Rating: 
Summary: Great videos that you can't see on TV
Review: If the other reviewers thought all of R.E.M.'s videos from the past 15 years were going to be on this they have no excuse. They should read the track listing before buying the DVD. I agree, a complete collection should be available, and perhaps in the future it will be, but this is just a companion to the album <i>The Best of R.E.M.</i>, so why expect more videos?
I really like the DVD, since I haven't gotten to see most of these videos before.
Rating:
Summary: Digital For The People
Review: Ok, what you have here is a disc with 16 R.E.M. music vidoes, plus several bonus ones (added from a recent version of "In View"), plus three songs performed live. There are some very short pieces of commentariy from individual band members, and that's it. The packaging is alright, though cheap. If you love R.E.M. and wanna get some of their vodeos, than this is for you. $30.00 is a bit pricy, but "In View" is one of my favorite DVDs.
Rating:
Summary: R.E.M rocks!
Review: R.E.M has done a great job putting this DVD Video Collection together. DVD feathers all the videos, plus 6 bonus ones and 3 live appearances. The audio and video quality is simply the best, featuring DTS 5.1, the best sound quality available nowadays.
Just want to say REM thank you for giving us such a great opportunity to view your works in a perfect way.
I really hope artists like Tina Turner, Aerosmith and Madonna will also release their video collections in DTS 5.1 Audio option, instead of cheap PCM Stereo.
Without any hesitation, I advise you all to get this DVD.
Greetings from sunny Azerbaijan!
Rating: 
Summary: Good but incomplete.
Review: R.E.M. experienced explosive commercial success thanks to its "Losing My Religion" video, so it's a natural move to release a collection of videos from throughout the band's career.But as far as retrospectives go, I expected this DVD to be comprehensive and it is far from that. Where is "Drive", a subversive, moody masterpiece of expressionistic photography which fit the sepulchral majesty of the song perfectly? Where is "Shiny Happy People" which, despite being saccharine and musically uninteresting, nevertheless represents a vital side to R.E.M.'s career (in the same way as "Stand")? And I could be dreaming, but I remember "Fall on Me" having a video. This was one of the band's best songs and if there were a video, I would've liked to see it here. What does get included is still prime R.E.M. material. Reflecting the decline of music video since the mid-'90s, the late-'80s and early '90s material is the best. "Losing My Religion" was one of the most bizarre hit singles ever made, and the Tarsem-directed music video (which swept the 1991 MTV Music Video Awards) retains its strange, provocative, yet humorous edge. "Man on the Moon"'s gorgeous black-and-white photography picks up where "Drive" left off, continuing the stark vision of the Automatic for the People album; "Everybody Hurts" expresses a highly cinematic vision; and "Stand" is a dumb piece of bubblegum pop, an exaggeration of what the song aimed to be. Out of the bonus material, the concert performances in Trafalgar Square grabbed my attention the most. Michael Stipe sounds a little offkey on "Losing My Religion", but the band performance is superlative, especially Peter Buck's shimmering mandolin, and the shooting manages to avoid the hyperactive camera-move-obsessed concert shooting that plagues modern music video. This director actually seems more concerned with capturing the onstage action than with moving the camera (eg. Metallica's 'St. Anger' DVD), and the result is a good, solid piece of concert performance. There's enough good material on here to make this worthwhile for the R.E.M. fan and music fans in general. All I'd say is that you won't get the entire R.E.M. canon here, but you won't be disappointed in what you do get.
Rating:
Summary: REM Scores with this DVD
Review: REM has changed dramatically through the years in sound, style and meaning, but has never given up the essence that makes the group one of benchmark performaners in American music.
The DVD has the option of playing the videos with interview snippets between the takes. While short and relatively benign to most long time fans, the clips do provide glimpses of the band member's thoughts on the songs to newer fans. The 5.1 sounds incredible with the proper equipment.
A little about my favorite videos:
The DVD starts out with REM's "Bad Day" video, which is probably one of the funniest and best shot video concepts on the scene to date. The band takes the persona of the "Morning Team" with Michael Stipe as an anchorman and Mike and Peter as satellite reporters.
There are supposedly 2 versions of the DVD release, one that carries the warning "Explicit Material" which is due to the extended version of "Nightswimming" which contains female and male nudes. These shots are tastefully done and convey the innocent nature of the song. The imagery does not overpower the feeling of the song.
Other highlights include the video from "The Great Beyond" which has been edited slightly different from the version on "Man in the Moon" to include actual footage of Andy Kaufman rather than Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman.
There are also several bonus videos, including "Tongue" which is a nice treat for hard core fans and casual listeners as well.
Perhaps one of the best features of the DVD are the 3 bonus live performances. REM is one of the few bands that can truely deliver an amazing live performance. The energy on stage is electrifying and makes it hard to stay in your seat.
Overall this DVD is excellent and I recommend it for hard-core fans, even if there is overlap in your DVD collection. For casual listeners, this is a collection of REM highlights with very well done videos. This is the perfect DVD to put in the home theatre while having friends over- the videos are intelligently done and provide a great conversation piece that is also entertaining. The range of emotions the selection brings, from getting up and doing the "Stand" dance to the more thought provoking and stirring "All the Way to Reno" "Everybody Hurts" and "At My Most Beautiful" makes this the perfect DVD to add to your musical collection in Dolby 5.1.
Rating: 
Summary: Joseph, O'Neil, Olyphant, Standish, and a semi-flop
Review: The four individuals put in charge of releasing this questionable "Best Of" could have either done R.E.M. a good promotional favor or leave both hardcore fans and occasional listeners disheartened. Actually, the finished product is somewhere in between. I'm very thankful for the inclusion of bonus videos like "Tongue" and "New Test Leper," as well as the video I didn't own prior to buying this, "Bad Day." I still don't understand why some of theri greatest songs such as "Find the River," "Pop Song '89," or "Star 69" were overlooked for duds like "At My Most Beautiful," while I'm overall thankful that "Shiny Happy People" was discluded. More complaints are that there are no lyric options (unlike other REM DVD releases) or at least bonus interview footage. I also would have prefered it to have older videos, but that was my mistake for not updating my old VHS tapes. It's still very affordable for 25 videos in all, with great music and mostly great videos for casual and die-hard fans.
Rating:
Summary: Joseph, O'Neil, Olyphant, Standish, and a semi-flop
Review: The four individuals put in charge of releasing this questionable "Best Of" could have either done R.E.M. a good promotional favor or leave both hardcore fans and occasional listeners disheartened. Actually, the finished product is somewhere in between. I'm very thankful for the inclusion of bonus videos like "Tongue" and "New Test Leper," as well as the video I didn't own prior to buying this, "Bad Day." I still don't understand why some of theri greatest songs such as "Find the River," "Pop Song '89," or "Star 69" were overlooked for duds like "At My Most Beautiful," while I'm overall thankful that "Shiny Happy People" was discluded. More complaints are that there are no lyric options (unlike other REM DVD releases) or at least bonus interview footage. I also would have prefered it to have older videos, but that was my mistake for not updating my old VHS tapes. It's still very affordable for 25 videos in all, with great music and mostly great videos for casual and die-hard fans.
Rating:
Summary: Great videos, great song, great band... Great everything!
Review: This came out along with In Time: The Best Of R.E.M., which was a hit all over the world. But if you thought the songs were good, you really gotta check out the videos! Except for Animal and All The Right Friends, every song's respective video from the first disc of In Time is on this DVD, and that's quite an impressive collection. So what do we have? We have the fantastic new video for Bad Day (like a mock news report), Imitation Of Life (my favourite video, it's incredible), and clever videos for All The Way To Reno, The Great Beyond, E-Bow The Letter and Daysleeper. It also contains the award winning video for Losing My Religion, the emotional Everybody Hurts, the silly Stand, and the bizzare Electrolite vid... what a collection! But there's more! The DVD comes with some bonus videos of rarely heard R.E.M. classics. I love Tongue and How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us, both rarely heard but very good, both with a great vid. Highlights, however, are the awesome Lotus video (almost as freaky as the actual song!) and the quirky vid for my favourite R.E.M. song, I'll Take The Rain. Wow... I love this DVD! There's even live perfomances of three of their more popular songs (Imitation, Religion and Man On The Moon), and a discography included, so the collector can start ticking them off! All in all, this is one DVD that is definatly worth your while if your interested in seeing some of the videos backing some of their best songs!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for completing your R.E.M. video collection.
Review: This DVD is a great value as it includes 14 previously uncompiled videos. This picks up where the Parallel DVD leaves off and gives you nearly everything from 1995-2003. I'm going to go through and describe the videos that are newly compiled and skip over the ones that everyone has already seen.
Bad Day is a news broadcast parody. Not one of my favorite R.E.M. videos but a unique concept. Peter and Mike had hilarious super-nerdy makeovers in order to look like a news correspondent.
All The Way To Reno sees the band visiting a high school and entertaining the kids as well as causing a little mischief here and there. Again, kind of a boring video but another pretty unique concept.
Imitation of Life has quickly become a fan favorite due to its originality. It's a short sequence of footage that is looper over and over, backwards and forwards to create the whole video. It's set at an outdoor party with lots of people and you have to really pay attention to catch all the stuff going on in the background.
The Great Beyond is the main song that the band wrote for the film Man On The Moon and as such, it contains a lot of footage from the movie. The rest of the video is the band doing some sort of broadcast and trying to break through the TV set and into the real world.
At My Most Beautiful is nice looking because of its soft and dreamlike colors. The concept is that the band are auditioning a cellist for the song and most of the video is the cellist trying to make it to the audition and having all kinds of problems along the way but she finally makes it and the guys seem impressed. The cellist is played by Rain Phoenix, sister of the late River Phoenix.
Daysleeper has become sort of famous now for its very cool cinematography. The directors used a unique and painstaking technique of snapping hundreds of photos and putting them together in succession in a sort of time-lapse fasion. Shows the band (mainly Michael) as working stiffs who are of course, daysleepers.
Electrolite is one of my favorites on the DVD. It's a Spike Jonze creation and one of the oddest videos that R.E.M. have ever done. It has a lot of bizarre sets and clothing and lots of bright colors. There is a really funny part where Bill is playing the drums outside in the middle of a city and he starts to grow bigger and bigger like Alice in Alice In Wonderland and pretty soon he is as big as the buildings around him.
E-Bow The Letter is another dreamlike video with muted colors. It consists of footage the band performing the song in their rehearsal space and of Michael in transit on a train and a few shots of Patti Smith here and there. Cool video that matches the mood of the song.
Tongue is a combination of footage of the band performing the song live on the Monster tour and a bunch of teens watching the performance on their TV sets. The teens watching on TV part is set in the 1970s and all of the them are trying to hook up with each other and it sort of centers on one particular girl who is not so attractive. This goes along with the song's subject matter of an 'ugly' girl who wants to get laid.
How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us is another favorite of mine. It's the band playing the song from the ledge of a billboard. Very cool idea. Michael is dressed in sort of western garb and you actually get to see him playing his single note on the synthesizer. The colors are slightly muted and the picture is slightly grainy to give it sort of an old western movie feel.
New Test Leper is mostly footage of the band recording the song in the studio. This is footage that is lifted from the electronic press kit for NAIHF and isn't really anything special. Not a bad video, though.
Bittersweet Me is very cool because it's done in the style of Federico Fellini films like La Dolce Vita. There are even some subtitles at the beginning of the video as the actors do some dialogue in Italian. We see the band playing the song while dressed in very cool clothes, and a story is also played out by the actors in the part of the video that is based on La Dolce Vita.
Lotus is another of R.E.M.'s oddest videos to date. The imagery in the video is based on the work of painter Francis Bacon. It's got Michael doing all sorts of weird poses (shirtless for many of them) and Peter and Mike playing their instruments while sitting inside of these clear boxes that have been animated. Very nice colors in this video.
I'll Take The Rain is R.E.M.'s first and only completely animated video. It's a cute little dog who is the king of something (as he is wearing a crown) but he seems sad until the end of the video. Kind of the same concept as Depeche Mode's video for Enjoy The Silence where the main character is king but has nothing.
That about sums it up. I gave it 4 stars because I feel that most of the videos here don't quite match the quality of the videos they used to make, but none of them are bad and some of them really deserve to be seen. Again, a good value for the money and a must for anyone wanting to have a pretty much complete collection of R.E.M. music videos.
Rating:
Summary: excellet collection
Review: this is a great companion to the in time cd. the best video is probably man on the moon but thats just me. i thought it was lacking a bit but still a very good collection
pick up the special edition cd to go with this you wont be dissapointed.
|
