Another slick, engaging title in the solid Rare and Unseen series, this briskly paced hour-long doc looks at the iconic British musician, actor, producer and voracious reader of going on five decades now, David Bowie. Most famous for his ostentatious, androgynous “Ziggy Stardust” alter-ego during the glam-rock era of the early 1970s, Bowie has continually reinvented his music and personal image, and is regarded as an influential innovator in both rock music and the intersection of a peddled, constructed public persona.
Told through missing archive interviews and rare and unseen footage, this insightful DVD is a worthy addition to any hardcore Bowie fan’s home video collection. Bowie’s skill as a multi-instrumentalist — in addition to singing vocals he plays electric, acoustic and twelve-string guitar, plus keyboards, alto, tenor, piano, harmonica, xylophone, tambourine, drums and many other instruments — shines through, and the timeless quality of his music is strikingly highlighted. Listening to bits of or ruminating on any of his numerous top 10 hits, including everything from “China Girl,” “Modern Love” and “Starman” to “Space Oddity,” “Under Pressure” and “Let’s Dance,” one is repeatedly struck by the freshness of their composition and arrangement.
Items genuinely unseen and never previously released on DVD stud this somewhat haphazardly pieced together title, including presumed lost but now restored TV interviews with Russell Harty in which Bowie speaks candidly about his drug use and the haze of his famously creative Berlin days. There is also rehearsal and backstage footage, some press conference material and a couple yawning Bowie impersonations by Stevie Riks. In aggregate, it’s a bit like opening an old box of stashed away high school and college mementos (“Why exactly did I keep this?” you wonder, before a splinter of recognition answers your puzzlement), but David Bowie: Rare and Unseen is undeniably a treat for fans of the chameleonic, one-of-a-kind performer.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, David Bowie: Rare and Unseen comes to DVD on a region-free disc, presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track. There are no supplemental bonus materials of which to speak. To purchase the DVD, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)
Daily Archives: December 2, 2010
All Good Things
Inspired by one of the more infamous missing person’s cases in recent New York history, All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, angles to be both a character portrait of psychological unease and rot, as well as a true-crime thriller loosely in the vein of Changeling, The Black Dahlia and Hollywoodland. Beset with a series of miscalculated dramatic misfires, it is instead a melodramatic adaptation of a tabloid-style telenews-magazine murder-mystery, wearyingly overstuffed with baroque detail in an effort to prop up its legitimacy.
Director Andrew Jarecki made a splash with the Oscar-nominated documentary Capturing the Friedmans, but in his dramatic feature debut he evinces little comfort for and skill with working with actors, and makes liberal use of tired dramatic markers more commonly associated with time-compressed television, like a whistling tea kettle to signify mounting tension. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Magnolia, R, 101 minutes)