Broadway's Best at Pops (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)The Boston Pops Orchestra under such legendary conductors as Arthur Fiedler, John Williams, and Keith Lockhart is an American musical icon. Now WGBH Boston Video has produced a DVD edition of "Broadway's Best At Pops" showcasing memorable moments enhanced with candid interviews with renowned conductors and Broadway personalities drawn from some 35 years of public television musical history. "Broadway's Best At Pops" features such luminaries as Ethel Merman, Ray Bolger, Kristin Chenoweth, Pearl Baily, Bonnie and John Raitt, Bernadette Peters, Tommy Tune, Carol Channing, Gregory Hines, and dozens of others. Superbly recorded, the DVD format of "Broadway's Best At Pops" has such bonus features as an additional twenty-five minutes of interviews with John Williams, Michael Feinstein, Barbara Cook, and others; printable selections from original Boston Pops Orchestra concert programs, and extended performances not seen on the original television program because of on-air time constraints. with a complete running time of 76 minutes (plus the extra 25 minutes of additional bonus footage), "Broadway's Best At Pops" is a very highly recommended addition to community library DVD collections and a 'must' for the family collections of Boston Pops Orchestra enthusiasts and fans.

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Item Name: Broadway's Best at Pops; Studio:WGBH Boston

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Leonard Bernstein's Candide (Great Performances) (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a splendid performance of Candide. But before you go any further, you should realise that this is a concert performance, not a full scale operatic staging of the work. That said, the singing is glorious and the acting, despite this being a concert performance is outstanding. It is driven to milk all the comic elements out of the play. It all works delightfully. It is so brimful of joie de vivre, it leaves you smiling and humming all day. I must disagree with a previous reviewer who said, Bernstein wouldn't be amused. This is precisely what he would have wanted to achieve.
Sir Thomas Allen is superb as Dr. Pangloss who doubles as the narrator of the concert. Paul Groves and Patti LuPone are both excellent. But the star of this Candide is surely the lovely Kristin Chenoweth as Cunegonde, who in addition to having a magnificient voice shows that she is a natural comedienne and actress. This recording of Candide immediately goes to the top of the list. Now, if only we could have Bernstein's own production of Candide recorded live at the Barbican Theatre in London. That recording under the Deutsche Grammophon label is yet to appear on DVD.
I should comment on the camerawork which received criticism from a previous reviewer. It is a mark of the electric quality of this bravura performance that most viewers don't even notice the occasionally almost amateurish shakiness of the camera. The cameraman was shaky at times and faces occasionally went in and out of focus but a large part of what I initially attributed to poor camerawork was in fact artificially introduced motion artifacts. This is a problem with the DVD encoding and not the camera. These cause apparent jumps in the picture. But this is present only in DVD players with low end video processors. Switching to a better DVD player or processor solves the problem.
The DVD by Image Entertainment is in 1.78:1 widescreen (anamorphic enhancement). Picture quality is very good, clear, sharp and with rich natural colors. The picture is flawless provided you play it on a good DVD player. It comes with 3 audio tracks, DTS 5.1, Dolby Surround 5.1 and Dolby Stereo. Excellent immersive sound. It would have been good if they had included an uncompressed PCM track as well but I suppose that's asking a bit much. All in all, an outstanding concert and one to be forever treasured.Technical note: As noted above I noticed a strange problem with this particular DVD. It seems to play quite flawlessly on certain systems, yet throw up irritating problems on others. On one set-up I noticed numerous motion artifacts and lots of combing issues. Motion appears jerky and horizontal scan lines appear whenever fast movements occur or rapid scene changes take place. I'm not quite sure why they should be there but I attibute it to faulty encoding or improper flagging. No other DVD exhibits these errors on this particular system. I believe what one of the previous reviewers complained about could be due to this. The problem goes away when switching to an alternate system with a better deinterlacer / video processor. However that does not absolve Image Entertainment from responsibility for producing a sub-standard DVD which requires high end equipment to compensate for its deficiencies.
P.S. Bernstein's Candide can be interpreted in many ways. Some approach it as serious opera, others as light operetta, still others as a Broadway musical or even farce. Liking or disliking a particular production is very subjective. If you adhere to Bernstein's final vision of this work, enshrined in his by now legendary Barbican performance (Final, revised edition, first premiered 1988 by Scottish Opera and later performed with the LSO at the Barbican in 1989 with high powered opera stars singing all the roles), then you will tend to view this more as Opera and consequently your attitude to any performance that detracts from that operatic image (like this one) will be very negative. But you must remember that for many years, and for most Americans, Candide was considered a Broadway musical and at most a comic operetta. The two contrasting visions are equally valid and are a testament to Bernstein's genius and Candide's status as a true masterpiece.

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Leonard Bernstein's brilliant comic operetta comes to dazzling new life under theguidance of director Lonny Price (A Class Act). Based on the classic Voltaire tale of an innocent young man's journey through a life filled with colorful characters and unexpected life lessons, this tune-filled frolic features Tony Award©-winners Patti LuPone and Kristin Chenoweth heading a dazzling cast with Paul Groves, Stanford Olsen, Sir Thomas Allen and the Westminster Symphonic Choir. The impeccable score (with lyrics by luminaries including Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Wilbur and John La Touche) includes a host of delightful songs such as "Life Is Happiness Indeed," "It Must Be So," "You Were Dead, You Know" and "Make Our Garden Grow." Now enjoy this all-new production of a musical comedy favorite with Broadway's top stars!

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Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season (2008) Review

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(More customer reviews)Alternately funny and whimsical, PUSHING DAISIES is a visually distinctive romantic comedy that encompasses a truly winning mix of ingredients. With its modern fairy tale settings and exploding color schemes - along with perfect but unobtrusive narration by Broadway veteran Jim Dale - comparisons to the work of Tim Burton are all but unavoidable. (In a good way.)
As in his previous outing (DEAD LIKE ME), series creator Bryan Fuller explores the great beyond but this time the results are much more impressive. The entire series centers around Ned (an utterly charming Lee Pace), who - at an early age - discovers that he possesses the power to bring the dead back to life with just a touch of his finger. The tradeoff? If he touches that person again, they will remain dead forever. And leaving the dead resurrected for longer than a minute causes someone else in the immediate vicinity to die. Cruel? Perhaps. But the universe demands a cosmic balance - and this is its solution.
Ned - the owner of a fairly successful pie shop known as `The Pie Hole' - uses his unique gift to earn a living in two ways: His astonishing pies, where his special touch invigorates the fruit with incredible flavor; and helping a detective (Chi McBride), who accidentally witnessed Ned's gift first-hand, solve murder cases. How? He revives the victims long enough to find out who killed them and then the two of them split the reward money. This can, and usually does, lead to near dangerous adventures for the two of them. Sounds exciting - but as Ned's co-worker Olive (the adorable Kristin Chenoweth of Broadway's WICKED) points out, it's a detached, emotionally frigid existence.
That is, until Charlotte enters his life again.
Charlotte or "Chuck" as she is called (played by Brit actress Anna Friel), is the girl Ned loved as a child before she moved away. When Ned and the detective discover the murdered Chuck on one of their cases, Ned brings her back to life for a sizable reward but can't bring himself to kill her, creating this dilemma: Although Ned and Chuck are strongly drawn to each other, they can never, EVER touch.
PUSHING DAISIES is loaded with stars from film, TV and the stage (Paul Ruebens, Raul Esparza, Molly Shannon, Swoosie Kurtz, Ellen Greene, Christopher Seiber, Barbara Barrie, Grant Shaud - to name but a few), and it's clear that everyone is having a marvelous time. The series is filled with tons of clever touches and Lee Pace, full of childlike vulnerability, is an immensely likable lead. His palpable longing for Anna Friel's Chuck is both sweet and touching. Seldom, however, has a series predicated on keeping two characters romantically apart established such a seemingly insurmountable barrier to insure that they remain that way.
As long as the creators can sustain the high level of entertainment that the first (as of this writing) nine episodes have provided, one can only pray that this highly original and gorgeous looking television experiment keeps going for years to come.


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Every not-so-often, along comes a show that's different. Wonderfully different. Pushing Daisies, TV Guide's Matt Roush writes, "restores my faith in TV's ability to amuse, enchant and entertain." It's the story of Ned, a lonely pie maker whose touch can reanimate the dead. Cool, but there's a hitch. If Ned touches the person again, the miracle is reversed. If he doesn't, a bystander goes toes up. What to do? Easy: Team with a private eye, bring murder victims back just long enough to discover whodunit, and collect the rewards. Things go well until Ned's boyhood sweetie is the next dear departed, and he can't resist bringing her back for keeps! Dig the wit, style and quirky romance: If you're not laughing, you may need a visit from Ned.

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