Product: Ziggy Stardust [VHS]
Rating: 2.0
Great Sound, Bad Picture
D.A. Pennebaker's filming of the final concert by David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation is a great piece of rock history. Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars is considered to Mr. Bowie's masterpiece. Mr. Bowie not only created a classic album, but in adopting the androgynstic persona, he blurred the lines between male and female and spearheaded the glam rock movement. Unfortunately, this disk is a major disappointment from the visual side. The songs and performance are first rate, but the picture is horrible. The disk does not clean up the blemishes. It is grainy, blurry and just plain tough to look at. The camera work doesn't help matters either as Mr. Pennebaker keeps the camera locked on Mr. Bowie most of the time and many times in close-ups. This takes away from the full experience of the show. The producers did do a great job in remixing the sound and the 5.1 Surround Sound mode is clean and clear. You are better off buying the cd soundtrack version than the DVD. This is for diehard David Bowie fans only because of the atrocious picture quality not because of content.