't sound any different in stereo. For a fourth problem, you know there won't be much to the extras when the first one, Behind the Scenes is a little over five minutes long. It doesn't really tell you anything that they couldn't have mentioned during the programme itself. Promo Spots is less than a minute of Shawn recording announcements for the programme's premiere on DirecTV in the US. Location Footage (9½ mins) goes into more detail about the place, whereas Just the Music takes you direct to those tracks in the film. Finally, the Biography is just a few pages of text about her. All of these extras are things you'll look at once and that's it. The menus are all static and silent and none of the subtitled languages are in English, which kind of misses the point there. All in all, a DVD I was looking forward to, becomes one to avoid.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B 37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier. PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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