Giants of Rock 'n' Roll: Filmed in Rome (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Cast Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	131:36 (Case: 139)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (77:20)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Bruce Gowers
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	James Brown Little Richard Jerry Lee Lewis BB King Ray Charles
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$31.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/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	No

    For a basic plot synopsis of this event, refer to my original review. For those who have already purchased the original DVD release, it is questionable whether or not you may find the need to purchase this new version, as the extra one hour's footage contained in this new release is really just more of the same. In fact, after having reviewed both versions, I can honestly say that the one hour version was indeed a very well edited summary of the highlights.

    For those who didn't purchase the original DVD, but are considering doing so now, you now have a choice; either purchase the original one hour edited highlights version, or see this concert in its entirety. Now as a personal opinion, if faced with this choice I would normally always opt for the unedited version, as I like to see these sorts of events in full in order to get a proper feel for the event in its context. I am also as a rule vehemently opposed to being subjected to edited versions of live concerts, be they either on CD or DVD, as it always leaves me wondering what songs I missed out on and why. However in this case, if you want my personal opinion after reviewing both versions, I would honestly recommend you go for the edited version. This is for two principal reasons; firstly the extra one hour of footage now available contains quite a lot of "filler" songs in my opinion, and secondly this new disc only has limited chapter indexing, making it hard to skip past individual songs.

    The chapter indexing on this disc actually corresponds to the artists, not the songs, so that for example Chapter 1 contains the 4 songs by James Brown. This means that if you didn't like song number 3, "Please, Please, Please", and wanted to skip forward, you would end up going straight to chapter 2/song 5, the first song by Bo Diddley. This was obviously done to make it easy for the viewer to jump straight to their favourite artist from the main menu, which is great. However the pain of it is that once you start to watch the feature, if you do come to a "filler" track that you decide you want to skip (and believe me you will!), unfortunately you're either stuck with listening to it or being forced to resort to the manual fast forward button, which is rather impractical in a live concert where you can't easily discern where the song ends and the next begins.

    If you've read my original review plot synopsis then you will appreciate that I did not really warm to this concert the first time around. I certainly didn't warm to it again this time around and reiterate my original comment that I would have much preferred to see documentary footage of all of these greats performing from their heyday, rather than a modern concert of aging, fat, has-beens who should know that they are past it.

    Following is a legend of the artists appearing in this full concert version, to reconcile to the track listing below. You will note there is one new artist this time around. Also, for what it's worth, following are my opinions of the performance of each relevant artist, indicating some of the highlights and lowlights of the event:

1 = James Brown:  whatever magic and audience appeal this man had - and I'm sure he did have it - I'm afraid he must have lost it decades ago!
2 = Bo Diddley:  now this guy still does have energy and pizzazz, and he still enjoys playing the guitar and having fun. This artist was a highlight for me.
3 = Ray Charles:  a genuine and talented song writer and pianist. Mr Charles is always a pleasure to listen to and, maybe because he remains sedate and seated, he stands out as a man who doesn't look out of place still performing in this concert.
4 = Little Richard:  ahem, now this man is really scary!  I sure hope Michael Jackson doesn't look this scary in about twenty years' time! Mr Richard comes across to me as almost senile in this concert, which is very very sad for a past legend of his stature. I wish he'd stayed at home. This is definitely the low-light of the concert for me. It is obvious why nearly all of his performance was edited out of the previous release.
5 = Jerry Lee Lewis:  this guy can still tinkle the old ivories. He's a talented, no nonsense performer and interesting to see.
6 = Dave Edmunds (NEW):  I didn't know of this "legend" previously, but found him fairly forgettable on my first introduction to him.
7 = Fats Domino:  obviously a very genuine fellow,  but I did not find him very entertaining.
8 = BB King:  another gentleman of music, as well as an undisputed and talented blues legend. Mr King was another highlight for me.

Video

    The video transfer quality is generally fine for a concert that was evidently shot on analogue video for TV broadcast. The transfer is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, is as sharp as might be expected for its source, and is generally acceptably coloured.

    Foreground resolution is generally OK. On closer inspection however, you can see that the outlines of images for the main foreground artists is quite soft and indistinct; this is a source issue rather than a transfer issue. Background detail is not great and there is plenty of low level noise apparent if you care to zoom into the image - expectedly so for an analogue video source - however the background resolution does remain ineffectual enough  when viewed normally at full frame.

    Colour is satisfactory for the most part, with skin tones occasionally a bit off and some colours not perfectly saturated, but hey, let's allow a bit of leeway here in acknowledgement of how hard it is to capture the harsh bright colours in a live rock concert environment. In addition, the ability to capture colours correctly, particularly the blacks, is again going to be limited by the analogue video source.

    There are no material MPEG artefacts, distracting film-to-video artefacts such as wholesale aliasing, or film artefacts per se, other than the noise and resolution deficiencies inherent in the source material. There is a prominent and noticeable image jar at 112:42, but it is momentary.

   There are no subtitles.

    The disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change occurring rather jarringly at 77:20, just before Jerry Lee Lewis' set.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    All-in-all, the audio mix serves the purpose OK for this particular feature, as after all this is not an overly demanding, high-tech, multi-layered live concert sound to be reproduced here. The mix's many faults include:

• the sound borders on distortion in isolated parts - listen to the vocals and trumpets on "I'm A Fool For You", for example.
• the mix is fairly flat, with drums sounding quite tinny in parts and little substantive bass in many songs.
• the sounds tend to bleed and rumble together in the mix at times - listen to how rumbly the drums become in "Bo Diddley" or "Down in My Heart".
• the front to rear balance is unnaturally rear-weighted at times, especially during Dave Edmunds' and Fats Domino's sets.

    On the positive side, dialogue quality is mostly fine - apart from the aforementioned isolated instance bordering on distortion, which is the noted exception to the rule.

    Audio sync is not perfect, at least on my player, with the audio tending to arrive just a tad ahead of the video, but this is only noticeable with some of the facial close-ups and is otherwise not problematic.

    The surround presence is surprising in this transfer - it is quite pronounced and effective at times. Possibly too effective in fact, owing to some unnatural weighting in the mix.

    The subwoofer gets only limited deployment, as many songs are devoid of substantive bottom end in this mix.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The bio text screens are a great inclusion. There are a good 7 or 8 screens of text information for each individual artist, providing effectively a short essay on the life and musical achievements of each performer, helping to place each in context as a "legend" or "giant" of the era. This is a worthy inclusion as an extra and makes for very interesting reading. The omission of this extra from the original DVD release is a sore loss.

    For the record, all menu screens are 1.33:1 still screens. The main menu screen and most of the other screens have audio underscoring.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall