Dionne Warwick-Sings Bacharach and More (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio Trailer-More Musical Moments
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	55:45 (Case: 30)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Dionne Warwick
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	None Given

    Dionne Warwick was a major pop/R&B star from the 1960s to 1980s and still continued to chart, at least in the US, into the 1990s. She is still recording new material, releasing a newly recorded album in 2004. Personally, I have never been overly attracted to her music despite having a huge collection of soul & R&B. I always felt she was too far toward Pop music for my tastes. Despite that I have enjoyed some of her songs and decided to take a look at this DVD to see if it changed my mind.

    The DVD is actually broken into two parts; a collection of live television performances running approximately 16 minutes and a documentary produced in 2001 for the Biography channel running just under 40 minutes. They are presented as separate titles on the disc but neither is really presented as an extra.

    The first part which is referred to as Performance on the menu includes performances from two different television shows, although the disc does not specifically say from what shows or when. A bit of research leads me to believe that the first two songs, which incidentally are not listed in the correct order on the cover, are from a TV show called Tom Jones : Coast to Coast from 1981 and the rest is from a show called The 5th Dimension Travelling Sunshine Show from 1971. The first section features Dionne singing Long Road Ahead Of Us followed by some chat with Tom and then a duet, Endless Love. The second section features a trio of female singers who are Dionne Warwick & Marilyn McCoo and Florence La Rue Gordon of The 5th Dimension. They perform a medley of various hit songs (includes Do You Know The Way to San Jose?, Up Up & Away, Say A Little Prayer and more) followed by all three singing She's A Lady and then Dionne solo on Games People Play. The cover intimates that all of the songs in the medley are present as separate tracks. I did not find any of the live performances particularly wonderful, however I am sure they would be of interest to fans.

    The second part is entitled Dionne Warwick sings Bacharach and is a documentary about Dionne Warwick's life and career focusing on her long term partnership with Burt Bacharach and Hal David who wrote most of her hits. The documentary includes interviews with many friends, relatives and colleagues of Dionne including Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, Dick Clark, Elton John, her sons, her sister, aunt and mother, Leslie Uggams, Solomon Burke, Hal David, Burt Bacharach and the lady herself. It covers many facets of her life and career and is quite interesting. It includes details of her rise to stardom, her marriages, her interest in astrology, including hosting a TV show, and various controversies during her career.

    This disc is certainly of interest to fans of Dionne, especially the old live performances, however I can't say it changed my mind about her music.

Video

    The video quality is very good considering a lot of old television footage is involved but you wouldn't get too excited about it.

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is probably the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was reasonably clear and sharp throughout considering the source, with no evidence of low level noise. There was some light grain.

    The colour was fine but there was some chroma noise and colour bleeding in the old television footage.

    From an artefacts perspective, I noticed some tape tracking errors at 14:55 in the performance section and some edge enhancement.

    There are no subtitles.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is very good considering the source.

    This DVD contains two audio options in the performance section, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s. The 5.1 track had a nice warm full sound but as you would expect very little significant surround activity. The earlier footage was a little muffled and distorted but not too bad. The documentary only allowed for Dolby Digital 2.0. The sound here was fine without setting the world on fire. A tape tracking error at 14:55 in the performance footage caused a sound drop-out.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync.

    The surround speakers added some mild atmosphere.

     The subwoofer was not particularly noticeable.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu was very simple, just allowing for audio choices.

Trailers

    Four trailers for other related titles from Umbrella are included. The titles are The Four Tops, Rhythm, Love & Soul, Smokey Robinson Live & Chaka Khan Live. Personally, I would be keen to see any of these titles.

    This disc appears to only be available in Region 4 although it is coded for all regions.

    The video quality is very good considering the source.

    The audio quality is very good considering the source.

    The disc has no real extras, with only some trailers for other available titles on offer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall