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Bjork - Hidden Place (DVD Single)

Bjork - Hidden Place (DVD Single)

List Price: $9.95
Your Price: $9.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: gold again
Review: Bjork comes back with this much awaited new single Hidden Place of the new album Vespertine. The video, in Bjork fashion, is visionary and absolutelt charming. Bjork's ability to combine her odd personality with her incredible sense of music concots one of the best music in the industry. Nothing too overtly commercial yet accessible. Vespertine promises to be the best Bjork's album yet with lush instrumentation and deep, profound lyrics...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Love the song, Hate the Video
Review: Bjork's videos have always been fresh and interesting, somewhat weird but always interesting. I proudly own Volumen and watch it frequently. But alas, Hidden Place is not very good. This video has no style, it is goo traveling around a woman's face. It starts with a wide shot of a presumably naked Bjork, then zooms in to her hair, then down to her face, then I am stuck watching goo come from her eye, up her nose, in her mouth, in her eye again, all in this cycle for 3 minutes. Now, this is either a joke, or somebody was lazy and couldn't think of anything else. Don't tell me the song fits the video, it doesn't. Anyway, I give it 2 stars because of the other songs and the badass duck that sits on-screen when they are played, because when you think about it, the video is just about the same damn thing.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Love the song, Hate the Video
Review: Bjork's videos have always been fresh and interesting, somewhat weird but always interesting. I proudly own Volumen and watch it frequently. But alas, Hidden Place is not very good. This video has no style, it is goo traveling around a woman's face. It starts with a wide shot of a presumably naked Bjork, then zooms in to her hair, then down to her face, then I am stuck watching goo come from her eye, up her nose, in her mouth, in her eye again, all in this cycle for 3 minutes. Now, this is either a joke, or somebody was lazy and couldn't think of anything else. Don't tell me the song fits the video, it doesn't. Anyway, I give it 2 stars because of the other songs and the badass duck that sits on-screen when they are played, because when you think about it, the video is just about the same damn thing.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Gross and boring
Review: Don't get me wrong, I think Bjork's one of the best and most original artists in the post-modern era. But not everything she does is worthy of praise, take this video for instance. Many great video artists like Bjork, Madonna, Radiohead, etc. have put out a bad one every once a while.

"Hidden Place" wasn't the best single to release off the lovely "Vespertine" album, sadly the video makes the song even worse. It's a 5 1/2 minute tediously long close-up shot of a seemingly naked Bjork while computer-generated mucus comes flying in and out of her nose, mouth, eyes, and hair. She gleefully tastes the goo without a care in the world. It's quite gross, guess that's the "hidden place" she was referring to. Yuck!

Of course a work of art doesn't necessarily have to make sense all the time, but it should at least be interesting. Watching mucus float in and out of Bjork's face isn't worth my time. Bjork was just trying to be her usual odd self just for the heck of it, and it failed bigtime.

There are some cool moments with the travelling CG mucus morphing into a wireframe snake or line art. And the cover art is nice, but I recommend that you download the video from her website before you decide to purchase it or not.

Luckily she comes back to full form in the "Pagen Poetry" video, but that's another story.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Gross and boring
Review: Don't get me wrong, I think Bjork's one of the best and most original artists in the post-modern era. But not everything she does is worthy of praise, take this video for instance. Many great video artists like Bjork, Madonna, Radiohead, etc. have put out a bad one every once a while.

"Hidden Place" wasn't the best single to release off the lovely "Vespertine" album, sadly the video makes the song even worse. It's a 5 1/2 minute tediously long close-up shot of a seemingly naked Bjork while computer-generated mucus comes flying in and out of her nose, mouth, eyes, and hair. She gleefully tastes the goo without a care in the world. It's quite gross, guess that's the "hidden place" she was referring to. Yuck!

Of course a work of art doesn't necessarily have to make sense all the time, but it should at least be interesting. Watching mucus float in and out of Bjork's face isn't worth my time. Bjork was just trying to be her usual odd self just for the heck of it, and it failed bigtime.

There are some cool moments with the travelling CG mucus morphing into a wireframe snake or line art. And the cover art is nice, but I recommend that you download the video from her website before you decide to purchase it or not.

Luckily she comes back to full form in the "Pagen Poetry" video, but that's another story.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: hide it under a blanket............lull it to sleep
Review: first, let's talk about the video itself. hidden place. it's a wonderful song, and the video goes very well with it. i'm not going to spoil the video, but i will tell you.. in ways, it's similar to the hunter video. bjork, with a camera shoved in her face, singing.. with other things too, of course :)
and the 2 b-sides on the single..RULE!! verandi is the bee's knees!!!!!!!! 8D

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I'm a fan of Bjork, but this video (stinks)
Review: I was very impressed that the DVD single had both Stereo and 5-channel sound. The 2 B-side are wonderful. All around, they have done a good job with the sound.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Two different ways to watch the video
Review: I was very impressed that the DVD single had both Stereo and 5-channel sound. The 2 B-side are wonderful. All around, they have done a good job with the sound.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AMAZING VIDEO!
Review: I'm a huge fan and i really think this video is simple but AMAZING! They say less is more and this video proves it. M/M Paris did a wonderful job leaving their trademark style in this elegant video. The non lp songs played on the dvd sinply show that little duck. How simple! I love it. A+ all the way! Lets jsut hope the following singles will be released on dvd!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bjork dares us to look closer . . .
Review: SPOILER WARNING: contains extended description for "Hidden Place"

Bjork is an extraordinary woman, whose haunting voice and alien-like visage have the power to create ambivalence-and disturbance-in the listener. Her dark, almond-slitted eyes, full cheeks, and rich, milk-white complexion are enough to instill doubts about her identity, while her ability to schizophrenically stretch her cords at whim is enough to generate poles of attraction and repulsion, admiration and aversion, to the face beholding that alluring voice.

In "Hidden Place," we see that charismatic, mystifying combination-face and voice-fully exploited. The video is fairly simple: viewers see half of her face up-close as colored, neon tears fall from one eye into her mouth, and watch as they exit her mouth and travel up into one nostril. From there, the cycle continues, but for the other half of the face, and repeats at intervals until the song is over. The video's formula-repetition-may sound simple, but for the careful, observant viewer, the result-namely, the moods and feelings that this repetition produces-are complex.

What is so unusual and, perhaps, disturbing about this video are the numerous, but subtle, contradictions permeating Bjork's expressions. After the last notes have fallen, one can't help but feel ambivalent-which is exactly what she wants us to feel. In this video, Bjork dares us to look closer, pulling the viewer into a voyeuristic journey by placing them right in the eye of the camera lens, forcing them to follow her movements-and her tears. First, she hypnotizes us with a partial view of her face, with hair blowing in the wind, and a view of the top of her naked shoulders. The voyeurism begins as viewers are then drawn closer and closer, as the camera moves closer and closer to her face. What seemed invisible now becomes magnified and blown-up, adding to the viewer's anxiety as the camera captures every single, little detail: a hair pore, a blemish, the lines of Bjork's lips. From there, we are led right to the tears. But these are not your ordinary tears. Like mercury, they glide seamlessly-smooth, elongated, and snake-like-in their descent down her cheek. If examined very carefully, the viewer should notice that the tears are not forced, nor are they cried out of sadness or pain. Rather, they flow amidst a facial mien of initial indifference and, later, subdued content. In the last third of the video, we see Bjork, with a partially-suppressed grin, playing with her tears as she tries to lick them into her mouth. And all the while, the chorus chants on, adding a dark and ominous, almost Apocalyptic ambience.

The overall effect is an eerie, disgusted feeling, an utter, visceral self-loathing lyrically reminiscent of Hooverphonic's "L'Odeur Animale." We are drawn in by the overall view, only to be eventually disturbed by the raw details that are revealed. "Hidden Place" is an anomaly of paradoxical proportions, bound between visuals that stimulate the eye's curiosity and lyrics that present a dark, brooding image of human nature: unfulfilled passion, isolation, uncertainty, return-feelings which abide in the repressed recesses of the mind, that which we would otherwise keep "hidden" away from others and the world. However, these lyrical themes seem to suggest yet another theme that is perhaps the underlying, hidden focus of Bjork's message: masks. Maybe what Bjork is trying to say through this song/music video is that we are most comfortable with the mask on, but horrified to discover what we are without it. She taps into something very sublime, going beyond what the phrase "hidden place" seems to suggest (despite a CG, skeleton rendition of the female organ).

"Hidden Place" displays Bjork at her rawest, both as a person and as an artist. And what she achieves with this video is ambivalence. Its genius lies in its revelation of our problematic, troubled condition through a simple manipulation of personal elements-namely, the combination of Bjork's face and voice. Bjork lingers on the fringe between our humanity and something else that transcends it: the paradox between what we portray ourselves to be and what we actually are; the difference between what we want and what we actually have; the ever-present conflict between restraint and desire; and the irony between our longing for another despite our individual, isolated nature as human beings. "Hidden Place," with its ubiquitous combination, is enough to make viewers wonder if they're just looking at her face or if they're really looking at themselves.


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