George Harrison + Paul
McCartney – Music Box Biographical Collections (2 separate DVDs)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Programs - McCartney: D Harrison: C
Well, after the odd and substandard Kurt Cobain
installment of the Music Box Biographical Collection, a series about
music stars that does not license their music, we just had to see what would be
done with two of The Beatles. Here, we
have discs on Paul McCartney and George Harrison. With longer careers and more available footage that we may not
have seen much of, there was a chance these would be good. Right?
No. The McCartney
installment gets off to a very bad start by having a very bad impersonator of
the man (circa 1963) and then going on with The Beatles era, skipping Wings,
yet obsessing about his marriage with Linda.
Then, after 40 minutes, we have only a series of drug arrests to
consider. This was stupid, badly edited
and the newer video footage is very poorly placed into the drawing of a TV that
has both marked and marred this series.
The Harrison disc is supposed to be about music, then
veers off into the interesting area of film production, something Apple Corp.
did not engage in as successfully as they had hoped for. Unfortunately, since these programs are just
spliced together without narrative and in often-sloppy ways, nothing is made of
this enough either. If you know about
film like this critic, it is more interesting, but it is more limited on its
own. As a matter of fact, this disc
should be retitled and a different program be made under the Music Box
name. That, of course, is not
happening. The show eventually gets
back to music.
The full frame image has occasional letterboxing at times,
though much of it looks forced and phony.
The PCM 2.0 sound on both discs is surprisingly weak and even with no
original music licensed, it might as well have been Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono,
though this series would have made than worse.
There are no extras and each program is only about an hour each, so
these are extremely basic titles and you should get them at your own risk. The McCartney installment is just a total
disaster and even insulting.
- Nicholas Sheffo
