BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1995	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	69:13 minutes	Other Extras	Biography Menu Audio
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Findlay Bunting
Studio Distributor	Laserlight	Starring	Robbie Robertson Martin Scorsese Eric Clapton Barry Levinson Daniel Lanois
RRP	$34.95	Music	Robbie Robertson The Band

    It is essentially a sort of documentation of the life and times of Robbie, as spoken by himself, and with the help of some of the prominent friends he has made along his way - such as Martin Scorsese, Daniel Lanois, Eric Clapton and so on. Nice to see, also, such an eminent musician sound so down-to-earth, and not have a need to act "cool" or wear sunglasses or other silly things. I think that is why this is as interesting as it is, because he is without pretence and can openly and honestly relate many events in his life to the viewer.

    Whilst I cannot recommend this disc generally, anyone who is a fan of Robbie Robertson will surely find this a most worthwhile disc to own. Now myself, I am still waiting for any kind of documentary on Pink Floyd. Hello? Anyone?

Video

    At its best, the transfer was ordinary, and was generally quite soft and without much definition, even in the very recent interviews. Not too bad, just not too good! Shadow detail was fine, though it would never be a problem given the always good lighting. There was low-level noise in many scenes, particularly old footage, but that is to be expected. Really, this disc does not showcase the potential DVD offers, and pales in comparison with other similar documentaries I have seen in the video department.

    Colours were reasonable, though slightly low-key. There were many instances of chroma-noise, and quite often the image looked composite-sourced, with tell-tale dot crawl. But, this was not always apparent, and I cannot say for sure whether the entire documentary is composite-based or just parts of it.

    There were no significant MPEG artefacts, and the only grossly observable manifestation was during the closing credits, with the titling producing the Gibb effect, typical of low bit-rate transfers. Film artefacts were rife throughout the entire running length, regardless of the vintage of the material, but was naturally worse during the older footage. There were no film-to-video artefacts to speak of.

Audio

    Dialogue was always very clear, and with no lip-sync problems.

    On the occasion where we get a music clip, or a part thereof, the sound is most impressive, being clean and open with good frequency use. I quite like the style of his later work as documented here, and found myself wishing that many of the clips would be the entire songs, and not just small parts. But, that may be by design, and might provoke a sale of his latest album!

    This soundtrack is stereo only, though running it through your pro-logic decoder will add some nice surround ambience to his music.

    The subwoofer was called upon for his music clips, but since this is a spoken-word documentary more than anything else, it didn't have much to do.

    The menu is themed, with some audio enhancement. What is unique with this disc is the audio enhancement in the "scene" selection, or index menus. These are text only, but moving the focus to each of the chapter stops plays a snippet of audio from that chapter! Very cool.

Biographies

    The transfer is plain, but not problematic in any way - it's just not as good as it probably could be.

    The audio is quite good, and most of the songs come across very well.

    Clever use of menu audio and a short bio make up the extras on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall