Country Legends


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Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Music None
Rating
Year Released 2000
Running Time 54:13 minutes
RSDL/Flipper No/No
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region 1,2,3,4,5,6 Director  
Studio
Distributor
Massive
Warner Vision
 Starring George Jones
Willie Nelson
Waylon Jennings
Billie Joe Spears
Conway Twitty
Don Williams
Roger Miller
Marty Robbins
Patsy Cline
Dolly Parton
Charley Pride
Merle Haggard
Case Brackley
RPI $39.95 Music Assorted

 
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame MPEG None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio No Dolby Digital 2.0
16x9 Enhancement No Soundtrack Languages English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio Full Frame
Miscellaneous
Macrovision ? Smoking No
Subtitles None Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

Plot Synopsis

    As something of a new country music fan, when Michael D enquired as to whether I may be interested in reviewing this DVD, I jumped at the chance. As the fifth Massive DVD through my player in the past few weeks, I really wish that I had said no. Still, there is a sole redeeming feature here that may become a tad obvious shortly.

    In general, country music has been the butt of many a musical joke over the years (one of the best in film is in The Blues Brothers), and to be honest the reason can often be found amongst the music of the legends on display here. The resurrection of country music in the 1980s and 1990s was the result of the new generation of musicians rejecting the style of these legends and forging a new style. The difference between new country music and traditional country music is plain to see when you view this collection, which is not to say that there is nothing to enjoy here, but rather to say that this is a great demonstration of a genre that has very much changed over the past twenty years. The songs on offer here are:

    I have always considered the likes of Conway Twitty and Roger Miller to be overrated hacks who did much to destroy country music by their style, most especially the former. This could also be further applied to Don Williams and Marty Robbins, as a result of their guitar twanging efforts. They managed to make country music so banal that it became a joke. Legends they may be considered by some, but that is not a word that I would truly apply to them. When I saw the track listing for this DVD, I knew that I was in some trouble: there is little here that I would consider to be "country legends" in the sense of expanding the genre. The obvious exception here is also the earliest effort on display - from the immortal Patsy Cline. Now there is a genuine legend of not only country music, but of music in general. She alone raises this modest collection out of the sea of mediocrity.

    The music comprises a mix of live concert performances (George Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings) and television appearances (the rest). All barring the effort from the immortal Patsy Cline are in colour. As seems to be the norm with these Massive releases, you can ignore the dating of 2000: this is a collection that dates back much further indeed.

    The packaging refers to the program as Country Legends, but the actual title credits refer to it as Legends of Country Music. A minor difference perhaps, but you would have thought a degree of consistency in the naming would be possible. You would also have expected that the spine lettering could be the right way round, in accordance with generally accepted conventions (spines should read from top to bottom, not bottom to top as here).

Transfer Quality

Video

    We get the usual over-the-top Massive claim of "Superb Digital Picture and Sound Quality - Dolby AC-3 Stereo". They obviously have a very different meaning for the word "superb" than I and the Oxford English Dictionary. Whilst this is arguably the best of the five Massive DVDs through my player as far as transfers go, that is not really saying much at all.

    The transfer is presented in a Full Frame ratio and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Obviously with the "clips" being extracted from various sources and eras, there is little consistency in the quality of the presentation here. In general, we have a transfer that suffers somewhat from a lack of any really decent definition and detail. What is on offer would be best described as average or slightly better. Some of the extracts are better than others, but the live efforts tend to be the better ones, for the simple reason that they would appear to be the more recent efforts. A few extracts display a rather diffuse image that really causes problems with the eyes when you have to resort to squinting in order to get your focus right. There is a distinct lack of real detail here, and most especially any real shadow detail. This is not an especially clear transfer, which is then compounded in a few instances by a little bit more grain than normal in some source material. There did appear to be some problems with low level noise in a few of the extracts, but this again may of course be a reflection of the inadequacies of the source material rather than the result of any mastering issues.

    Aside from the black and white Patsy Cline clip, which actually looks pretty decent, the program is made up of colour extracts. In view of the rather varied sources of these, there is obviously a degree of variability in the colour palette offered. The one consistent point though is the lack of solidity of the colours throughout: there is no great tonal depth at all and the result looks marginally undersaturated throughout. This is obviously not a vibrant transfer at all. There is some problems with flare in some of the live concert extracts, but nothing approaching colour bleed or oversaturation anywhere in the transfer.

    There are no apparent MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There were no real problems with film-to-video artefacts in the transfer. Film artefacts were not much of a problem here, other than a few black marks in the Patsy Cline clip. The main issue here would be the general inherent flaws in the source materials used.

Audio

    There is nothing especially remarkable about the audio transfer here at all.

    There is only the one audio track on this DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    Dialogue and vocals were reasonably clear and reasonably easy to understand and there did not appear to be any problems with audio sync in the transfer.

    Given the audio level variability in the previous two Massive DVDs through my player, I was expecting the worst here, given the wide range in the age of the source material. I was pleasantly surprised, as there appeared to be no real inconsistency in the audio levels at all. That is about the best thing I can say about the audio. Otherwise, it is a rather unremarkable soundtrack, with nothing much in the way of dynamics to be concerned about. It all comes across in a rather flat manner, but it is free from any imperfections as far as I could hear. Nothing here at all to disturb the slumber of the surround channels nor the bass channels. Overall, an adequately bland soundtrack and nothing more.

Extras

    If these are really legends of country music, where are the biographies and the discographies? All we get here is a rather poor-looking menu page that has all the excitement and pizzazz of the Worm Racing World Championships (with apologies to the organizers of any such event).

Menu

R4 vs R1

    This appears to be identical around the world, so there is no essential difference to favour this version over any other.

Summary

    Country Legends is in my view a serious misnomer, and a short DVD to boot even if they are true legends. The DVD, as is typical of Massive efforts thus far, is flawed due to the lack of quality in the source material. To be honest, this is only likely to appeal to hard core, traditional country music fans: new devotees to country music (those who enjoy the likes of Pam Tillis, Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, Martina McBride, Shania Twain and Faith Hill) would be very strongly advised to avoid this.

    A decent video transfer.

    An average audio transfer.

    No extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras  
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
25th August 2000

Review Equipment
   
DVD Pioneer DV-515; S-video output
Display Sony Trinitron Wega 84cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder Built in
Amplification Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL