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 Great in an altered or even unaltered state! As Pink Floyd draws you into it's realm, the borderline-stardom bandmembers show you a little of what they're about.
Here's the deal: Maben went back into the Abbey Road studios while the band was putting together DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in 1973 and shot some documentary footage of the band recording and talking. The new footage was spliced in between some of the original performances for the film and the result was released in 1974 in America; it was maybe 70-something minutes long. Unfortunately, this edit has not made it to the DVD. Now, this new version uses more footage from Abbey Road, some B&W I must say the new footage seems extremely out of place. It doesn't match visually with the old footage, looking very straight-to-video. Much of the editing of the original is broken up with splices to new stuff the director just couldn't keep out ("Hey, Pink Floyd is "spacey"--- I'll put in computer-generated shots of planets!"); the result is more a series of thematically related music videos than a unified movie. What really gets me is that there's an interview on the DVD with the director where on multiple occasions he touches on why the original and almost-original versions of the film were so special, and then he proceeds to destroy that with his new version. In the original, the ruined Pompeiian setting gave the movie a
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I was very excited when this DVD appeared (actually months earlier in other countries). I am rating this concert as the best Pink Floyd performance (although the recent Waters and Gilmor's concerts despite their age are very close). Nevertheless, the Director's Cut is actually quite inferior to the original movie (thanks God they included it also on the disc). First of all, it is anamorphic 19:9, i.e., parts of the picture is cut out and it shows. I would have rather concentrated on remixing the sound into 5.1 as they did with the Dark Side of the Moon. This was a missed opportunity to have an early Floyd in 5.1. Second, the movie is so watered down that the title "Live in Pompeii" becomes irrelevant. It looks like as "Live in the Cosmos" or "Live Somewhere with Occasional Presence in Pompeii". The original movie was perfectly balanced with respect to shots from Pompeii and around. I also don't understand the logic behind rearranging the original song sequence (I might be little conservative here). So hang on to those VHS tapes people (actually, the quality of the video of this VHS rivals many other DVDs and it is even better in some instances, as for example Peter Gabriel's Secret World live).
THIS EARLY FLOYD VIDEO GRABS THE ESSENCE OF THE BAND BEFORE SOME OF IT'S SKYROCKETING FAME. EXCELLENT VERSIONS OF ECHOES,ONE OF THESE DAYS...,AND SET THE CONTROLS...;HOWEVER,THE EXCERPTS OF DARK SIDE OF THE MOON STUDIO RECORDING SESSIONS ARE TOO BROKEN UP AND MAKE YOU CRAVE FULL- VERSION RECORDINGS! STILL A MUST FOR ANY DIEHARD FLOYD FAN. (THE BAND SHOWN IN IT'S EARLY(YOUNG!)STAGES WITH YOUTHFUL ,LONG-HAIRED MEMBERS GIVES YOU THE THRILL OF FOND MEMORIES OF OUR OWN CRAZED ADOLESCENCE. THANK YOU FLOYD!
Well, it seems PINK FLOYD: LIVE AT POMPEII director Adrian Maben has got himself a case of George Lucas disease. The new DVD release of the so-called "Director's Cut" of that film is completely re-edited, with a slew of new material, and it completely ruins the mood of the film. Thankfully, they included the original version of this haunting movie on the disc, as well. There's a drastic difference between the two.
