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Radiohead - Meeting People Is Easy

Radiohead - Meeting People Is Easy

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: No Surprises here for real Radiohead fans
Review: I finally bought this video after seeing clips of it on MTV. There are obvious disappointments in this video including the lack of live video coverage, and also cutting off interviewers quesitons. The thing I find most intriguing about Radiohead aside from their music, is their views on world issues and their sometimes sarcastic answers to empty-headed reporters. Many times in the video, the questions are asked, but you never get to hear the band's answer. The glimpses you get of unreleased songs is cool, especially the performance of big ideas. THe video ultimately portrays the meaning of the album OK Computer, which shows the bad sides of politics, commercialization and non-individualsm. Overall, very cool and worth buying. As others mentioned, if you are not a true Radiohead fan (ie you just like the song Creep), stay away from the video. The band does not want your money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A film as stunning and evocative as the band's music.
Review: Radiohead fans are intimately familiar with the off-kilter, partly giddy, partly disturbed, and deeply moving nature of the band's music, traits which have reached a new peak in their latest album OK Computer. This having been observed, I am hardpressed to conceive of a documentary that better captures the personalities of the band members and their work. The concert footage is simultaneously powerful and touching, and it captures well the live Radiohead experience from the band's point of view (the footage of, and later commentary on, the Glastonbury concert renders one speechless). What it feels like to be Radiohead on tour is, much like the band's music, never communicated with a blunt instrument. On the contrary, through the myriad and often monotonous series of interviews, photo shoots, and media appearances, one is able to implicitly understand the struggle the band felt to preserve their sanity and focus while being paraded across the world for a year. Apart from the band footage, Grant Gee's use of common scenes from airports, subway stations, and interstates provide the visual counterpart to the themes set forth in OK Computer: the sterility of modern life, the dangerous uniformity of public opinion, and the all-consuming juggernaut that is the popular music industry. All of this footage is layered with music by the band, and many b-sides and unreleased songs form part of the film's wonderful soundtrack. An added bonus is the footage of the band in the studio working on some new tracks which are quite a nice taste of the next album's content. The bottom line: Anyone who would like to simultaneously see what it means to be Radiohead for a year and witness a stunning montage of images set to very evocative and moving music should buy this film. It is an hour and a half you will want to spend over and over.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: ...
Review: I do not recommend this to non-Radiohead fans. Apart from interviews with Thom and Colin, this film is nothing but much-too-long shots of mindless, useless imagery (think Japanese people in escalators for 5 minutes straight with a distorted "Climbing Up the Walls" playing in the background, or something of the sort). At times, the background music overpowers the speaker and most of the backstage scenes seem unneccessary, rather dull, actually. 1.5 hours of Grant Gee showing off his "superior" film-making skills by showing clips of Thom played *gasp* backwards. "Look, mommy! Pretentious crap!" I love Radiohead, but this is just awful. Worth it just to see Thom squeal as he receives his gold/platinum/whatnot record and for the Creep performance.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 5 stars for Radiohead fans!
Review: If you're not a fan of Radiohead, this DVD may not be for you.

If you are a fan, this DVD is necessary! It gives so much insight to the OK Computer album and the band members.

In pure documentary style, we are placed backstage, onstage, and just about everywhere Grant Gee can find a place for a camera. Some of the DVD ventures into pure works of art that are strange and unexplainable just like Radiohead's music. For example, an interviewer asks Ed O'Brien if he likes science fiction and then before he can answer, the screen flashes to a strange futuristic structure and then to a completely different scene.

It almost feels as though Radiohead have directed this video because of the strange sense of humor that perfectly matches theirs. However, about midway through the film, we realize that is definitely not the case because we start to see the band (specifically Thom) lose their composure. Dealing with the touring, interviews, reviews, and the obvious fear of how to follow up the magnificent OK Computer, the audience is given front row seats to the crippling music business. This can be funny at times, but it is actually pretty scary to see just how un-human the music industry is. It is very strange to think of the comparisons between Meeting People Is Easy and the album. It is almost like they are living the prophecy they recorded the prior year.

Highlights of this DVD include cool live performances, Thom tantrums, making-of the "No Surprises" video, unreleased songs "Big Ideas" & "Follow Me Around", and many other cool little things that Grant Gee adds.

Just like a Radiohead album, I find something new in this DVD each time I watch it. Great stuff!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Visually engaging, but lacking in insight
Review: Less a music or concert video than an eclectic, highly stylized, extended montage of Radiohead and stock video footage: snippets of concerts (usually shorter than desirable), interviews (a few too many, and emphasizing the same "I'm being asked another stupid question" theme), photo shoots, and promos; stock footage of spacecraft, lonely subway stations and garish city lights superimposed over printed critical reviews; the now familiar Macintalk Fred (a la "Fitter Happier") drifting between the band's melancholic reflections on the nature of stardom (echoing similar sentiments by many bands before them), etc. The overall elegiac tone and content occasionally reminded me of documentary footage of Joy Division I'd seen years before. Notable are a few concert snippets in which York's voice (and the loudest among the front audience row) is mixed way to the fore, allowing insight into the onstage sphere of experience in an interesting and unexpected way. This film will appeal more to those interested in enjoying a visual feast peppered with music than the inverse. Lots of mood; few insights into the band or its music. Not a good video to just listen to, but it makes for good visual trip s--t, as we used to say. Only two chapters on the whole 90+ minute DVD, making quick navigation a bit more unwieldy. Still, a worthwhile video for Radiohead fans.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It figures ....
Review: If you're looking to learn something new about Radiohead, don't buy this DVD. If you're looking for some great previously un-released footage or recordings, don't buy this DVD. In fact, save yourself the trouble; just don't buy this DVD.

It would figure that someone would feel the need to be artsy when making a documentary of a band like Radiohead. And that's the way it comes off too -- contrived and artsy. It's as boring as any documentary I've ever seen, and I've sat through one about the migratory patterns of birds. I came away not knowing anything that hasn't been timelessly covered in articles about the band, not to mention thoroughly irritated. The numerous clips of live shows are each time quickly interrupted in order to return to the pretensiousness that abounds throughout this movie.

I've got to hand it to the director. Given the caliber of Radiohead's music, I thought a worthless documentary wouldn't be possible. You learn something new every day I guess.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: RADIOHEAD DOCUMENTARY IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN SPADES.
Review: The consummate Radiohead fan will absolutely adore this video-documentary. Thom Yorke not only establishes himself as a great live performer via snippets of live concert footage, but he also paves the way for his band's ascent as an all-encompassing experience beyond the generic trivialities of being a "rock group" - whatever that term happens to mean today. I have always maintained that Radiohead was and is a band for the next millenium, consistenly producing music head-and-shoulders above their contemporaries. What's more is that Radiohead have become far more than a purely musical experience, and this film emphasizes all these intangibles. Radiohead's outlook has forever seemed to be deeply rooted in a frenetic paranoia, in man's routine struggles against the relentless oppression of technology and the future, and the fight against the loss of self-awareness under the onslaught of the corporate mentality, and the Orwellian shackles that are becoming more and more prevalent in our everyday society. Most every Radiohead song seems to evoke the feel and mood that Big Brother is indeed, watching. The fact that this menacing outlook comes across in beautiful melodies stemming from the voice of an enchanting frontman only makes the experience that much more spectacular. This film takes you through Radiohead's touring persona, so to speak, from Yorke warming up his vocal cords before a concert, to producers polishing off the final touches on a video release, to band members handling the pressures of often prying media. Meeting People Is Easy is masterfully psychedelic and ominously dreary, but cannot be denied as an absolute work of art... What a fitting way to steal a peek into the goings-on of the world's best rock and roll band!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Not your typical band DVD (and that's a good thing)
Review: For those expecting tons of live concert footage or unreleased songs, you may be disappointed. There is some interesting footage that shows the origins of Kid A/Amnesiac, such as the early stages of "Life in a Glasshouse" being written, and Thom Yorke soundchecking "How to Disappear Completely" alone with an acoustic guitar (an amazing scene). I think "Big Ideas" is in there somewhere too. But that being said, this film/documentary focuses more on the band than on their music. And that is what makes it so damn interesting.

I think this film can best be explained by describing one scene: the movie fades from live footage of the band (playing "Lucky", my favorite song) into a bunch of press clippings about "OK Computer", most of them claiming to know exactly what the band was thinking behind each song. The pre-eminent (and least pretentious) one says something like this: You're a band. You release your third album, which you quite like. No big deal, that's what bands do. All of the sudden, you're being hailed as the saviors of rock n' roll. That is what this film is about. Almost overnight, Radiohead went from cult favorite to some and "that band that wrote "Creep"" to many, to rock n' roll gods. (Love the scene where they're playing "Creep" in Philly and Thom looks incredibly disinterested as he limply holds the mic to the crowd.) This film documents that journey via following them on their "OK Computer" tour.

The best scenes are those of the band being interviewed. Again, and again, and again, and again. At one point they play about 5 different clips of people asking "What does music mean to you?" back to back without playing the response. The point is not to give you some kind of insight into the band persay, but to show the effects of stardom on otherwise ordinary people who are not consumed with being stars.

Question after question starts to crack some members of the band. They are all very uncomfortable with their new found celebrity status, and it shows. One interviewer continually badgers Thom Yorke about all the celebrities attending their shows. "So you're not impressed when, say, Tom Cruise is at your concert?" Thom does not look (nor act) impressed and he then explains that in England they do not quite comprehend the god-like status given to celebrities here in America. In the end, celebrities are people like everybody else, just as fallible as you and me. (For some reason that scene reminded me of the Charles Barkely commercial where he said "I am not a role model.")

This film is about so much more than music, and that is what makes it amazing. It is about fame and celebrity, about the loss of privacy, about having to live up to unrealistic expectations from people who know next to nothing about you, yet they feel they understand where you're music is coming from completely. The title itself speaks volumes. Meeting people might be "easier" for the members of Radiohead now that they are famous, but what good is it if the people they are meeting are insincere phonies (for lack of a better term) who only want to meet them because they're Radiohead? Are you really meeting anybody worth your time? This DVD was not what I expected but I was more than pleasantly surprised. It seems fairly obvious why "Kid A" sounds as claustrophobic as it does after watching this documentary. If you're a band that went through this, you would make claustrophobic sounding music too.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great for info--diappointing for music
Review: This DVD is a great documentary of one of Radiohead's tour. In it you really get an in depth look at the band and how they operate on tour. You get to see they way they are treated by the press and the crowd alike. It is truly something that needs to be seen to be understood. If you're a Radiohead you'll love it. If, however, you're not really into them, i can see it being a big disappointment.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Documentary
Review: I'm keeping this short. This is a very good documentary on perhaps the best band in music history, Radiohead. That's it, I'm done.


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