Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A disc that sits on the fence and goes nowhere, March 30, 2000
By A Customer
I find myself really underwhelmed by this disc. The main problem is that it can't really decide whether it wants to be a music video compilation or a music commentary. Videos in this disc are incomplete at best, with commentary by Joel sprinkled between each one. I found the commentary rather distracting, leaving me to press the FF button on the remote quite a lot. Having been to two of his concerts (including the 2000 years New Year's Eve concert), I can safely tell you that his live performances are much, MUCH better than any "official" recordings, like music videos. If it's the music they wanted to present, a DVD of one of his concert performances would have been better. If it's commentary they wanted, I think a DVD of VH-1's Storytellers would have done much better, maybe with some music videos of a few popular tunes included as "extras" on the disc. I honestly think the latter would have been a much better choice considering the type of disc they seem to be going for here. Technically, the sound and video are competently done, though not really spectacular in any way. Actually, considering that some of these videos are 15 years old or so, the digital transfers came out well. All in all, though, a mediocre disc. Joel deserved better.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
They Chopped Up The Music Videos!, July 1, 2004
This is a review of this product: Billy Joel: Greatest Hits, Vol. 3 DVD. Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the link so that you can be assurred that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
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As a fan I enjoy hearing Billy speak about his music and videos, but not at the expense of the videos themselves. The person who edited this program together chopped up most of the music videos so as to intersperse Billy's comments within them. All of the music videos are chopped up, except for:
-- And So It Goes [though Billy speaks over it]
-- No Man's Land [after a false start, the real video plays complete]
-- Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) [though Billy speaks over the last few seconds of the video]
-- To Make Your Feel My Love [though Billy speaks over the very end of the video]
It should also be noted that the last two videos are in reverse order from how they are listed on the packaging. "Hey Girl" and "To Make Your Feel My Love" is the correct order.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A decade of great music on DVD....., November 8, 2003
If you like Billy Joel as much as I do and enjoy music videos, Columbia Music Video's Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume III: The Video is a DVD you should add to your video library.
Although its running time doesn't quite allow CMV to present all the songs from the 1997 CD with the final volume of Joel's greatest hits, the DVD includes some of the best songs from that album, including "Keeping the Faith," "A Matter of Trust," "We Didn't Start the Fire," "And So It Goes," and "The River of Dreams."
Volume III covers the last 10 years of Joel's pop/adult rock and charts his artistic evolution. Creative and always exploring new musical territory, Joel is a versatile songwriter/vocalist, able to leap from style to style almost effortlessly. On this collection of videos, he goes from guitar-based rock in both "A Matter of Trust" and "We Didn't Start the Fire" to folk (the Celtic-beat-driven "The Downeaster Alexa"), to blues-tinged gospel ("The River of Dreams") and even classical, as in the hauntingly lovely "Lullabye (Good Night, My Angel)," which has a piano solo in the style of composer Edward Grieg.
While I enjoy all the videos and the interesting behind-the-song introductions by Joel, my favorites are "A Matter of Trust," particularly for its depiction of a fed-up neighbor who tells Joel and his rock-n-roll band to "Shut up!" in typical Big Apple fashion. I also take a particular shine to "The Downeaster Alexa," not only for its tale of hard-on-their-luck fishermen on Long Island, but because of its Celtic flavored backbeat and stylings. "A River of Dreams" is very catchy and I like the melody, the harmony of the gospel-styled backup singers, and the lyrics. As a Cold War kid, I loved Joel's "Leningrad," where he tells the parallel lives of Viktor, a Russian circus clown, and himself....and how they became friends when Joel toured the former Soviet Union in 1987. And because I am a sentimental person, I am always moved by both "And So It Goes" and the "Lullabye."
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