Bob Marley-Spiritual Journey (2003) (NTSC)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Gallery-Photo Booklet-32 Pages CD-The Lion Of Reggae-14 Tracks Audio Interview-Cast-Bob Marley (on the CD)
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	56:05 (Case: 55)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Rajon Vision	Starring	Bob Marley
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$29.95	Music	Bob Marley

    I recently reviewed another DVD/CD release from Rajon, entitled Jimi Hendrix - Feedback. This product is along very similar lines being a documentary on a DVD about a musician and an accompanying CD of material by the artist in question. In this case, the artist is Bob Marley. This product includes a better CD of music than the Hendrix one, but the DVD material is not as good. I will cover the DVD here and the CD in the extras section below.

    The DVD contains a documentary about the life of Robert Nesta 'Bob' Marley featuring many interviews with his friends and family including his mother, his son Ziggy Marley, Bunny Wailer, Tony Calder, an ex-manager of the Rolling Stones, Chris Blackwell of Island records, two former Prime Ministers of Jamaica and many of his friends and childhood neighbours. It also includes a short interview with the man himself recorded for Canadian television mostly focusing on drugs, Rastafarianism and how they are responsible for all the crime in Toronto. The documentary is entitled His Journey. Generally, the documentary is pretty patchy, consisting of lots of disjointed footage stitched together rather than being one show, made at the same time. There is certainly some interesting stuff here such as a BBC report from Jamaica covering his funeral. Quite a bit of the running time is made up of stills of Bob Marley with music playing over them. There is no live performance footage of Marley.

    Topics covered include his childhood, his beliefs, the assassination attempt, his battle with cancer, living in the Trenchtown slums, his music, career and his many women and illegitimate children. None of these topics are covered in any great depth, more just mentioned in the various interview segments. Generally, I didn't feel this was much of a documentary despite including some worthwhile and interesting footage.

Video

    The video quality is average.

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is probably the original aspect ratio. The colour system is NTSC so those who cannot playback NTSC should avoid this product.

    The picture was variable in clarity and sharpness depending upon the footage being used. Most of the archive footage was quite soft and full of issues. The more modern interview footage was better but still nothing special. There was no evidence of low level noise. Grain was abundant in most archival footage, sometimes drifting into macro-blocking.

    The colour was generally quite washed out but better on newer footage. There were a couple of spots of minor cross-colourisation.

    Artefacts included some very minor aliasing and lots of specks, flecks and hairs on archive footage.

    There are subtitles in 6 languages but none of them are English. They were clear and easy to read, in white.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is decent.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was clear but quite often difficult to understand due to the Jamaican accents. Subtitles would have been very useful. There was no problem with audio sync.

    The music by Bob Marley & The Wailers sounds quite decent in this transfer. The songs used are from the 1971/72 period before they hit the big time. The CD also contains material from this era.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu included music and the ability to select scenes and subtitles.

Booklet

    An excellent full colour booklet of 32 pages is included in the case. It includes a quite interesting essay about his life and career plus lots of pictures. Better than the documentary.

Disc 1

Picture Gallery

    10 stills of Bob Marley which are the same as the ones used regularly throughout the documentary.

Disc 2

Music CD - The Lion of Reggae - Bob Marley & The Wailers

    This disc contains 14 quality tracks recorded by the original Bob Marley & The Wailers (including Peter Tosh & Bunny Wailer) in 1971/72 before they signed with Island records. Included are:

1. Lively Up Yourself 
2. Soul Rebel
3. Treat Yourself Right
4. Rebel's Hop
5. Soul Almighty
6. Kaya
7. Trenchtown Rock
8. Soul Shakedown Party
9. Natural Mystic
10. Fussing and Fighting
11. African Herbsman
12. Keep on Moving
13. Go Tell It On The Mountain
14. How Many Times 

Audio Interview

    After the music tracks a 29:17 audio interview with Marley is included. There is no information about when it was done or by whom. It's not bad but hardly spectacular.

    This disc is available globally in the same format right down to the colour system.

    The video quality is average.

    The audio quality is decent.

    A well packaged set which includes various extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall