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Isao Tomita's solo electronic interpretation of Gustav Holst's ground-shaking, daring, 1916 symphonic suite is the only reason to listen to, er, watch, this DVD. But be warned: there are several exceptional CDs of Holst's piece that might better suit your ears. Sadly, the visual accompaniment by director Don Barrett dulls the soaring, gorgeous score. The visual side of the DVD is a strange collision of basic textbook astronomy lessons, grainy outer space photography, and outdated supercomputer animation. This unexciting presentation is mashed over Tomita's remix of Holst's suite and then segmented into a lecture on each planet. The result is a tiresome show that undercuts the beauty of "Venus" and the power of "Jupiter." Alas, Houston, there is a problem.
The Planets was made in 1991 and to be fair, home theater has accelerated in leaps and bounds in the several years since. But the bigger question remains: why bother to release a DVD of such tepid technology at all? IMAX is infinitely superior and even the late genius Stanley Kubrick, in his three-decade-old
2001: A Space Odyssey, showed more chutzpah and imagination than this dated misfire.
--Paula Nechak
Product Description
In 1916, Gustav Holst, a composer of music and self-admitted mystic, wrote a brilliant orchestral suite entitled "The Planets." Sixty years later, internationally renowned keyboard artist and composer Isao Tomita created a highly popular electronic version of the Holst suite. Now, award-winning director Don Barrett has chosen "The Tomita Planets" for the soundtrack of this musical video grand tour of the Solar System. Using actual outer space photography returned to Earth by the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, Pioneer, Magellan and Galileo spacecrafts, combined with supercomputer animation, scientific accuracy throughout the planetary segments co-exists with artistic license within transitional material to create a magnificent marriage of sight and sound, art and science.
