Black Sabbath-Last Supper, The (PAL) (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Biographies-Cast Gallery-Photo Featurette-Reunion EPK
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	106:27 (Case: 120)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jeb Brien Monica Hardiman
Studio Distributor	Sony Music	Starring	Ozzy Osbourne Tommy Iommi Geezer Butler Bill Ward
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$29.95	Music	Black Sabbath

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    I'm only going to provide a quick plot synopsis here because I have a fair bit of ranting to do, and it is not going to be pretty. To understand the sort of impact that Black Sabbath has had on music the world over, one only really has to look at the number of bands who play music that can be traced directly back to them. In countries like Norway and Germany, it is practically chart music despite the best efforts of monopolistic record labels, and a large part of this can be credited to the fact that, in a world where Big Brother-ism only allowed bands to sing songs about the flower children and such garbage, Sabbath burst onto the world making music about how dismal their world truly was. As a point of interest, in fact, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings was partly inspired by the shift of a certain city from a quiet residential centre to one of the dirtiest, slimiest industrial sectors in all of England. That city is the same one that Black Sabbath grew up in - a place called Birmingham.

    Now, on to the ranting. Wyatt Smith, take note - under no circumstances do you ever, in your wildest dreams, contemplate interrupting a Black Sabbath song, not even with commentary by Black Sabbath themselves. There is as much a safety reason for this as there is an artistic one - Sabbath fans who paid good money for this disc will want to find out where you live, chase you up a tree, and set it ablaze when you do things like that. Sony Music Video, being a subsidiary of one of the richest corporations, if not the richest corporation, on Earth, can more than afford to insert the commentary via an extra audio track or seamless branching if needs be. The music needs to be treated with the respect it deserves. End of rant.

    Now, for those who want to read the tracklisting, here it is:

Video

    Where is my review of the NTSC version of The Last Supper? Essentially, these two discs are fundamentally identical, with only the telltale NTSC-to-PAL conversion artefacting to distinguish the two. Actually, that isn't quite true - there are some small differences, but they are so minor and incidental that they are not really worth mentioning at all.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced.

    The sharpness of this transfer is good, but not great, with the line structure occasionally being visible, especially during the interview footage. The shadow detail is poor, but no low-level noise is visible.

    The colours in this transfer are acceptably rendered within the limitations of live concert footage, with no composite artefacts on display. Obviously, the interview footage features much better colour saturation.

    MPEG artefacts were not noticed in this transfer. Film-to-video artefacts were frequently visible, usually on the neck of Tony Iommi's guitar or on Geezer Butler's bass strings, implements that often undo concert videos. Film artefacts were also frequently visible, with numerous flecks and scratches visible on the picture, making it look as if it had been stored in a litter box for the few years since the original NTSC VHS tape was released.

    There are no subtitles present on this disc, not that Hearing Impaired viewers would have that much interest in it to begin with.

    This disc is supposedly RSDL formatted, but I was not able to locate any layer change. Suffice it to say that it is not in the same place as the previous NTSC release of this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two soundtracks available on this DVD, both of them in English: the first soundtrack is a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack with a bitrate of 448 kilobits per second, the other is a Linear PCM soundtrack with a bitrate of 1536 kilobits per second. Fidelity is everything with live Black Sabbath songs, so the Linear PCM soundtrack is vastly superior, with the Dolby Digital soundtrack being much quieter, muddier, and generally flat.

    The vocals from Ozzy Osbourne are reasonably clear, excepting his tendency to lose focus when he speeds up his vocals to compensate for the faster live tempo that his bandmates put on. Tempos do tend to get faster live, and this definitely doesn't help Ozzy considering that the studio versions of these songs saw him slowing the session tape down a half-step in order to sing along with it. There are no discernable problems with audio sync.

    The music on this disc is wholly and solely the work of Black Sabbath, with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Geezer Butler on bass, and Bill Ward on drums. If ever one needs a demonstration of how relevant that music is today, just as it was in the Birmingham of the 1970s, one can always hunt down the Region 1 DVD of Type O Negative's cover of the song Black Sabbath named themselves after. Both versions take the inferior imitators that have sprung up on MTV ad nauseum and stamp them under their boots, as only the truly great musicians are apt to do.

    The surround channels were mildly used in the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack to redirect the ambience of the audience and guitar reverberations, but they were mostly redundant. The Linear PCM soundtrack actually sounds much clearer in spite of the extra channel separation of the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack - great bands always sound great no matter how many bits, channels, or Hertz you allocate them, anyway.

    The subwoofer, on the other hand, was used quite heavily by both soundtracks, with the Linear PCM soundtrack having a lot of bass information redirected while it was discretely encoded in the Dolby Digital soundtrack. It supported Geezer Butler's bass and Bill Ward's bass drums from start to finish, creating a warlike, roaring floor on the soundtrack without calling any attention to itself.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Another thing that is recycled from the previous disc is the extras.

Menu

    The menu features live footage of the band with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, although this is different, and not nearly as interesting as the live footage from the previous NTSC disc. It is not 16x9 Enhanced.

Cast Biographies

    Biographies for Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward. If you've read my comments about the biographies on the NTSC disc, then you know what I am going to say about these ones.

Photo Gallery

    A collection of blurry photos from the Reunion tour.

Featurette - Reunion EPK

   The only real reason to indulge in this effort is that it is an extended advertisement for the Reunion album with Ozzy Osbourne recording some of the vocals that appear on Psycho Man.

    The Region 1 version is identical to the NTSC disc that was previously sold here. Since both effectively mangle the concert footage, my advice is to buy neither.

    Black Sabbath are one of the most influential, and certainly one of the darkest, bands that has ever existed, but you wouldn't know that from the way their music has been presented on this DVD. If I were a member of the band, I'd be beating down SMV's door to have this disc redone with the music presented uncut, and the interview footage presented as a seamless branching extra a la Planet Of The Apes. As it currently stands, I cannot recommend this disc to anyone, not even the most hardcore Sabbath fan like myself.

    The video transfer is acceptable.

    The audio transfer is good.

    The extras are limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall