Customer Reviews

David Bowie: The Plastic Soul Review

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Some clips are not so rare but the ones that are rare are worth the purchase for collectors and diehard fans. I was really impressed with the quality of interviews and clips they show in this review of David Bowie. I enjoyed most stories from the people who worked with him and saw him perform regularly back in the years 1974-80. I, too, love the early years because there is so much turmoil in his life through the last half of the 70s that it is the best work that has come out of him in his career.

The trivia game is really a treat if you can get all the answers correct. Some answers are in the movie. Some are not, but try to answer the questions before watching the film and then after the film see how well you do but do look at the answers and answer them all correctly to see the final ultimate rewarding message. The message flashes by too fast, unfortunately. The text design in the package could have been more screen friendly. You need very good eyes to read the text of the trivia game's answers.

There are some parts that are apparent that the producers of the DVD could not get footage so I was disappointed that for one song there was an empty dancefloor with lights just providing some texture; not so creative. Songs from Diamond Dogs [ECD] should have been played a little longer but are briefly mentioned. There are excellent biographies (The David Bowie Story StarDust) about him (Alias David Bowie: A Biography) that have covered what the Diamond Dogs tour was like and how it drained him financially.

When they talk about the level of darkness on the album Station to Station, it is this period of time that his personal life is at his lowest, including the fact that he was losing money every day while he was attached to the deal he made with Mainman's Tony DeFries, the manager.

I think one of the best treats is hearing John Lennon talk about doing a song with Bowie. There's no Bowie of current time discussing his "Plastic Soul" work with a great deal of reflection, but that's likely the hardest footage to gain access to these days if not directly having an interview with the man especially for such a DVD.

David Bowie: The Plastic Soul Review/David Bowie: The Road to the Railway and Station To Station

Beware! These two DVDs are exactly the same. As with the "Sound and Vision" & "Starman" DVDs, someone has sold the same product twice. I bought both at the same time, thinking these two DVDs (one about Young Americans and one about Station to Station) whould go great together, only to find it is the same DVD. Very annoying! Here follows the review.

The documentary follows Bowie's career from Diamond Dogs, through David Live, Young Americans, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Station to Station, and ending up with the Berlin trilogy, although, in actual fact it is a DVD about Young Americans and what came before and after (Berlin is mentioned as an afterthought). I would guess that a good 45 minutes is about the Young Americans album, with the other bits sharing about 5 minutes each.

Interestingly, the running time is not 61 minutes as the cover claims, but a bit over 69 minutes...

The documentary is good, featuring insightful people saying interesting things, and there are clips of Bowie music spaced out in-between. (Do not expect this to be a Bowie concert DVD, as some people seem to expect every db documentary to be only to be thoroughly disappointed by what they buy). It does not contain any groundbreaking new info on db and his career, (no commercial DVD documentary will ever be more than a summary/DVDs are not books), but it is still interesting and fun. The video quality of the db performances are of a copied-from-TV level, since the makers of the DVD do not own any rights to these clips. (Again, do not buy documentaries for the concert clips... they are always poorer than the actual concert DVDs).

All in all I would rank this DVD with 4 stars, but I withdraw two star because the creators sold me the same product twice. In the future I'll pay closer attention to who made the db DVDs I buy.