Rating: Summary: in a word: shoddy. Review: well, i've been waiting quite some time for this to get a DVD release, and this is certainly not the quality product i was hoping for. first, The Pros: the performance is excellent, i have always enjoyed both the film and the CD of this performance. Skinny Puppy was definitely at the top of their game when this was recorded. The Cons: i could make a joke about this whole DVD being a con, but let me give specifics. the most glaring defect is that the begining of the film was completely chopped out. it starts about 2 minutes into the performance, no opening titles, no intro, just right into Anger, and not even at the begining of the song. secondly, between tracks there are jumps, it looks like whomever encoded this just pulled the tracks right from the old VHS, assigned them a length, and gave the option to play all (btw, this is a "feature" in the main, err uh, make that only menu. there are no sub menus, just a list of the songs, but i will get to that in a minute). so the result is that one track jumps to the next, and that looks very bad. thirdly, there are instances of line noise throughout, like it was literally copied from the VHS. come on, couldn't you have put just a bit of effort into this Nettwork? and of course without opening credits one wouldn't be that suprised if the closing credits had been removed, right? well, they were, it just cuts off at the end of Smothered Hope and goes back to the main menu. and even though i think it's nice the menu offers the ability to skip right to a song (something you can't do on the CD, it is all on one track), it seams that that is the main reason for all of these problems. in light of all of these defects i would have prefered it to just begin and play through, opening credits and all. this is a very frustrating release and i am seriously thinking of returning it and waiting for them to get it right. so in conclusion, try again Nettwork, and please please please get it right next time. all the Skinny Puppy fans out there will really appreciate a little love and care put into a decent DVD release of Ain't It Dead Yet.
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