Product Details

• Actors: Brian Eno, John Cale
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Microcinema DVD
• DVD Release Date: September 30, 2008
• Run Time: 81 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001BZIZ3W
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #224,957 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

A revealing cinema verité portrait of the former Velvet Underground musician, John Cale, in creative collaboration with Brian Eno. Director Rob Nilsson follows them to Moscow, London and Wales for the recording of a new album, Words for the Dying, built around four Dylan Thomas poems. This is not your typical ""making of"" documentary. Once in Moscow, Nilsson discovered that Eno wanted no part of the filming. The film becomes a clash of wills as Nilsson tries to cajole Eno back into the project. It is a subtle internecine battle, the camera crew tiptoeing through a minefield of bursting egos.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For Fans of Cale or Eno, it's Worth a Few Bucks, March 21, 1999

By 

Nariaki Imamura (Osaka) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Words for the Dying [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Even though the self-absorbed filmakers think we want to see as much of them as we do of Eno or Cale, there are still some interesting scenes of the two working on recording tracks from the album. We even get to see Cale lose his temper and shout a four-letter expletive at the boys' choir. What makes the video worth the purchase are the moments where the camera sits still long enough to let you see Cale and Eno interact while in the studio. Unfortnately there are far less of these moments then there are of pretentious camera-jiggling around Moscow at night, but if you are a fan and it is worth it to you to see this rather rare footage of these guys at work, I'm afraid it's a necessary purchase.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Songs For the Living, December 6, 2004

By 

R. J MOSS (Alice Springs, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Words for the Dying (Audio CD)

This is devotional music, pure but not so simple. Cale's,'Words For The Dying' has a sustained mood of sombre atonement. The lyrics are Dylan Thomas's and Cale flights them with the sublime sadness of a lover's rent heart. The international news of the day relayed the larger wound of the Falkland's War. It hovers over the project, and Cale responded to it, writing a suite of music performed here by the Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gosteleradio from the former U.S.S.R. The voices of Llandaff Cathedral Choir School in Wales were enlisted as a counter to Cale's cool, haunting tones, and I suspect, congealed that crucial Welsh touchstone. Their edifice of plaintive, innocent voices is just one of the brilliant moves on this Brian Eno produced triumph. I suspect that those raised on the Spoonriver Anthology find Richard Buckner's repossession of its text leaves an indelible imprint. Cale has done this for these poems. Both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas crossed my path during my 16th summer, the former at its inception, the latter at its close as part of my high school's curriculum. Both bards literally made the written word sing with emotion in fresh, intoxicating ways. My mother tongue had been reborn. Cale's take on his countryman's verse has re-seeded these emotions.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a profoundly moving masterpiece, August 7, 2006

By 

seedwick (san francisco, ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Words for the Dying [VHS] (VHS Tape)

this is arguably the greatest music documentary ever filmed. it certainly blows spinal tab right out of the tub. the filmmakers and musicians seem to have acted as one mind to bring us this condensed golden nugget of pure hillarity, this sublime comic fugue, this subtle, silvery spiderweb of laughs that will surely ensnare even the most stony-faced fly. so many great moments: the stiff interviews with perfectly timed awkward pauses, the endless takes of bellowing, bathetic singing, the crazy violinist...
it's too bad that dylan thomas had to say good night before this came out, but i'm sure he's whirring happily in his grave. i hope one day this same team tackles some of the other luminaries of poetry.