Cheap In View - The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 (Jewel Case) (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of In View - The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 (Jewel Case)

This is more of an item description than a review....
Contains 16 music videos, plus 6 rare music videos and a 3-song live performance. Also includes short interview pieces from 7 documentaries filmed from 1988-2003.
From the WB website: The simultaneously released DVD com- panion to In Time:The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003 ,the band's first greatest- hits album from its most successful years (which spans its ongoing tenure on Warner Bros.),is also R.E.M.'s first best-of video compilation from the period.Featuring 16 video clips,includ- ing the acclaimed classics Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts, the DVD brings together several compelling performances from 2001s South Africa Freedom Day concert in London's Trafalgar Square and fascinating excerpts of EPKs from throughout R.E.M.'s history.

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Good but incomplete.
R.E.M. experienced explosive commercial success thanks to its "Losing My Religion" video, so it's a natural move to release a collection of videos from throughout the band's career.

But as far as retrospectives go, I expected this DVD to be comprehensive and it is far from that. Where is "Drive", a subversive, moody masterpiece of expressionistic photography which fit the sepulchral majesty of the song perfectly? Where is "Shiny Happy People" which, despite being saccharine and musically uninteresting, nevertheless represents a vital side to R.E.M.'s career (in the same way as "Stand")? And I could be dreaming, but I remember "Fall on Me" having a video. This was one of the band's best songs and if there were a video, I would've liked to see it here.

What does get included is still prime R.E.M. material. Reflecting the decline of music video since the mid-'90s, the late-'80s and early '90s material is the best. "Losing My Religion" was one of the most bizarre hit singles ever made, and the Tarsem-directed music video (which swept the 1991 MTV Music Video Awards) retains its strange, provocative, yet humorous edge. "Man on the Moon"'s gorgeous black-and-white photography picks up where "Drive" left off, continuing the stark vision of the Automatic for the People album; "Everybody Hurts" expresses a highly cinematic vision; and "Stand" is a dumb piece of bubblegum pop, an exaggeration of what the song aimed to be.

Out of the bonus material, the concert performances in Trafalgar Square grabbed my attention the most. Michael Stipe sounds a little offkey on "Losing My Religion", but the band performance is superlative, especially Peter Buck's shimmering mandolin, and the shooting manages to avoid the hyperactive camera-move-obsessed concert shooting that plagues modern music video. This director actually seems more concerned with capturing the onstage action than with moving the camera (eg. Metallica's 'St. Anger' DVD), and the result is a good, solid piece of concert performance.

There's enough good material on here to make this worthwhile for the R.E.M. fan and music fans in general. All I'd say is that you won't get the entire R.E.M. canon here, but you won't be disappointed in what you do get.

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Great videos, great song, great band... Great everything!
This came out along with In Time: The Best Of R.E.M., which was a hit all over the world. But if you thought the songs were good, you really gotta check out the videos!

Except for Animal and All The Right Friends, every song's respective video from the first disc of In Time is on this DVD, and that's quite an impressive collection.

So what do we have? We have the fantastic new video for Bad Day (like a mock news report), Imitation Of Life (my favourite video, it's incredible), and clever videos for All The Way To Reno, The Great Beyond, E-Bow The Letter and Daysleeper. It also contains the award winning video for Losing My Religion, the emotional Everybody Hurts, the silly Stand, and the bizzare Electrolite vid... what a collection!

But there's more! The DVD comes with some bonus videos of rarely heard R.E.M. classics. I love Tongue and How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us, both rarely heard but very good, both with a great vid. Highlights, however, are the awesome Lotus video (almost as freaky as the actual song!) and the quirky vid for my favourite R.E.M. song, I'll Take The Rain. Wow... I love this DVD!

There's even live perfomances of three of their more popular songs (Imitation, Religion and Man On The Moon), and a discography included, so the collector can start ticking them off!

All in all, this is one DVD that is definatly worth your while if your interested in seeing some of the videos backing some of their best songs!