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Shine A Light
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon & Noor Razzak (15th September 2008). |
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The Film
 The movie beings, appropriately enough, with Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger talking about how to start the movie. A few days later, I imagine, a few days before the concert, Martin Scorsese wants to know the concert's setlist to know on whom to concentrate his cameras, while Mick Jagger is still debating and revising the setlist he wants, looking at Mr. Scorsese's suggestions. The day of the big show, Ronnie Wood looks forward to the final setlist, still not knowing what he'll be playing in a few hours, while Charlie Watts is silently annoyed by the lighting tests done for the movie. The concert time gets closer, and band members rejoice that there will be a live audience soon enough. Finally, in his booth, Mr. Scorsese gets the setlist, with the first song being 'Jumping Jack Flash', and so the concert beings with the camera on Keith Richards. The music starts and everything falls into place. Mr. Scorsese has the camera angles he wants, and the camera moves smoothly across the stage and around the audience, capturing the magic that is a Rolling Stones concert. Indeed, the editing and filming are very well done, getting all kinds of small moments the audience sees, but that filmgoers would usually miss due to the limitations of the film frame. Martin Scorsese knows how to capture the special moments that happen on stage and convey how those things make a concert a special event. Little additions on guitar or looks by the band members are all caught on camera, and give the viewers arguably a better view of the concert than members of the audience. There's nothing better than getting the best seat in the house, even amid great songs. In between the various songs throughout the concert are spliced-in clips of The Rolling Stones at various points in their career. The clips start 2 years after they started, to the late 1970's, it seems. Through them, you learn their history and some of the hardships they went through. These clips only gloss over their career and never really focus on particularly good or bad events. This movie is about the concert and the clips chosen only reflect that. The band members talk about music and not much else. In addition to this, the fans had some nice surprises, as the group welcomed a few special guests. Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera join the gang on stage, helping pump up the energy levels and drive the fans absolutely wild. The energy for the 2-hour-plus show is extremely high throughout, and The Rolling Stones, after 40 years can still deliver a great show. For those attending the concert, it must have been quite an experience, and thanks to Scorsese's masterful eye and attention to detail, the concert is very enjoyable for home viewing, as well.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1 this transfer is presented in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been created using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The film was shot on various formats including 16mm, 35mm and also some digital footage was also shot. The transfer does a balancing act of maintaining the quality of the image throughout the film and considering the various stocks used to shot this documentary Paramount does a great job in retaining the look in which Scorsese was after. The image retains a lot of grain, especially the 16mm footage which looks heavy and textured, exactly as it should. The rest maintains a consistent level and it does look like film, I'm glad Paramount didn't put this film through a digital noise reduction process which seems to be a new trend among HD releases. There is a combination of black and white footage and color footage, the black and white maintains a high contrast while the color footage looks consistent, blacks are nice and bold and detail does look good. There's some archival material thrown in as well and that's about the only footage that looks big aged and worn but otherwise it's a great image that retains its rough and gritty documentary style well.
Audio
Three audio tracks are present on this Blu-ray disc, an English DTS-HD lossless Master Audio 5.1 presented at 48kHz/24-bit as well as an English Dolby Digital TrueHD track presented at 48kHz/24-bit and finally an English PCM 2.0 stereo track. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its DTS-HD track. This is a documentary that focuses a lot on the music so there's not much in the way of active action surrounds, however the film's soundtrack is powerful and impacting. The music soars and breaths life into the 5.1 channels, dialogue is clear and distortion free. It's a fine musical track that takes you right into the concerts and surrounds are active with crowds and all that makes for a great sound experience. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.
Extras
Paramount has released this Blu-ray disc with a few extras, usually Scorsese discs are packed full of stuff, but unfortunately "Shine a Light" is a bit slim. Included is a featurette and some bonus songs. Below is a closer look. First is a "Supplemental" featurette which runs for 15 minutes 10 seconds, which is just a supplement to the movie. It's basically an extra 15 minutes to the movie. It's vintage interview bits spliced in with rehearsal footage of the band practicing on the big day (or a little bit earlier). It's fun to watch but doesn't really belong in the movie. Some bonus songs are next. These are just more songs from the concert: - "Undercover of the Night" which runs for 4 minutes 25 seconds. - "Paint It Black" which runs for 4 minutes 39 seconds. - "Little T & A" which runs for 4 minutes 8 seconds. - "I'm Free" which runs for 3 minutes 34 seconds. "Paint It Black" is probably one my favorite Stones songs so I'm glad it's included. The musical and other credits are next and are basically 8 text pages of information.
Overall
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