"Led
Zeppelin The Song Remains the Same" on Blu-ray Disc
This flick is a good
example of what you're likely to get when a studio gives rock stars a
bag of money and sends them off to make their own movie.
It isn't that "The
Song Remains the Same" is a bad movie. It just isn't really much of a movie
at all. Sure, it has some great concert footage of Led Zeppelin performing at
Madison Square Garden, and this is by far the highlight of the flick, but the problem is they didn't limit this to being a concert film. Nope, they tried to make
an art movie out of it - and they shouldn't have.
It takes about thirteen
minutes to reach the first concert footage. Until then you have to sit
through (or fast forward through!) a staged Mob hit and endlessly self
indulgent footage of the band members at home living their country squire
existences.
Fortunately, they
open the real musical footage with a searing rendition of "Rock &
Roll" followed immediately by "Black Dog," the two opening
numbers (though in reverse order) from the band's classic "IVth"
album.
Jimmy Page is the
real star here. One of rock's finest guitarists, he shone in Led Zeppelin and
in "Song Remains the Same" you get to see lots of him in action. Even here, however, they'd chosen the "artsy fartsy
route" and insist on jazzing up the shots rather than just letting us watch him play.
Please! This is one
of rock's great bands!
Robert Plant proves
he's much better in the studio, where he can swallow his uvula and wail
with the best of them. He doesn't appear nearly as up to it on stage,
however, only going through the vocal motions while concentrating on "rock
star posing and preening" instead.
The other band members,
John Paul Jones and the late John Bonham, aren't as well featured in the
flick (much as John Entwistle is treated in Who material), but they have
their moments and come across as the journeymen rockers they were.
Of course just when
you're beginning to settle into the concert footage, they break off again
for another scene, either some contrived fantasy or some "backstage"
stuff that does an excellent job of showing the size of the egos at play
around this Supergroup.
The movie has a least received a decent Blu-ray treatment. The film has been remastered and remixed and the 1080p widescreen picture quality is very colorful, though it has more than its share of grain. The DVD was quite grainy most
of the time, too, whether intentional or not we can't tell, so perhaps this explains the noise on the Blu-ray disc.
The
audio's pretty good. Warners offers it in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (and "garden variety" 5.and it has pretty good
dynamics considering their ancient, analog source. In all, it isn't bad to crank.
Extras, which were virtually nonexistent on the DVD, include two "never released before" performances - Celebration Day and a searing version of Over the Hills and Far Away. You also get performances of The Ocean and Misty Mountain Hop - all of which would be better served spliced into the movie at the expense of some artsy fartsy stuff.
And that isn't it. You also get some old TV footage (Led Zeppelin Robbed during their 1973 concerts, including Plant on the BBC and a news report. There's also the original trailer.
Now how about a Blu-ray of How the West Was Won?
Led Zeppelin, The
Song Remains the Same, from Warner Home Video
136 minutes, Widescreen (1.85:1), Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Starring John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page
Jim Bray's columns are available from the TechnoFile Syndicate.
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