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  • Widescreen 1.78:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer ( )
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  • English: Dolby Digital Stereo
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    English, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish
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  • Production notes - Song Lyrics
  • 5 Photo gallery - Photo Gallery, Album Graphics, Posters, Bootleg covers, Roughs
  • Interviews
  • Fact file - History of Pompeii
  • Bonus feature film
Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii: The Director's Cut
Universal/Universal . R4 . COLOR . 91 mins . G . PAL

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One of the most self-indulgent bits of musical wankery put on film, or a Floyd lover’s wet dream?

Like most things Floydian, you’re either in the hate ‘em or love ‘em camp, and neither can convince the other they’re wrong, so I won’t bother trying. But you are wrong, very wrong, and you’ll only have yourself to blame if you miss this one.

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Who's Floyd? And why is he pink? Oh, pink pink.

Back in 1971, Pink Floyd were going a right treat, still a couple of years off releasing their monster that would be Dark Side of the Moon. Their fans were happily tripping the carrot fantastic and generally feeling that, hey, they were the centre of the universe after all, as long as they took a magic carpet ride to the inner cosmic self with the help of some artsy lyrical politicking and introspective psycho-babble mumbo-jumbo. Oh yeah, and smoking a whopping big joint while tripping on a tab on the back of a donkey. Wa-hey!

Then, smelling something special in the air (it probably wasn’t herbal shampoo), Adrian Maben gave the boys a call and eventually talked them into creating a concert film featuring Floyd, but sans that annoying by-product of most live performances, the audience. If Woodstock could have a million people in the crowd, Floyd would go one better and have no crowd at all.

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Whaoh, I got this..like..light thing growing outta my head! Good shit man!

Filmed in an amphitheatre which may have held the entire populace of Pompeii before the mountain went and popped its load in 79AD, Live at Pompeii could easily attract the moniker Live and Pompous for all its arty shots of bubbling mud and indulgently lingering scenes of Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright before a front projection screen playing stills of ancient art and oversized footage of the band itself.

The result, loved and loathed, again depending on which camp you sat your unwashed or enema-drained arse in, was definitely ‘something’ - not film, not concert, but something in between, which maybe thankfully hasn’t been done the same since.

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Floyd test the Pompeii sewage system together.

A little while ago, Maben revisited the film again, eager to ‘get it right’, and added new bits, including interviews with the lads which are insightful, maybe half in jest at times (who knows?) and perhaps in regards to Roger Waters a little dismissive of any alternative position and a touch defiant. But then that’s the Roger we all know and love, isn’t it? Maben has tried to tie it all together with a grander cosmic agenda bookend that doesn’t entirely work (see his interview on the disc to find out what the idea was if you can’t work it out yourself), but there’s no doubting that it adds something to the film that certainly isn’t out of place with this style of music.

Stick it in, switch it on, kick it back. It’s the Floyd!

  Video
  Audio
  Extras
Contract

I’m not going to bemoan the lack of a 5.1 mix in either Dolby or DTS, because the Dolby 2.0 stereo track services the music and the spectacle more than sufficiently. The road manager at the time thought that the quality of the 24 track recording was as good as any studio result, in part due to the reflections from the stone walls surrounding them. Maybe at the time that was so, but regardless this has obviously helped out here when porting it across to this groovy little shiny format. There are some moments when the soundstage will break out beyond the speakers and encroach deeper into the room, such as in Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, but I would have liked a little more authority in the bass, which seemed to be a little lacking in the bass line in One of These Days. There are many impressive points though and it manages to strike a comfortable balance.

The 1.78:1, 16:9 enhanced picture is clear but very soft. Shot on film, this brings a distinctive look of class to the performance and the overall film, so hopefully you’ll cope with the washed out colours, minor shimmering and varying levels of grain mostly centred on the insert footage. More contemporary footage, such as the CGI inserts and space scenery, looks equally soft, and possibly the average bitrate of 5.9mbps which never really climbs above 7mbps more than a few times may not have helped. It’s bearable, though, as the show stands out beyond any mere technical issues.

Although it contains quite a few items in the 'features' sections, the bulk of the material is an interview with the director and the inclusion of the original version of the film.

The Interview with Director Adrian Maben is given a solid 24 minutes to flesh out and is better for it, as he talks on the genesis of the project and how it panned out for him and Floyd. He’s honest and engaging with his thoughts, ready to admit to what he thought was a bad judgement or reflect on the state of the band at the time. Definitely not a fluff piece in any way, it has its own worth on the disc as a valuable document on the production.

Then, if you want to see what all the fuss was about before Maben took to it again for a 'Director’s Cut', here is the Original Concert Film in its entirety. Not a bloody half bad extra to have thrown in, if you ask me. Running 61 minutes compared to the new extended length of 92 minutes, it’s a far more compact and musically focussed product not without its own appeal, and with good video and audio.

There’s also a collection of small image based features, including a photo gallery with 23 images of the band at work and play, album graphics containing images of the inner and outer covers of Meddle, Ummagumma, Dark Side of the Moon and A Saucerful of Secrets, posters promoting the film, press/reviews from a couple of mags, bootleg cover images and other covers from previous releases of the film on mediums such as video and video CD and roughs which look to be possibly conceptual drawings for the covers. The last two extras are a text based History of Pompeii with Maps and lyrics to Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and Echoes.

In many places you can also click on the simple graphic of two joined dog heads, which will bring up a flashing full screen version of the full graphic before dumping you back to the menu system in a different language. Who the hell knows why? It just does.


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  •   And I quote...
    "Stick it in, switch it on, kick it back. It’s the Floyd!"
    - Vince Carrozza
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-NS730P
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    • Receiver:
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          Wharfedale s500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Polk Audio CS245
    • Surrounds:
          Wharfedale WH-2
    • Subwoofer:
          DB Dynamics TITAN
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
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