Lou Primais-The Wildest (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Booklet Additional Footage-Extra footage, music clips and interviews
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	80:35
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Don McGlynn
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Louis Prima
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$39.95	Music	None Given

    Louis Prima was one of the great entertainers of this century. Few had the enthusiasm and zest for life that Louis did. You could see this obvious enthusiasm for life in his stage performance. Louis started out as a straight Jazz musician playing a mean trumpet, moved to swing when swing was big, had a big band of his own and wrote some of the great Jazz standards in Sing, Sing, Sing, and Just a Gigolo. It is a testament to his staying power that he remained popular for over 40 years and was one of the establishing acts that made Las Vegas the entertainment town it is today.

    Louis Prima, the Wildest! is an 80 minute documentary that examines his music and background, influences and impact. Interviews with family members, band members and music experts round out a story of a very interesting and charismatic man. Louis always looked for, played to and revelled in a responsive audience. This is clearly seen in this documentary. The documentary goes into reasonable detail about most facets of his life and the early Jazz scene that he grew up in. At the end, I felt a lot closer to understanding a little of what made Louis Prima tick.

Video

    The picture was not very sharp on the whole but given the age of much of the footage one has no real reason to complain. Things like shadow detail, quality of the blacks, and so forth, vary wildly in documentaries such as this. This documentary was no exception.

    Colours, when present, were slightly muted but not problematic.

    MPEG artefacts were not problem here. Film grain and artefacts existed in most of the film-sourced footage. There was a major flaw in the videotape source that can be seen eight minutes into the feature. Overall, the considerable age of much of the source material is easily discernable on the DVD.

    This was an RSDL disc with  no observable layer change. Presumably, the bonus materials are on the other layer of the disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue quality was varied, ranging from acceptable to very poor. Audio sync was not a problem.

    Music is what this man was about but the technical quality on display here is again dependant on the source.

    There is of course nothing for the surrounds or sub here.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Booklet

Additional Footage-Extra footage, music clips and interviews

    There are nine bonus items in the special features section. Five of these are footage with sound and show footage of Louis dancing or interviews with band members about particular topics. The other four are audio only, again with songs and interviews providing the material. All interviews and audio selections are between 30 seconds and five minutes in length. There are some interesting anecdotes among them, such as the story of why Louis named his big hit Sing, Sing, Sing. Although a modest collection of extras, they are still worth watching.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall