(State of Grace, Three O'Clock High, Heaven's Prisoners)
Producer:
Michael Hamlyn
Featuring:
Bono (Lead Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica)
The Edge (Lead Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals)
Larry Mullen, Jr. (Drums)
Adam Clayton (Bass Guitar)
U2: Rattle And Hum
is the reknowned concert movie filmed on their Joshua Tree tour back in 1988.
U2 are one of, if not the, premier Irish rock band. They've recorded several
albums over the past 20 years including Boy, War, which gave them more
of their rock-based hits such as New Year's Day, Pride (In The Name of Love)
, and The Unforgettable Fire.
In the case of The Joshua Tree, it spawned three hit singles: With Or
Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Where The Streets
Have No Name, and one imported single which only made No.48, In God's
Country, all of which are included here.
The album of this film gave the band four hits, Angel of Harlem, When Love
Comes To Town (that track featuring B.B. King who joins them here too), the
six-and-a-half-minute epic, All I Want Is You, and their first Number One
single, Desire.
1991 brought Achtung Baby, another Number One single, The Fly
as well as Mysterious Ways and the soulful One. 1992 and 1993 saw
them take a different route, putting more of an electronic sound into their
music for Zooropa, and their subsequent Zoo TV tour, parading
such tracks as Numb, Lemon and Stay.
1997 saw their album Pop, and a
third Number One single, Discotheque which showed the band going techno
at the end of the video and dressing up as the Village People believe it or
not (!)
This year seems them going more into the mainstream with hits like Beautiful
Day and Elevation.
U2: Rattle And Hum begins loudly with their cover of the Beatles classic,
Helter Skelter, performed at the McNichols Arena, Denver, Colorado, one
of the indoor locations where the band were filmed. Brief interview clips,
filmed at the Point Depot Recording Studios, Dublin, come between some of the
songs, and that location also forms the setting for a burst of Desire.
The band travel across America exploring new influences, and play alongside
the legendary B.B. King on a journey which takes them from Dublin to Graceland,
and from San Francisco to the streets of Harlem.
Up to the end of chapter 12, the film is black and white only, but with the
laserdisc the the clever bit came at the sidebreak, such that when you began
side 2 (ie. track 13) - and tracks 13-17 are performed at Sun Devil Stadium,
Tempe, Arizona - everything's in colour. However, for the last three tracks
we go back to where we started, and back to black and white.
Bono was the last to realise where the audience were.
There are 20 chapters, one for each song, and the track listing is shown below.
It's interesting to note that the film contains 8 tracks not included on the
actual album, namely tracks: 4, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18.
Tracks :
1. Helter Skelter
2. Van Diemen's Land
3. Desire
4. Exit
5. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
6. Freedom For My People/Silver And Gold
7. Angel Of Harlem
8. All Along The Watchtower
9. In God's Country
10. When Love Comes To Town
11. Heartland
12. Bad
13. Where The Streets Have No Name
14. MLK
15. With Or Without You
16. Star Spangled Banner/Bullet The Blue Sky
17. Running To Stand Still
18. Sunday Bloody Sunday
19. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
20. All I Want Is You
Unlike the
1997 PAL Laserdisc release,
we now get to see the film in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen as it was originally
filmed. I could complain that the picture quality is questionable because it
appear to have a fair bit of grain throughout, although when it's bad that's
actually an intentional effect.
The average bitrate is 6.1Mb/s, varying quite a bit.
Also, unlike the stereo Laserdisc, the sound is remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1,
obviously in English only. You know any of the U2 songs listed above? Now
imagine them in DD5.1 and have a guess why I've given the sound full marks.
Yes, it's that good.
The only extra is a rather pointless 80-second 16:9 anamorphic trailer of the
band walking on stage, partly in silhouette.
Subtitles are available in a mindboggling 23 languages:
English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish,
Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian,
Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and
Turkish. Other than English though, not all of them are used for the lyrics.
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:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
