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Elton John: Tantrums and Tiaras
R1 - America - Echo Bridge Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (26th January 2009). |
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The Film
 Public fascination with celebrity can be easily seen in any supermarket or newsstand with all of the tabloids and pop-magazines like “People” that endlessly document the lives of celebrity. Though this sort of obsession is typically associated with pop culture or some hierarchical understanding of low-culture, the same fascination is easily applied to critics, but usually only when repackaged to give an actor a chance to step into the celebrity shoes in the form of a biopic. At the same time, actual documentaries about celebrities and musicians don’t seem to get as much acclaim, or at the very least aren’t produced with the same intensity or popularity. So when “Elton John: Tantrums and Tiaras” (1997) it’s not terribly surprising that it didn’t get a re-release during the days of “Ray” (2004) and “Walk the Line” (2005) when these sort of musician biographies were overly popular. Though instead of a dramatization, “Tantrums and Tiaras” gives an interesting and engaging look into the life of Elton John over the course of the mid 90’s. In this time span Elton goes on a worldwide tour for his upcoming album, wins the Oscar for “The Lion King” (1994) and generally does his own thing for the entire year. However, the most interesting part of the documentary comes from the perspective, filmed by Elton’s partner David Furnish, the documentary looks mostly behind the scenes at the impact of the workload upon John. The name itself “Tantrums and Tiaras” comes from John’s flamboyant lifestyle coupled with his fairly frequent temper tantrums and extreme reactions to anything that would seem to interrupt his hectic lifestyle from going. Even at one point while vacationing in the south of France, Elton flips out and decides to leave because someone annoyed him during a tennis match. The perspective of the documentary and the story it tells is interesting and fairly engaging, and at a mere 74 minutes it’s a fairly quick watch, but worth the viewer’s time. Furnish asks some interesting questions about Elton’s life that probably wouldn’t get answered by anyone else. Though this different perspective comes at the cost of production values as the documentary is filmed with what seem to be handheld VHS camcorders, leading to a low quality of video that isn’t really improved by the transfer to DVD at all. However, it’s well worth sacrificing visual quality for a more engaging documentary that’s able to take more of a glance at the performer's life rather than simply show off his box office sales and records. Though there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of introspection by Elton himself, it’s more designed to be an outside look at his fairly extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle, as well as Elton John as a person outside of the stage persona. Seeing celebrities joke around about inane things or laugh at stupid jokes really helps to make them seem more like people and less like icons, but this documentary seems to waver back and forth between his stage persona and the side that Furnish mostly sees, giving a fuller look at Elton John. Overall it’s a nice documentary that runs fairly short, but accomplishes it’s purpose. There’s some funny moments and it’s interesting to see a celebrity from a personal side rather than the biopic or “celebreality” that seems to be the norm.
Video
The 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio and the quality of the video reveal that it was obviously made on videocassette with handheld recorders, but the DVD feels like it was simply transferred directly from the VHS rather than with any kind of remastering. There are still occasional static tracking marks at the bottom of the frame that are frustrating to see on DVD.
Audio
Presented in English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, suffering from similar problems to the video, the 2.0 stereo sound on the DVD feels directly ripped from the VHS without any remastering, though if you look at some of the bonus material or deleted scenes you can tell there was definitely some remastering either originally or for this release. There are no optional subtitles on this disc.
Extras
There’s a suprising amount of special features on the disc, though it’s mostly in deleted scenes, 11 in all, and an audio commentary track all described below. First up is the audio commentary by Elton John and David Furnish, newly recorded for the DVD. Elton makes some catty comments and the two have a good banter, but there are a lot of pauses where they just watch the video or laugh along with what’s going on screen. It’s interesting to hear their voices and their comments on different points of the film, I just wish it could have been more fluid discussion of the documentary or whatever they decided to talk about as the pauses get a little annoying, but for the most part the frustration is outweighed by some of the comments. Next are the 11 deleted scenes which include: - “1st Confession” runs for 1 minute and 3 seconds, Elton talks about his last night in Rio De Janero, the length of the tour and wanting to get home. - “2nd Confession” runs for 2 minutes and 45 seconds where Elton talks about his addiction to eating and his new habit of keeping track of his meals and snacks. - “3rd Confession” runs for 1 minute and 54 seconds, Elton talks about recording labels, contracts and how well he’s been able to do in terms of being paid even if becomes unhappy with the label. - “Last Confession” runs for 1 minute and 39 seconds, Furnish and Elton talk about his addiction to drugs and alcohol, as well as the need to keep on working. - “Elton on Rod Stewart” runs for 3 minutes and 14 seconds, Elton marks up his calendar and talks up his upcoming dinner with Stewart, their careers and their relationship, along with some footage of Elton’s birthday party hosted by Rod Stewart. - “Funny” runs for 3 minutes and 31 seconds. In this candid scene Elton plays with a boxing Nun hand puppet and generally goofs around behind the scenes of some of his concerts, takes some photos with Madonna . - “Kylie Minogue” runs for 5 minutes and 13 seconds, Elton and Minogue rehearse for a performance together and he tries out some new dresses and drag. “Mario Testino” runs for 3 minutes and 37 seconds where Elton gets ready to pose for some photos and talks with his photographer about his album cover. “Shopping” runs for 4 minutes and 22 seconds, during a stay in Moscow Elton goes shopping and one of his handlers talks about security for the shopping adventure. “Gianni Versace” runs for 4 minutes and 25 seconds. Versace talks about the talent of Elton, their friendship and what he likes the most about John. “XXX Funny” runs for 2 minutes and 3 seconds. Elton plays around on the piano and sings about genitals, butts and everything else at various points.
Overall
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