Cheap Paul McCartney - Back in the U.S. (Live 2002 Concert Film) (DVD) (Mark Haefeli) Price

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Customer Reviews of Paul McCartney - Back in the U.S. (Live 2002 Concert Film)

I have been reading reviews of this DVD and it blows my mind that some people acutally thought they were going to get some sort of "uncut" full-length concert....IT WAS A TELEVISION SPECIAL!! I thought that some of the backstage shots, rehearsal clips and other behind the scenes footage provided a entertaining and insightful look into the life of a living legend. I was fortunate enough to see Paul perform in NYC, and I believe this DVD, in general, captured the tour as best as it could in 2 hours. It provides for good memories, especially if you were lucky enough to see him live on this tour.

I did not give the DVD 5 stars because I do tend to agree with some of the reviews regarding some of the cheesy fan outtakes it shows...I do think the fans are an important part of a concert tour and should be represented, but the DVD does go a bit overboard with some over zealous fans declaring their love for Paul, singing songs to each other, etc. This could have been toned down a bit...I guess you can't really blame them though, right??

Just keep in mind this was a made for television special and never intended to be a full length, uncut conert; even though you get practically every song in its entirety! Enjoy it for what its worth.

Let's Start Over on This One
Note to Paul: you are one of the greatest musicians of all time and your last tour was a masterpiece. Now, please, create a DVD that captures this incredible experience. This DVD is not worthy of you and your contribution to music (poor video quality, mediocre sound, terrible hyper-kinetic editing, too many crowd shots, also needs a separate DVD for the extraneous stuff).

Write this initial DVD off as a "TV Special". My suggestion is that you go back to the drawing board and produce a DVD worthy of what you and this concert represent. You, your fans and history deserve so much more. The concert DVD benchmark has been set by many others (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Band, James Taylor to name few). You could easily raise the bar. You have the content - now just repackage it in the format it desrves.

You obviously focused on creating a great concert - now simply put that same effort into creating a great DVD.

Suckshow
The DVD of Paul's fantastic concert tour is a pathetic representation of the real experience. I saw two of his concerts on this tour and the band's performances were excellent. Paul spoke to the audience very candidly in between songs and it was obvious to us that they all thoroughly enjoyed playing their hearts out for us for two and a half hours. Nine different cameras were used to film a concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and I thought the DVD would be a nice rememberance of this colossal night, but no...

The director of this DVD decided it would be exciting to give the audience equal camera time along with the band. I got to know the people in the front row better than the band members themselves! A quick close-up of an emotional fan is alright every few songs, but not every three seconds. That makes as much sense as a TV camera filming a football fan cheering for his team while they are in the middle of running a play to win the Super Bowl! The director might have thought that showing twenty different celebrities will make people like the DVD better. Well, I for one don't need footage of Jack Nicholson singing along to "Hey Jude" in order to validate my opinion of the DVD. I bought it to watch Paul play, not to see Jack Nicholson in sunglasses four different times.

I wanted to see close-ups of Paul singing and playing, but there are much more wide angle shots, and very few close-ups of him playing the guitar chords and strumming along. There was a time when Paul played "Something" and all we saw was his foot tapping on the floor. Weird. The DVD switched camera angles every two seconds - I wish the camera would've stayed fixed on one shot for a longer amount of time so I could take it all in and enjoy it better. Hey, sometimes fast editing is important during certain songs, but I swear that there was not one shot longer than three seconds. Having the closing credits run over footage of the band playing "I Saw Her Standing There" was also annoying.

Some of the songs were tucked away in the Special Features section of the DVD for some reason, which detracted from the pace of the concert as well as the overall experience of watching it. The director also saw to it that many of Paul's conversations with the audience were cut short or eliminated entirely. It was these spoken words to the audience that helped make the night very endearing, and special.

The Special Features section had five different segments of what happened behind the scenes, but they were also interspliced with the concert itself: the DVD didn't show the opening segments of "Coming Up" but it did show Paul's advanced road crew talking about how many packs of cigarrettes they are smoking a day. It drastically cut into the playing time of "Hey Jude", but it did show fans in the parking lot trying to sing "Yesterday. The guitar solo to "My Love" was deleted in order to make room for a soccer mom crying in the parking lot. A guitar solo was deleted from "Maybe I'm Amazed" so we could see Paul visiting a monkey at a primate center. When Paul played "Something", that was one of the most emotional moments of the entire concert, but the director thought it would be more prudent to trim off 30 seconds of that short song in order to show how the cook prepares food for the road crew. Hey, I'm all for seeing what goes on in Paul's life offstage, but NOT at the expense of the concert. That's why the Special Features section is there! If the director was concerned about the DVD not being able to fit everything on one disc, then why not trim down the Special Features a little, but NOT the concert! Better yet, make it a two-disc DVD set!

On a brighter note, some of the interesting footage was of Paul's different guitars he used during the concert, behind the scenes at "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", and clowning around on their private jet. The band also played an amusing, up-tempo version of "Hey Jude" during a sound check.

Note: this DVD was already in production when Paul changed his playlist and decided to include "Michelle", "Let 'em In", and "Midnight Special", so if you saw him play those songs, you really had a special treat!

The 1976 film of the Paul McCartney and Wings Rockshow is filmed much better, and will be a special collectors item when MPL Communications releases it - especially if there is a Special Features section which includes footage of "Wings Over the World".

2/5 stars for a disappointing "Back in the U.S." DVD.