Joy Enriquez-Live in Puerto Rico (Music in High Places) (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette-Behind The Scenes Featurette-Getting There Interviews-Cast TV Spots Featurette-Location Footage Music Video Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	52:45
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Alan Carter
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Joy Enriquez Marcelo Berestovoy Rick Deliz Andreas Geck Rafael Padilla
Case	Click
RPI	$39.95	Music	Joy Enriquez

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.75:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.75:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	German French	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, MSN Music in High Places
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, on location "off cuts"

    The idea behind Music In High Places (a travel adventure cable TV series not yet shown in Australia to my knowledge) sounds interesting - take a musician/recording artist to an exotic/remote location, get them to talk to the locals and visit famous landmarks a la Michael Palin's travel adventures and get them to perform some of their best known songs "on location." Package it all up as a travelogue or travel documentary cum music videos/live performances. Microsoft has also got into the act by making certain segments from the series available as streaming Windows Media files on MSN (http://www.musicinhighplaces.msn.com - although when I recently tried to access this site it seems to have disappeared and MSN doesn't seem to mention it anymore).

    This "instalment" or "episode" features Latina R&B singer Joy Enriquez travelling around Puerto Rico and singing at various locations.

    Joy is a Mexican American born and raised in Whittier, California. She is probably not well-known to Australians - apart from the occasional guest appearance on the TV sitcom "7th Heaven" and singing the love song "How Can I Not Love You" from the film "Anna And The King." In the United States, she initially won recognition through her participation in the "Star Search" series and going on to record for Babyface.

    The music performances in the feature are edited like music videos (footage shot on location is spliced together as a montage of images together with cuts to Joy and her small group of musicians performing at various locations in Puerto Rico). The performances are pretty much captured "raw" or "unplugged."

    Joy visit several places, including:

• singing, dancing and eating at the El Rancho Lechonera
• visiting the sinkhole and cavern at Rio Camuy
• wandering around a "theme park" replicating the buildings of old San Juan and visiting the zoo
• visiting the El Morro Fortress
• walking the streets of the town of San Juan, and hearing Glenn Monroig sing
• flying into the island of Vieques
• the ruins of the Lafeyette Sugar Refinery

    The musicians accompanying Joy include

• Marcelo Berestovoy (guitar)
• Rick Deliz (guitar)
• Andreas Geck (bass)
• Rafael Padilla (percussion)

    All in all, I think I enjoyed this more as a travelogue than as a music DVD, but it was nice listening to an acoustic version of How Can I Not Love You, which is easily my favourite song on this disc. Joy herself is very voluble and talkative, and no doubt very easy on the eyes if you are so inclined.

Video

    Apart from the opening title sequence, which is presented in full frame, the feature is presented in roughly 1.75:1 but with no 16x9 enhancement.

    Surprisingly, even though the transfer is based on a video source (presumably interlaced), the overall video quality is not too bad. The amount of detail is consistent with that of a video camera. Certain scenes look very detailed although overall the transfer is probably just a little on the soft side. Colours are quite natural and only have a very slight tendency to be on the yellowish side.

    The video transfer quality for this disc is higher than the previous two discs (Brian McKnight and BBMak) in the Music In High Places series that I have reviewed. I did not notice any significant instances of compression artefacts or even interlaced video artefacts, apart from very occasional aliasing and shimmering.

    There are three subtitle tracks on the disc, but the first one appears to be a silent subtitle track. The other two are French and German subtitle tracks. I turned them on briefly just to check that they do exist.

    This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). I did not notice the layer change, and I suspect it occurs in between titles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are two audio tracks present: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s) and English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 Kb/s) . I listened to mainly the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track.

    The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track appears to be sourced from a stereo mix and then electronically enhanced for surround. The rear channels are used to convey ambience and the centre channel is silent. The LFE track is mainly used to reinforce the low frequencies in the track.

    Unlike the other two discs in the series that I have reviewed, the quality of the Dolby Digital 5.1 track is very poor, to the point of being virtually unlistenable. The sound track is recorded at a very low level, and sounds extremely muffled and lacking in high frequencies even when the volume level is boosted.

    The Dolby Digital 2.0 track sounds much better even though in comparison with a reference quality audio track it is still fairly mediocre.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are a fair amount of extras accompanying this disc, none of them 16x9 enhanced. The only extra not included that I can think of would be an audio commentary track, but that would be pretty superfluous since the main feature itself is a commentary of sorts on the location and the music.

    Most of the video extras appear to be presented in 1.75:1 (letterboxed) with a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track.

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static.

Featurette - Behind The Scenes (5:06)

    This is a short making-of featurette featuring interviews with:

• Joy Enriquez
• Manny Bonilla (camera operator)
• David West (director of photography)
• Ed Moore (engineer)
• Andreas Geck (bass guitar)

Featurette - Getting There (3:50)

    This is a montage of scenes which look like off-cuts from the programme. There is no accompanying dialogue narration, but there are some "sound bites" of the cast and crew.

Interview - Joy Enriquez (29:19)

    This contains the extended version of the interview segments, excerpts of which made it to the main feature. Joy is obviously responding to questions posed by an unseen interviewer whose dialogue has been edited out (apart from the occasional muted comment).

Featurette - Promo Spots (0:37)

    This features Joy Enriquez making sound and video "bites" promoting the Music In High Places series on DirectTV, MSN and Radio Shack.

Featurette - Location Footage (34:48)

    This is an extended version of the scenes of Joy visiting various places in Puerto Rico (on a boat, on the streets of San Juan, in a tourist transport on the way to a sinkhole), including sections where she chats with various local guides. The scenes in the cave are very dark. Incidentally, the camera CCD looks like it has a dead pixel and there is a persistent, slightly blurry, white spot slightly to the right just above the midpoint.

Music Videos

    At first I thought this was a scene selection menu that takes you to the chapters containing the music performances, but it appears that these are separate music videos of the following songs:

• Without You (5:03)
• Situation (4:13)
• Losin' The Love (4:27)
• Not Alone (4:07)
• Just When I Needed You (2:58)
• Vete Ya (1:12)
• How Can I Not Love You (4:44)
• Shake Up The Party (3:54)
• Someday (3:57)

    The reason why I think these are separate music videos instead of excerpts from the main feature are that;

1. The video footage is actually different, which you can verify by comparing the music video with the corresponding chapter on the main feature. In general, the music video focuses more on the musicians playing the music rather than splicing in on location footage.
2. There is only one audio track for these music videos, Dolby Digital 2.0, as opposed to both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 on the main feature.

Biographies-Cast-Joy Enriquez

    This is a set of seven stills providing a short biography of Joy Enriquez.

    The disc appears to be identical across Region 1 and 4, with the possible exception of subtitle tracks.

    Music In High Places - Joy Enriquez (Live in Puerto Rico) features the young Mexican American singer touring various locations around Puerto Rico and performing a selection of her songs. The video transfer is reasonable, but the audio transfer sounds rather muffled and soft. Extras are reasonable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall