I am a fan of most anything that puts to work a good home theater system and shows its versatility while showcasing the kind of "blow you away" sound quality that simply does not exist in the world of stereo CDs, so when Queen Greatest Video Hits Volume One was released, I was in seventh heaven. It was one of the first DVDs I bought after getting my surround system and since it was encoded in glorious 96/24 DTS-ES - which there have been no movies released on DVD encoded in such a high bitrate! - I jumped on it in an instant, despite the fact that 70s Queen music isn't exactly my favourite. Sure, I appreciate their stadium anthems and
"Bohemian Rhapsody" but it was their 80s material that captured my imagination the most. So when I saw Greatest Video Hits Volume 2 sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart, quicker than you can say: "Flash! Ahaah!" I was on it again, in an instant.
What we have here is a two disc set with suspect packaging. Its like they decided on making it a dual disc-er at the last minute, because the cover art is all stretched around the box, with the spine title offset and the back piece only taking up about half the space intended so that the plastic peeks out in abundance. Very shoddily done. Plus its butt ugly. Someone had an amateur blast in photo shop combining the faces of the four musicians together in an unholy, creature-esque morphed fashion. The black background and the prominent faces matches well with the more tastefully done "Volume One" cover, but the R2 release recieved a much nicer front art with a grey background instead. Why do other regions always get the good stuff?
But as expected, the thing that matters the most, the sound quality of course, is absolutely superb. Tested on a Denon 5803 receiver with a Mirage surround setup (two floor standers, a center channel, a dual 12" subwoofer, and four surround wall mounters) the 5.1 mix is near flawless. Queen's over-the-top theatrics and bombastic musical structures is the perfect template for a 5.1 surround mixing, and the engineers that slaved on this, did an exceptional job. The highs are crystal, the lows get the sub booming, and the immersion effects are fantastic. Some of the songs on Volume 1 seemed a little "odd" filtered into a 5.1 soundstage, but they have their stuff together for this second release indeed! Just check out how mesmerizing
"Who Wants to Live Forever" has become for proof of this.
The disappointing factor is the video. Sure, I have never seen these looking as vivid as they are here, but for some reason, most of the videos are not represented in their original aspect ratio of 4:3 and instead have been cropped to fit into 16:9 and have been blessed with being anamorphic to boot. Unfortunately with the picture cropped, some of the vids just don't look right, with the framing seeming strange at times. You can tell there's supposed to be more in the picture, but again, like on
"Who Wants to Live Forever", some of the dramatic far-away camera angles sees some of the set simply cut out.
"A Kind of Magic" suffers as well, since everyone looks bloated and squashed.
Truthfully, I don't care much about the videos, I just wanted the David Bowie/Freddy Mercury gem
"Under Pressure" in DTS 5.1, and does it ever deliver. The video itself is downright silly with buildings blowing up randomly, little excerpts from the "classic" (debatable there) 1922 vampire monster movie, "Nosferatu", and cars crashing. Oh and its all in black and white. Despite hearing the song millions of times on an old cassette tape of Queen's Greatest Hits Volume 2 (which my dear mother played only two million times) I never realized that David Bowie sang on this track, but with one listen from this 5.1 mix, I was like "wow Freddy Mercury sounds just like David Bowie" before it hit me. The seperation is so flawlessly mixed that you can pinpoint the differences in pipes in the blink of an eye. Good stuff.
"Radio Ga Ga" is also quite weird, with a glowing old tymey radio and a family running around their living room, transfixed by the squawk box and wearing gas masks. Its very strange, and so is the song with its chorus of "All we hear is, radio ga ga, radio goo goo."
"I Want it All" is a classic Queen anthem in the same vein as
"Another One Bites the Dust" and
"We Will Rock You" (don't look for those two songs here though, they were on Volume 1).
Almost everything representing the CD,
"A Kind of Magic" is awesomely cool, since it was made for the Highlander movie and the majority of the songs from that album had kick and fire.
"Friends Will Be Friends" sucks, and so does the video with the stupid kids running around, but the title track, the thunder pumping
"One Vision" (with the irresistible line, "gimme gimme gimme...fried chicken!" Popeyes or Kentucky Fried Chicken, here we come!) and the metallic catchiness of
"Princes of the Universe" slays and kills. There's also that already mentioned heart ripping ballad,
"Who Wants to Live Forever", which can still draw out a tear to this day. Mercury's singing and Brian May's guitar is a lovely combination indeed.
You can also look forward to the cheesy 80's
"Invisible Man" song which sounds like a George Michael tune. The video is extremely dated, taking place in a mock up computer/video game from the Atari 2600/Commodore 64 era, but since the video is as pitiful as the song, it's a saving grace, since you can skip it and not feel any remorse. Oh but the real treat is watching Freddy Mercury prance around in a skin-tight red body suit with a peacock theme, complete with feathers spraying off the shoulder in yet another bad video. It is so flamboyantly tacky, even I was surprised.
"Body Language" is also purely pathetic, repetitive pap with that New Wave touch that was so in style at the time. Ugh, I can't believe this was on the same album as
"Under Pressure"!
Disc number two is a cornucopia of bonus material, highlights being a wealth of band interviews from the times of release for "The Works", "A Kind of Magic" and "The Miracle" including the one where Freddy Mercury proclaims "I'm just a musical prostitute, m'dear," and two from the vaults bonus clips that supposedly have never before aired from the album "Hot Space",
"Calling All Girls" and
"Backchat". Queen nuts will want the DVD for this alone. There's also some live footage, but the cuts from The Montreux Rose Festival should have stayed buried because it's a lip synching travesty. The band really sucked at it, which makes it hilarious.
"Staying Power" is a real live performance, and makes up for the other footage.
To stretch out the Queen cash cow, EMI has saved all the videos from "Innuendo" for "Greatest Video Hits Volume 3". Since the 1980s were covered on Volume 2 here in their entirety is there any reason to hold these over this lone and single album (from 1991) for a third entry in the Queen series? Of course not, but I guess it gives us something to look forward to at the end of this year (2004), which is the current projected release date for the final installment of the Queen Greatest Video Hits trilogy. Although
"These Are the Days of Our Lives" is sorely missed. There's plenty of material left to be included, such as live concert clips (especially LIVE AID would be nice) and the videos that were "held back", but until then, "Greatest Video Hits Volume 2" is a no-brainer buy for the audiophile and the Queen completist. Unfortunately the score is a little knocked down thanks to the blatant disregard of the original aspect ratio and some poor song selections, but don't be thrown off because I highly recommend this DVD simply for the DTS 96/24 mix that puts Dolby Digital to shame and
"Under Pressure". Hell what more do you want??
Rating: 7.5/10Written by
Alanna Tuesday, May 11, 2004
