The Calling-Live in Italy (Music in High Places) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette-Nate and the Face Featurette-Art Gone Wild Featurette-Whirly Cam Featurette-Lost Luggage...The Real Story Music Video-Just The Music Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	57:52
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Ryan Polito
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Alex Band Aaron Kamin Billy Mohler Nate Wood
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$39.95	Music	The Calling

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.75:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	French German Spanish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, funky world music during closing credits

    The idea behind Music In High Places (a travel adventure cable TV series not yet shown in Australia to my knowledge) sounds interesting - take a musician/recording artist to an exotic/remote location, get them to talk to the locals and visit famous landmarks a la Michael Palin's travel adventures and get them to perform some of their best known songs "on location." Package it all up as a travelogue or travel documentary cum music videos/live performances. This seems to be a more recent title than others in the series, since it no longer refers to a defunct Microsoft MSN web site but references www.pricelessedge.com, which is a training programme behind the series sponsored by Mastercard and MTV.

    This "instalment" or "episode" features L.A. band The Calling. As far as I can tell, they have only released one album so far entitled Camino Palmero (2001). I don't know how their music sounds normally, but the unplugged performances in this feature are okay sounding if somewhat repetitive.

    The members of the band are:

• Alex Band - vocals
• Aaron Kamin - guitar
• Billy Mohler - bass
• Nate Wood - drums

    I think it is a bit of a stretch of the truth to call this The Calling - In Italy since the boys mainly visit Florence and Siena. It's kind of like having someone visit Adelaide and calling it "Live In Australia" (not that I have anything against either Florence or Adelaide). We get to see the band on the banks of the river of Arno in Florence, hanging around Florence streets and alleys, riding scooters in Siena (and getting arrested by the police for not wearing helmets), at the Piazza del Duomo in Siena, Piazza del Campo, and Castello di Giove.

    Unfortunately we don't really get to see much of Florence, so it's not much of a travel documentary. Having visited the city, I was disappointed that the feature did not cover any of the major sites or buildings.

    The boys also perform in many of these locations, in some cases surrounded by some of their Italian fans (who look very very young by the way).

    I think the producers ran out of footage really early on and the last 15 minutes of the feature seems to be mainly padding. It has a surreal segment where a member of the crew starts to imagine what he would do if he was in charge. This segment doesn't even feature the band.

Video

    Finally, a Music In High Places DVD that actually has a 16x9 enhanced widescreen transfer (approximately 1.75:1 aspect ratio)! (Previous discs in the series that I reviewed were not 16x9 enhanced). We also have a new director (Ryan Polito) rather than Alan Carter.

    The transfer is probably based on an interlaced video source, but looks quite film-like, with saturated highlights kept to a minimum.

    Detail levels are quite high, and I did not notice any of the usual interlaced video artefacts such as shimmering or aliasing. Compared to reference quality, this transfer is probably just a touch on the soft side and the colours very slightly on the yellowish side depending on the scene. An example of detail level is the weave pattern in the blue jumper of a girl in the background in Chapter 5, for example around 16:30.

    I did not really notice any compression artefacts, probably because the length of the feature is so short and it's on a dual layered disc.

    There are four subtitle tracks on the disc, but one of them is a silent one. The remaining three are French, German, and Spanish. I turned them on briefly just to check that they do exist.

    This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). The layer change occurs between Titles 2 and 3 so is not visible.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks present: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s) and English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kb/s) . I listened to mainly the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track sounds quite decent and full-bodied, with lots of reverb and background noises. The centre and rear channels are used to convey subtle ambience and environmental background noises. The LFE track is mainly used to reinforce the low frequencies in the track.

    In comparison, the Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track is recorded at a much lower level (-8dB compared to a typical CD) and sounds slightly flat compared to the Dolby Digital 5.1 track.

    Both tracks feature a fairly deep soundstage but unfortunately not very wide.

    There are at least two instances of audible distortion due to over-clipping, once when the girls are screaming around 42:43-42:45 and another when the band members are shouting around 48:14-48:18.

    I did not notice any issues with dialogue intelligibility or audio synchronization.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras on this disc are slightly different to those on previous titles in the series. Most of the video extras appear to be presented in 1.75:1 (letterboxed) with a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track (224Kb/s).

Menu

    The menus are 16x9 enhanced and static.

Featurette - Nate and the Face (6:20)

    This is an interesting set of interviews with Aaron Kamin talking about fellow band member Nate Wood who seems to have some sort of affliction where he has to take medication, otherwise he generally acts weird and pulls faces.

Featurette - Art Gone Wild (1:36)

    This features lots and lots of shots of statues of naked bodies, which for some hormonal reason the boys in the band are very obsessed about, plus shopping for weird stuff around Florence.

Featurette - Whirly Cam (0:24)

    This is a very short featurette of two crew members spinning the camera around Piazza del Campo.

Featurette - Lost Luggage...The Real Story (15:19)

    This is a very tedious featurette of the crew hanging around Rome airport waiting for their lost luggage to arrive. It looks like it was taken off a consumer videocam belonging to one of the crew members. The audio track is plagued with occasional mobile phone buzzing noises.

Music Videos - Just The Music

    At first I thought this was a scene selection menu that takes you to the chapters containing the music performances, but it appears that these are separate music videos of the following songs:

• Adrienne (4:21)
• Could It Be Any Harder (4:49)
• Final Answer (4:32)
• Stigmatized (4:53)
• Unstoppable (4:08)
• We're Forgiven (4:11)
• Wherever You Will Go (4:06)
• Thank You (3:05)

    The reason why I think these are separate music videos instead of excerpts from the main feature is that:

1. The video footage is actually different, which you can verify by comparing the music video with the corresponding chapter in the main feature. In general, the music video focuses more on the musicians playing the music rather than splicing in location footage.
2. There is only one audio track for these music videos, Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), as opposed to both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 on the main feature.
3. The audio for the music videos seem to be mixed at a much lower level than for the main feature, and also sound a bit muffled.

    The music videos are in 1.75:1 letterboxed (no 16x9 enhancement).

Biographies-Cast

    This is a set of 7 stills providing a short (textual) biography and career highlights of the band.

    The disc appears to be identical across Region 1 and 4, with the possible exception of subtitle tracks.

    The Calling - In Italy is part of the Music in High Places travel/music series and features the boys in the band performing and touring mainly in Florence and Siena.

    The video quality is good and 16x9 enhanced (the first 16x9 enhancement I've seen for titles in this series).

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is okay.

    Extras include a number of featurettes and music videos.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall