Cheap Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii (Director's Cut) (Jewel Case) (DVD) (Adrian Maben) Price

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Customer Reviews of Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii (Director's Cut) (Jewel Case)

Echoes of Pompeii...
Now THIS brings back fond memories... of midnight showings, wall-to-wall hippies, "exotic" tobaccos, and... well, I can't remember much else! LOL! But seriously, as soon as this was released, in a "Directors Cut" no less, I raced out and bought it... and you can't imagine how crushed I was by what the director, Adrian Maben, had managed to do to his original film. <
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>I've made it a rule of sorts not to write negative revues, I'd much rather tell you why I liked something than why I thought something sucked; my first exception to that rule was for the totally execrable "AvP," and this, I'm afraid, is my second. Thankfully the "Original" film IS included in the "Special Features," and it's for this that I gave the 5 Stars. <
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>The production, such as it is, is incredibly simple by todays standards, we're talking 1971 after all, so, there're no lasers, no circular screen, no Varilights, no "Floyd droids," no mirror-ball, no wall, no pigs, no uber-show. What you do have are the four remaining members of the band, recently Sid-less, playing direct to camera in the Roman Amphitheater in Pompeii. Stretching themselves artistically in new directions, experimenting with new sounds and musical structures; in a number of the tracks presented here, you can hear the genesis of what they were to become, especially in the superb "Echoes." <
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>Visually you get a mixture of static shots of the band playing, with the occasional tracking shot front and back of them. There's some footage of them walking on what appear to be the slopes of Vesuvius, looking at bubbling mud pools and clouds of steam. There're some over-dubs and front projection work done in a studio in France, but the most visually interesting numbers are "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun," "Careful with that Axe Eugene," and "One of these days," which are all performed at night... VERY atmospheric! "One of these days" is actually quite bizarre as practically ALL of the footage is of Nick Mason playing up a storm, the rest of the footage of the band, with the exception of a couple of blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cut-aways, was lost! <
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>So, what IS the problem with the "Directors Cut?" Simple. The performance of the band has been butchered; interview footage, some of it unintentionally hilarious such as an obviously stoned David Gilmour telling the director that they're NOT a "drug orientated" band, "You can trust us," he says, has been edited into the breaks between the tracks. There's also footage of Gilmour, Waters, and Wright, in the Abbey Road studios trying out alternate versions of numbers from "Dark Side." All of this additional footage is well worth having, but, IMHO, it should have been edited into a separate documentary, or used to illustrate the obligatory interview with Maben, not shoe-horned in between the tracks themselves! <
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>And then, as if to add insult to injury, Maben completely loses the plot and cuts in a bunch of grungy old stock NASA footage, y'know, Saturn 5 rockets taking off, a horribly pixilated 20 year old CGI'd planetary fly-by that looks as if it was produced on an Atari console, solar flares etc etc etc. This is embarrassing, I mean, the title sequence of "Star Trek Voyager" has better looking "space" footage than this old tat!!! Hell, if you want "trippy" visuals with your Floyd you'd be better off ripping the audio from the disc, converting it to mp3 and then playing it through iTunes with the Visualizer turned on!!! And if you're going to do that, edit the two halves of "Echoes" together via a 30-second cross-fade... I'm actually starting to like this version better than the studio one! Maben's justification for this travesty in his interview is completely bonkers, something about aliens in another galaxy picking up a faint broadcast of the Floyd's performance, then jumping in a ship and tracking the signal back to it's source!!! Oh, and did I mention the fake "Letterbox" format? (sigh) <
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>My advice to any self respecting Floyd fan is to buy this and watch the "Original" film FIRST; just soak up the performances and marvel at how young and scruffy they all once were! LOL! Then, grit your teeth and watch the "Directors Cut" for the additional interviews and Abbey Road footage. So, in summing up... Pink Floyd: 5 Stars, Adrian Maben: 0 Stars!!! <
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Different, still strange, still good.
If your previous experience with this movie was the original cut, be aware, this version is different. Footage has been added and the overall pace of the movie has been quickened. Having said that, I cannot say that the movie has really been improved or worsened. I am very familiar with the older VHS cut so I know where the cuts and addidtions have happened. It is still a cool movie for Floyd fans, but if you like the old school version it will take some getting used to. If you are not familiar with the older cut, then by all means enjoy, it is still an entertaining flick, although it does have some flaws. The additional footage that has been added dates from the original shoot (early 70's) to the presnt day. The new footage (some of which is CG) can be kind of jarring when spliced into earlier stuff (seems to be an obvious afterthought sometimes) but it does still work. Most of the added footage is space/NASA/stock footage which is also seems like an odd choice, but I guess it is just as relevent as footage of vulcanism and eruptions in a film about Pink Floyd (space rock?) playing music in a town destroyed by a volcano. Also, a 5.1 mix would have been cool, but so be it. Wrapping up, if you like the old version, live in the now, and if this is a new movie to you, enjoy!

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great dvd
features excellent versions of songs filmed in the ancient pompeii ampitheater, my favorite is set the controls, saucerful is great with waters jumping around hitting the gong, echoes is split into two parts both of which are great buy this dvd