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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Ella Fitzgerald-Something to Live For (1999)

Ella Fitzgerald-Something to Live For (1999)

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Released 13-Oct-2003

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Music None
Rating Rated E
Year Of Production 1999
Running Time 86:47
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 1,2,3,4,5,6 Directed By Charlotte Zwerin
Studio
Distributor

Warner Vision
Starring Ella Fitzgerald
Tony Bennett
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $34.95 Music Various


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles None Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, during credits

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    When it comes time to choose the greatest singer of all time, the century that will be turned to will be the twentieth. The country that will be turned to will be the United States. The genre of music will be a generic one called jazz. The "nominees" will be Billie Holiday (1915-1959), Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) and Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996). From there you can argue like crazy. I have extensive CD collections of all three of these great singers and love them all. But when it comes time for me to pick the best that ever was, there is no question in my mind at all - Ella Fitzgerald. And just for the record, yes I do mean the best of all time. There will never be anyone better for the simple reason that no one will ever again be exposed to the training grounds that these great singers had, and even if they did, the modern music industry would reduce them to quivering masses of vocal burn-out within a decade. But those great singers of the past - they will live forever in the recordings of utter brilliance that they left.

    None was more brilliant than Ella Fitzgerald.

    Lady Day sung the blues - and she sung them like no one ever did and no one ever will. But in the end her problems with substance abuse left her voice damaged and she died a pale shadow of herself. Nonetheless, grab any of those great albums she recorded for Columbia (released on nine CDs as The Quintessential Billie Holiday) and be amazed at what Lady Day could do with her voice and a song when she was at her peak. The Divine first came to attention as a gospel singer (the Negro Spiritual is by far and away the most beautiful, haunting music the world has heard in the past two hundred years) but gained fame for her range and the beauty of her voice (hence her nickname). But no one before and no one since has come close to the abilities of Ella Fitzgerald. She could take the most banal standard of just about any era and sing it like it was the first time you ever heard it. She could put nuances into a song that no one else could. She had longevity that no one else had. She could sing just about anything and be the master of it. She had an incredible ability to mimic instruments vocally and became the greatest female exponent of scat singing. She could take that standard and have you in tears before she was finished. She could take the same song the next day and have you laughing before she was finished. She could take the same song the next day and sing it as if she were a trumpet and have you cheering for more. She was unique.

    The real day the music died was 15th June, 1996 and the world of vocal music has long since been the poorer for her absence. To truly understand how brilliant she was, you need to grab just about anything she ever recorded. However, amongst the very best stuff is the music she recorded for Verve and in particular the Song Book series. All have been remastered superbly and this is where you can see what Ella Fitzgerald could do with both her voice and the songs. Start with Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Song Book and keep on investigating...

    This all-too-brief look at the life of Ella Fitzgerald is a mixture of modern interview material from some of the people she worked with, some of her friends and some of her family with archival interview material (notably with Andre Previn) and performances from television, stage and screen. Whilst her life was not a bed of roses, and certainly the hellish sides of her life are not ignored, the emphasis is always on the music that she brought to the world. From the time she recorded perhaps her most famous song in 1938 (A-tisket, A-tasket), just about the entire musical world came to understand how great she was. The programme looks at the highs of gaining fame in the Chick Webb band, the lows and struggles after he died and the rise again principally through the work of Norman Granz to break her out of just the jazz clubs. Wherever she went, she was adored. The calibre of musicians we see in this programme are a true indication of how great she was too: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Joe Pass and Harry "Sweets" Edison to name but a few. When you are the best, you get to play (and sing) with the best. But we also get to see the other side of her life - her deep caring for children for instance - for which she was perhaps not so well known.

    The one regret I always have is that I came to her music way too late in my life - although I sure made up for that in a hurry! You can be assured that when this release was announced I was all over it on the allocation list! It might not be the best documentary you will ever see, but it is interesting and does present a large chunk of performance that demonstrates just how good she was. If you have any interest at all in great singing, then this is an absolutely essential purchase.

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Track Listing

1. A-tisket, A-tasket
2. It Don't Mean A Thing
3. S'Wonderful
4. Misty
5. Angel Eyes
6. It's All Right With Me
7. I Want Something To Live For
8. Summertime
9. The Man I Love
10. Lush Life
11. The Lady Is A Tramp
12. For Once In My Life
13. Once In A While

Transfer Quality

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and as such it is not 16x9 enhanced. You should remember that the age of the material here is rather wide and the source is also rather eclectic: variability is the name of the game here.

    Some of the archival material is rather soft in definition and detail but that is to be expected. I have seen better but I have also seen worse. Shadow detail is very ropey in the older material, and there is an inconsistent issue with grain. However, the more recent material is of excellent quality, nicely sharp and very well detailed. That establishes the extremes - you find plenty of stuff in between those two extremes. In an overall sense, this did not disappoint from a quality point of view nor did it exceed any expectations that I might have had.

    The colours, as well as the blacks and whites, are a little all over the place. Whilst there is nothing wrong with the recent interview material, which is well saturated, nicely vibrant, has plenty of depth to the blacks and generally is really good looking, some of the other stuff is rather ropey. This is especially true of some of the club footage, where the blacks and whites are definitely more greys and greys, and then across a rather narrow band. The bottom line is though that the colours are no worse than we would anticipate for this sort of material. Yes, better would be nice, but we have to take what we are given to see some of this rare material.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There was not much in the way of film-to-video artefacts in the transfer either. Oh, but how there are film artefacts in the source material, especially the older stuff and the material sourced from television. Scratches, dirt marks, film dirt, flaring, you name it, it is probably here. Some of the archival material looks pretty ropey indeed, but there is not much that can be done about it short of everything being thoroughly and painstakingly restored. Since they rarely do it for feature films, I doubt that we can expect it for material such as this.

    This is a single sided, single layer formatted DVD, so there is no layer change to worry about.

    Nothing is offered in the way of subtitles on the disc, which is rather disappointing.

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

Audio

    There is just the one soundtrack on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 effort.

    Given that some of the source material dates back to the war, and much of it has hardly been cared for lovingly, you can bet there are plenty of problems here. Thankfully, those problems do not significantly impinge upon the programme in a wider sense. The dialogue and vocals are generally easy enough to understand, although obviously the modern interview material is vastly superior to the archival material. There did not seem to be any significant problem with audio sync, although the age of some of the source material does mean that there are a few minor problems here and there.

    The main problem with the material is that it is rather hissy - well actually it ranges from something akin to an angry rattlesnake in a calico bag type of hissy through to minor background hiss. You certainly cannot avoid the hiss. There is also a deal of the old crackle going on in the sound too. Normally I would have not had a problem with the limitations of the source material, but given the quality of some of the early CD recordings I have of the lady, I know that a lot better could have been achieved.

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

Extras

    Staggeringly, absolutely nothing whatsoever, not even a track listing.

Menu

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    You would have thought that since this is coded for all Regions, the Region 1 release would be the same as what we have here. Not so. The Region 1 release does have something in the way of extras, namely about twenty minutes of additional interviews, two of the Memorex commercials that she did and a discography that scrolls whilst I Want Something To Live For plays over it. I don't know if it is a complete discography, but even if it is a partial one it is very long! So basically, Region 1 is the region of choice.

Summary

    Whilst the basic programme is very good, even though it could and should have been longer, the DVD itself is not. At the asking price, I think we have every right to expect the full extras package of the Region 1 release, if not more. In addition, a basic track listing and chaptering to get to those songs are absolute essentials missing from here. The DVD is a disappointment but the programme itself almost more than makes up for the DVD's shortcomings. Ella Fitzgerald - Something To Live For is definitely an A-grade programme released on a budget DVD, but with a premium price on it.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (Biological imperfection run amok)
Monday, January 05, 2004
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-515, using S-Video output
DisplaySony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-795
SpeakersEnergy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL

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