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Rebel Heart Tour DVD | Showtime Premiere


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@@luckystar  I do agree that they try to make things more exciting in less exciting parts, and that they could do choreographies like they did on RIT and CT that don't require too much stamina, and I also agree that the show itself is not as well crafted as MDNA, but

 

There's been a lot of editing since IGTTYAS, that's not really or solely done to hide anything, it's just the way she likes her shows to look on film. Beyonce's 2010 tour DVD shows performances from all over the world, so that's what she's going for as well, they could've easily not shown different outfits since they were willing to use screen footage from any show but they chose shots with different outfits because they wanted to.

 

The MDNA Tour film looked amateurish in many parts. There were cameras that vibrated, bad framing, extreme quality (resolution) discrepancies and angles where you couldn't see anything. Those problems aren't visible on RHT. 

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People act like there was nothing to complain about in any of her show releases, she lipped synced Vogue ever chance she got til Sticky, the Virgin tour is basically one segment (although killer debut! lol), Erotica she had scary boy hair! and Sticky she thought Spanish Lesson was a good idea and Drowned World had these weird shaped furniture to dance around and none of this with interesting editing. When I buy the release from Madonna I don't want the show as it was performed that is nuts to want that, sure some times it's appropriate and certain acts but Madonna it's a narrative and visuals; if you going for just music wrong artist. Adele performs shows and try and make a interesting edit to her what standing? (although not a fan she was slayed Glastonbury) come on guys it's eye candy and it's so pretty! And I am officially bowing out. :) Also the editing is soooo minor I am just so confused now, like wow Virgin black and the next flannel it's agony?

 

Also Madonna with every release, song or movie is a mixed bag of what people get out of it and that's awesome. But anyone who thinks The Next Best Thing was competition for Julia Roberts like i thought going into that and still feel that way...smiles.

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After watching two hours of glorious footage, I gotta post a little review.

First of all: I love the intro. And I'm not talking about the intro for the show, the one that comes before the iconic intro. When they did something similar in the SAST DVD I thought it was pretty cool, so I liked it when I saw that she was doing something similar this time.
Moving on to the show... OMG, THOSE COLOURS! Iconic is simply vibrant. Bitch I'm Madonna has a cool edit too, the slow-motion and reverse shots look cool IMO, and the backdrop overlaying the actual image is not something that bothers me in this part. Burning up has a cool edit too, being a performance that was pretty static live it feels now pretty dynamic. The backdrop overlaying here is too much sometimes, but it is still pretty well edited. Holy Water/Vogue was great, especially the part when she is approaching the table. The vocals are amazing in this section, with the live vibe and minimal edition, and you can hear the crowd when it needs to be heard, not through the whole show like the MDNA Tour. Devil Pray sounds better (thankfully) in this recording, though the performance is still dull IMO. The Messiah interlude has been the biggest dissappointment for me, the filter does no good to it and the edit masks the performance totally. When I watched this live I cried, and this just not the best they could have done with it. Body Shop looks cool and True Blue is just perfect (that gay kiss in the audience is awesome) and we even got Debi in the crowd! :D
Deeper and Deeper looks flawless, even though there are too many angles for just one performance (not that it bothers me especially but sometimes it is just too much). HBC looks pretty cool, my first reaction was, literally, "was there a backdrop during this performance?!" because I was near the heart stage and I could only watch her :P AND GOD, PLEASE, MAKE THEM INCLUDE THE FULL UNCUT PERFORMANCE ON THE DVD/BD! It was such a shame to get it cut...
Like a Virgin is definitely a highlight, although I don't get why they did extend the Heartbeat part but it actually works somehow. SEX is one of the performances that have improved with the editing process, because when I saw it live it wasn't a big thing and now I actually enjoyed it. Living for Love looks just glorious with the steadycam shots, and the colours are wonderful in this part :D La Isla Bonita looks awesome, just what I expected from that performance (even though I don't like flamenco, it looks cool in this one). The medley got included (yay!), but why did they cut Lucky Star? 30 seconds of a song were too much for this broadcast?! I don't get it.
The footage from Detroit is cool, but I hope that we are getting Take a Bow for the DVD too, because WE NEED IT.
She looks so pretty in Rebel Heart <3 But, once again, too many angles for just one performance, and the costume changes are just too noticeable (I know they made it in purpose, but I enjoy continuity and this is just disturbing haha).

Illuminati looks cool with the goPro cams, I wasn't expecting that. Music is pretty neat too, except for the black and white footage... Maybe the intro looked cool with it, but not half the song! Candy Shop is flawless, just like Material Girl, La Vie en Rose and Unapologetic bitch. The fact that they extended the song and included many of the unapologetic bitches was brilliant, cause I didn't want a video for each one of them and I didn't want just one of them either :P
Holiday looks awesome too, even though I thought it was weak when I saw it live, the editing actually improved it.
And please, Madonna, RELEASE IF I HAD A HAMMER! :D

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guys, do you remember when we we're freaking out about not having a dvd? now that we have... why so many critics? why some of you guys just can't enjoy? i just dont get it ec20fb7f.gif its better having this release than nothing... chill, lol ec20fb7f.gif

Maybe because some are just disappointed with the edits ? ;)

 

That's not because some were freaking out about not having a release of the tour that others can't have their own opinion about it... I didn't freak out, but was expecting a finish product.

 

When I see they didn't do the colour calibration (or they did in a bad way), they tried to merge different shots in one - or did in a messy way - and they used shots from the bigscreen which don't have the same appearance than the shots taken especially on Sydney, I have the feeling they made it quickly to thrown it to us.

 

Some will like it this way, and I'm happy for them. But, personally, all those things that can sound like tiny details, made me quit the show too often, so I did'nt manage to enjoy it properly. And that's kind of sad because when I see some little extracts of it, I find them great, but the whole thing don't work for me... We have a release, that's great and I never doubt about it, it just don't work for me. That's just my opinion :)

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After MDNA Tour's dvd I may be more easily pleased? but I'm not really bothered by a rather small change in quality with the shots from the screens which are still high definition even if not as lush and amazing as the professional shoot from Sydney.

 

They could've combined those shots where they remove the runway better but honestly it's not that big of a deal to me. They did it so they could show more of the action on stage without having to zoom in or out. It could be a little more perfected but honestly I didn't notice till I paused it. I'm focused on her performing tbh. And if we have this instead of even more cuts back and forth from different angles to show all the action then even better.

 

I don't think most people would notice or care about things like this and I'm willing to overlook them.

 

Honestly the thing I have the most problems with is the audio, but it's much better than MDNA's and Sticky & Sweet's. The audience noise can be a bit much, they really weren't holding shit back, and the special sound effects they added sound too loud on the mix. But the vocals are lovely, and I love Heartbreak City and how raw they left it. I hope Love Don't Live Here Anymore will be included on the final release but if it's not oh well, at least it was edited out in a seamless manner.

 

Honestly we don't get live releases often so if the content is mostly great i'm happy. We may get lucky and maybe screen footage from her tours may surface or leak one day which would be great too but the way she does her tour films is interesting and different and one of the reasons I became a fan.

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I so love the broadcast version so far.... if the full show will appear on the physical edition I would certainly not refuse it, but I'm already happy with what I got to see. Perfect audio, perfect colours... some songs may be too frenetic, but the 80% of the rest isn't so... perfectly satisfied here!

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It’s really interesting hearing everyone’s point of view. There doesn’t seem to be an overall consensus with opinions ranging far and wide, at both ends of the spectrum. Some love it; others hate it. I suppose that makes satisfying everyone very difficult.

That said, having watched and re-watched, I’ve moved past my own initial frustrations and niggling criticisms. Now a few days later, I’m drawing a very different opinion. On the whole I love the recording, but for those who were disappointed, I wonder if it’s a failure of expectations, rather than intention? Allow me to elaborate…

 

I have a motto in life – ‘excitement leads to expectation, disappointment, and then frustration’. That might seem pessimistic, but from past experience, I know I’ve been the victim of my own preconceived notions of what I wanted an album, a tour, or a video to be; only to find myself disappointed by the reality of what it ended up being. The excitement comes from the desire to repeat past pleasures. We all have our favourite live recordings – for me it’s Confessions, others say Girlie Show and so on, and so forth – there’s no right or wrong answer, just our own individual preference. But the desire to repeat a past experience and feel the same satisfaction can stifle our ability to enjoy something new and different. In recognising that, I read some fans have resigned themselves to the inevitable disappointment, but others were pleasantly surprised, when it wasn’t ‘as bad’ as they’d feared. For anyone feeling disappointed though (as I initially was), perhaps it’s worth looking again to understand what the recording is, rather than criticising it, for all the things it never intended to be? I’m not trying to deny or supress anyone’s opinion here. I believe fans in this forum have responded genuinely, even when I find their choice of words challenging. But for my own part, I’ve managed to move beyond my own gut reaction, and re-evaluate and appreciate this recording in a very different way. Which brings me to my next point – what is authenticity?

 

Many have complained this recording (and others) doesn’t accurately represent a real ‘live’ show – the slow-motion effects, the frenetic editing, the sweetened vocals, overlaying backdrops, and most notably, the lack of visual-continuity, splicing multiple shows together, all detract from any true sense of authenticity, failing to accurately represent what it was like to be there, seeing the show in-person. Some would rather re-live a singular concert, faithfully re-created in ‘real’ time and space; but there’s a contradiction here – all of Madonna’s live recordings are a constructed reality, which dilutes the true experience. You don’t relive the hours you spent queuing and the frustration you felt desperately waiting for the show to start; or the annoying person who held up a flag or a sign, blocking your view so you spent the entire night watching the screens instead. You don’t hear the reverberations of the bass, muffling Madonna’s voice; or that annoying girl standing next to you singing – shouting – screaming the wrong lyrics. That’s reality; that’s truth; that’s authenticity. Anything less is a construct in the editing room. It’s reliant on the artistic choice of an editor, whose eyes and ears are predetermined by the recording technology and conventions of live performance editing at that particular time. None of that can truthfully recreate the ‘real’ experience of what it was like to be there in person, and how you felt in that moment.

 

For me, and I’m sure others too, this show really began on youtube, months before I saw the lights go down over the arena floor. I have fragmented memories of the 3 shows I attended – feelings and emotions more than anything I can specifically remember. But in truth, I’ve experienced this show predominantly via my phone. I’ve seen all the different costumes, hair styles, speeches, and changes in the set-list through multiple videos. Accordingly, there’s not one single show that can accurately represent the totality of this tour for me. I no longer differentiate between my ‘real’ memories and the many, many videos I’ve watched since the tour began. Whatever I might have experienced at the time, has largely been lost and replaced with a new version of the ‘truth’ – all those video clips have overtaken ‘reality’, and that’s what I’ll remember most. Moreover, I see many fans spend the duration of the show watching the performance via their phones, so their experience was never really defined by their own eyes, but mediated and fragmented through the limitations of the video captured on their phones.

 

I believe Madonna recognises this. For example, her decision to insert grainy fan footage during MDNA was not incidental. She’s aware it’s inconsistent with the professionally shot footage, but she recognises the way modern audiences experience her performance. It’s not the same now as it had been in the former years of her career, when you had a limited opportunity to see the show and then it was gone forever, with the only artefact being a single officially recorded performance. In the future, perhaps everyone will have 4k Ultra-HD video technology on their phones and access to social media, which may defy the requirement to bother creating an official version. In essence, anyone with that technology can be an editor, creating their own perfect version of the show. It’s already happening – you can see various full length concerts on youtube, comprising multiple angles from different concerts, all mixed together. These clips combine low and high-res footage, and there is often a lack of continuity in the visuals and audio, which I appreciate, comes from necessity rather than design; but nonetheless, these videos accurately represent the way many of us have experienced this tour. In doing the same, Madonna only reflects the ‘reality’ of our experience. She’s creating another version of the ‘truth’ relevant to our experiences with technology now. I don’t regard it as an attempt to deny, conceal or hide her shortcomings. She’s merely holding up the mirror and reflecting the world as she sees it, as any artist would do. Maybe it’s not the way we would like to re-live the show, but I can appreciate her reasons for doing it; which takes me to my third point – style!

 

Since I’m Going To Tell You A Secret, Madonna has strived to create a unique style and a visual vocabulary for her live recordings, quite unlike any other performer. It defies convention, so it can seem quite challenging, easily misunderstood or dismissed as inappropriate for purpose. I’m not aware of any other performer who has taken so much interest and creative control over their live recordings, but who said a show can only be presented in one way anyway? Like Picasso and the Cubist movement before her, Madonna recognises the influence of technology, developing a new way of ‘seeing’ her art, reflected by the realities of the modern age. Her shows have defied the status quo, pushing the boundaries and expectations of live concert performance. 30 years deep into her career, the production values of her shows are a staple for many performers. It’s become the norm, we expect it, so who know, perhaps in another 10 years’ time, everyone will be editing their concerts in the same way, and that will become the ‘new normal’. I appreciate it’s not to everyone’s taste now, and this is only my opinion of course, but I suspect Madonna may be well ahead of the curve here, and for that I recognise and applaud her innovation, rebellion and revolution, even if her daring vision goes underappreciated in her own time. This is exactly why I love her.

 

This is all food for thought of course. It’s just my opinion. I’m sure others will disagree, but please don’t pound on me if you feel differently. I come in peace! Epic post over and out.

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People act like there was nothing to complain about in any of her show releases, she lipped synced Vogue ever chance she got til Sticky, the Virgin tour is basically one segment (although killer debut! lol), Erotica she had scary boy hair! and Sticky she thought Spanish Lesson was a good idea and Drowned World had these weird shaped furniture to dance around and none of this with interesting editing.

 

You are criticizing her shows here, not the DVD releases of them. 

 

IMO Vogue should be lipped synced. Virgin tour was her first one, so it in unfair to criticize its concepts and details. 

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