Johnny Cash-An Anthology of the Man in Black (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Half Mile A Day Discography Filmographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	142:00
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (25:50)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Al Greenfield
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Johnny Cash Waylon Jennings Judy Collins Carl Perkins Willie Nelson Merle Kilgore Kris Kristofferson Marty Stuart Glen Campbell Billy Bob Thornton George Jones Sam Phillips
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	Johnny Cash

"Hello I'm Johnny Cash...."

    The Man In Black always introduces himself in concerts with this simple line, so I felt the review needed the same touch.

    Johnny Cash is the only singer I can think of that sounds as good today as he did in 1957 when his career started. For 6 decades he has treated music lovers to an enormous number of songs with a large number of these hits in their own right. A tremendous number of bands and artists have played alongside Johnny and he has even formed other bands, the most notable one being The Highwaymen. You would have to look long and hard to find another artist that is liked and honoured as much. This disc is a tribute to a truly great artist.

    The people featured on this disc do lay on the "Johnny is so great" speeches pretty thick and it gets a bit much in the first 10 minutes. Then things start to pan out a bit as the footage keeps returning to the same colleagues and you get to hear more detail about Johnny's accomplishments and how they feel about the man. Not much is left out and the topics covered are more extensive than in any other feature I have seen about Johnny Cash.

    The format chosen for this programme is to play one of Johnny's hit songs (starting from 1957) and to then show an interview with a friend or colleague, continuing this format until the end and progressing through the years. This Anthology disc is really 2 different "rockumentaries" and unfortunately the two share a great deal of content. Personally, I would have preferred to have seen the two merged into one larger piece because the shared content does get distracting after a while. There is a broad spread of Johnny's songs on this disc but The Highwaymen are only glossed over with no songs from the group played in full compared to his solo songs.

    Even those who have followed Johnny's career closely may pick up a thing or two about the Man in Black here. My personal favourite and a song I enjoy is "Ring Of Fire". In spite of being the brunt of some curry-eating stories, this particular classic was written in 1963 and came to Johnny in a dream. It was interesting to hear how the song and music went from being a dream to being such an uplifting song. "I Walked The Line" goes right back to 1956 and still has not aged a day, although Johnny never once walked the line for any of his women.

    Oh, one last thing. I wish that a menu option to play back the songs without the comments had been included. Such a feature would have ensured the continual enjoyment of this disc. You can, however, manually select the songs from the main menu on an individual basis.

Video

    The video transfer of this feature varies a great deal in quality, as is to be expected given the variable original source material. The 1957 recordings are of quite poor quality. As we progress through Johnny's career, the quality of the footage improves until we end with some high quality songs.

    The transfer is presented in a full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.

    As I mentioned, the footage improves as time goes by. The only constant is the interview footage with Johnny's colleagues and friends which is clear and of an acceptable quality. The footage could not be considered as sharp per se, but more like quality video. The archive footage starts off with poor quality and below average levels of shadow detail. There is still enough detail in the poor lighting to appreciate and see the band.

    There is no low level noise.

    The colours vary in quality and it goes without saying that the more recent the footage the better the quality. The early footage has strong colours that have a smeared appearance. Towards the end of the disc, the colours have a more natural and sharper appearance.

    The main MPEG artefact on this disc is posterization, but this is mild in each case and not distracting unless you look closely for it. At around 22:16 there are stripes across the image which in appearance look just like moire effects. Aliasing is very rare and very mild when it does occur. There are plenty of film artefacts and again the older footage is the worst. Take a look at "Big River" (Track 3) which was filmed in 1958 to see the worst it gets. The artefacts are large and frequent with occasional scratches or cracks in the frames that run vertically down the screen for a second or two each time. Short of an extensive and expensive remastering of this footage, I think this is the best you will ever see of Johnny's performances from this era.

    This disc is RSDL-formatted, with the layer change appearing at 25:50 during the "Half Mile A Day" feature. There is a slight fade to black with no sound or video. It is quick and well placed so as to not prove disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only an English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtrack to choose from. As the majority of footage is old with soundtracks to match, the surround-encoded track is a fitting choice.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times for each of the speakers that had a chat about Johnny. As for Johnny when he sang, well he wasn't known as "Johnny Decibel" for nothing. His voice can cut through any musical instrument / musician or bomb blast. There was some hiss apparent during some of the early titles but it was not overly concerning and I doubt better masters would have been available anyway.

    Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.

    The music overall sounds quite good and even the tracks from the 1950s come across as pleasant. The quality improves as you progress through the timeline. The quality is certainly on par with early CD recordings I have heard featuring Johnny's titles from the same era.

    The surround channels were subtly used for the song sequences. Daddy Sang Bass at 44:33 uses the rears more effectively than the other titles. It goes without saying that the black and white songs are in mono.

    The subwoofer was also used sparingly but did place a nice bottom end on the music and prevented any tinny sounds spoiling these performances.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Half Mile A Day

Album Discography

Filmography

Umbrella Propaganda

    Some still images of other Umbrella titles, but with no additional information to go with the images of the slipcases. This includes images of;

• Blues Masters Volumes 1 & 2
• John Lee Hooker 'That's My Story'
• Max Merritt & The Meteors 'Live In Concert'

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

• Umbrella Propaganda

    This title is identical in content to the Region 1 version with an added Umbrella Propaganda section for advertising. The Region 1 disc cover consists of an image of Johnny very early on in his career. We get an image of the man as he is today in a very similar pose.

    I would recommend the local version purely on the PAL/NTSC formatting differences.

    As a long time fan of Johnny Cash, I found this an interesting DVD to watch and I managed to pick up some interesting background information about the original MIB (Man In Black).

    The video varies in quality but is acceptable for this TV-style documentary. The "Half Mile A Day" featurette contained footage of worse quality than the main programme. Generally, colours were too rich in this featurette, giving an unnatural appearance leaning towards the red portion of the spectrum.

    As with the video, the audio varies dramatically due to the source material and wide ranging timescale that the recordings are from. In all cases the songs contained enough depth to not sound like a tinny wireless recording and were enjoyable. Towards the end you get better quality recordings and these come across nicely as a surround encoded track.

    Again, the "Half Mile A Day" content should really have been sliced into the main feature to extend its length. The other extras are interesting merely for a quick flick but there is little of real substance.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall