Customer Reviews

Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of Dire Straits

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great collection of Dire Straits' videos from the beginning ("Sultans of Swing"), to the end ("Heavy Fuel"). There are 13 videos presented here with three live "videos" taken from the "On Every Street" tour. The total running time is right at 90 minutes, and much of the material is rare, so it is wonderful to see all these on one DVD.

The videos are as follows:

"Sultans of Swing" - This is from the very early days of music video, and it shows. This is basically a staged version of the song. Mark looks so young in this video that it is almost startling.

"Lady Writer" - I found the "Puffy Shirt" from Seinfeld! Well, maybe not exactly, but you have got to see the shirt that poor Pick Withers has to endure back at the drum kit (it really does look like its "Puffy Shirt" namesake). Very lame production values from the late 1970s, once again.

"Romeo and Juliet" - This is the first Dire Strait's video that tells the story largely through actors performing the song as a narrative. Some interesting hairstyles are featured.

"Tunnel of Love" - This is a great early video, albeit featuring some very bad early 1980s clothes and hair.

"Private Investigations" - This is the only video that reveals that Mark is actually left handed if you watch for it. This one is well done, and is genuinely creepy, as per the song's subject matter: highly recommended.

"Twisting by the Pool" - From the EP of the same name, it is a comparatively rare track, and is up-tempo fun. It features film shot from the time of "Alchemy."

"Love Over Gold" - This one is a bit boring, but honestly it may be my bias: this is not one of my favorite Dire Straits' songs.

"So Far Away" - This is a very conventional and captivating video featuring a lot of studio footage from the band.

"Money For Nothing" - This is, of course, one of the most influential videos in history, introducing computer generated characters to videos. It didn't hurt that the song is the biggest hit ever by Dire Straits.

"Brothers in Arms" - This is an impeccably crafted and suitably somber video. It is incredibly well conceptualized and executed, particularly the "machine gun to guitar" edit introducing Mark's solo. It is the best Dire Straits video, hands down.

"Walk of Life" - Another great concept, this time illustrating the lighthearted side of the band with sports bloopers.

"Calling Elvis" - This is an interesting video of a relatively weak single from the early 1990s. It was very creative to use "Thunderbirds" marionettes that looked like the band in this one, a very cool concept.

"Heavy Fuel" - A video shot through the eyes of a roadie. It is very amusing and well done, and shows some interesting behind the scenes footage that fans will love.

The last three "videos" are from early 1990s concert footage, and consist of "On Every Street," "Your Latest Trick," and "Local Hero-Wild Theme," which is always a favorite of mine.

This is a great package and as a bonus features an audio interview with Mark Knopfler that is very interesting. I highly recommend this DVD to Dire Straits fans, just expect to laugh at the production values of the earliest videos: the band sure came a long way in fifteen years.

First off, I never had MTV back in the 1980s, so I never saw most of these dated videos. I was a big Dire Straits fan as soon as the first album hit, and continue to purchase every Mark Knopfler CD to this day, so I was interested in seeing this DVD, if only for a historical perspective. To be honest, this is the last DVD that I purchased from this group / artist from Amazon. I bought the Mark Knopfler DVD "Night in London" and the Dire Straits DVD "On the Night", as soon as they became available back in mid-November and as of yet have not seen them due to those DVD not being in stock. I bought this DVD as a fill-in until I get (what I hope is) the superior Mark Knopfler DVD.

Just to get the negative things out of the way, first this is a two-channel stereo DVD. I wouldn't care, except the cover has a sticker that says 5.1. It is not 5.1, but only your basic left and right front speaker stereo. Next is the cover's track listing with numbers that do not match the actual track numbering. This makes direct access a bit confusing, since everything is one-off for some reason. Last is the interview with Knopfler, which I was looking forward to after reading about it here. It is only audio, not video, so you don't get to see him or have any way of knowing how old it is (which hair line he is sporting in it).

Overall the music is pleasing. In two-channel stereo, the sound quality is equal to the CDs from these songs. The video transfer is average quality, about what you'd see with a VHS tape.

I won't go over every track, but I was a bit frustrated by a couple of short songs. They left the whole terminal solo out of "Sultans of Swing", which I was looking forward to watching as a guitar player myself. "Love over Gold" also ends abruptly compared to the actual track on the CD. There were a couple of songs that were clearly cut and pasted from stock footage to make a video for songs that never had a video.

All of that said, there were some nice videos that really worked well with the songs. "Brothers in Arms" is a nice looking video that replicates pencil sketching, but in motion. The mood really compliments the song. There were some humorous tracks also, such as "Heavy Fuel" which has actor Randy Quaid (the Vacation series' Cousin Eddy) as a roady that keeps getting in the way during a sound check.

This DVD is fine for true fans of the group that might wish to simply have everything from them, but it is not first class in terms of the things that make DVDs great. If you want to see how good a video can be of Mark Knopfler, in terms of both the sound and video transfer, then check out the rendition of "Brothers in Arms" on the DVD, "Music for Montserrat". Run this through a good sound system with all 6 speakers to support the 5.1 sound and it is stunning. Maybe this DVD has caused me to be hypercritical for the reduce quality of the Dire Straights DVD that I am reviewing.

I have a VHS entitled "Dire Straits - The Videos", released by Warner Reprise Videos in 1992.

This DVD appears to be the exact same collection of videos released under the guise of a new product. That would explain the lack of features that one would normally associate with a DVD -- it's a direct port of the VHS.

There are still 3 good reasons to get this DVD: 1)It's better quality and will last longer than VHS, 2) The VHS is probably very hard to get a hold of, and 3) It's Dire Straits.

A five-star collection of videos, but it loses a couple stars for trying to trick us and for the stripped-down features and presentation (when compared to other DVDs in the genre).

I bought this dvd for my husband, who is a huge fan of Dire Straits. I also like the band. The way they put together clips from live concerts, along with music videos (when music videos were actually interesting) was very well done. A great trip down memory lane for any "baby boomer"!

As an "On Again" fan of Dire Straits since "Brothers in Arms" this collection of videos is very well done and well worth the asking price. Sound and picture quality are very good and song selection is indicative of their collected body of works.

First of all I like music concerts or live recordings.

From this point I can say it's not the best Dire Straits DVD. It has no unity, it's like several Videos placed together on a DVD. Some of them are Recorded Live and some others are the videos I used to watch on MTV...
No subtitles!! They are just for the main menu.

This is The best of DIRE STRAITS. I like it a lots and I would recommended to everybody. If you luke Dire Straits_ You Know that is the best. IT has 2 the moste popular songs, "Money for nothing and Sultans of swing.

Great tracks ... but really old videos (however, some were interesting) ... Bottom line: you can't go wrong with Mark and friends.

First clip was a lip sinc disaster. All had instruments playing on stage to the studio recording.The next set wasnt much better.2nd was live footage with studio recording mixed in with obvious timing mishaps. Other clips were basic MTV type videos and other bad retake sing alongs.
Great Music but not for sitting down to watch and enjoy.
Better off buying the music CD and having cartoons on the TV with the TV volume off.

I'll keep this short and start off by admitting I'm a huge DS fan. Knopfler certainly doesn't have the greatest voice however you have to admit the man does know his way around a guitar. You can certainly argue this point but I believe Money for Nothing is close to the greatest rock song of all time; I love the unique melody and lyrics, humourous point of view, unusual video animation, etc. Many videos on the disc are not all that noteworthy however MfN just about makes the dvd worth the price all by itself.