Warner's upcoming PERFORMANCE DVD is defective... (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Thorne]

Warner's long awaited DVD of Nicolas Roeg's PERFORMANCE has been briefly reviewed by Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas over at his blog - and there's good news, and bad news...

The good news is that the disc is as uncut as it's ever been (rumours to a longer Donald Cammell print being in the posession of his widow notwithstanding), and the transfer is reportedly outstanding. The soundtrack has also been remastered (though it's not 5.1, so don't get your hopes up there) and the all-important music score is crisp and punchy. There's also a nice doco included.

The bad news is that the audio of a line of dialogue spoken by Mick Jagger during his central MEMO FROM TURNER performance is completely missing, even though the shot remains, and you see his lips move, and other dialogue by him from the same scene is there, and that same line of dialogue has been present and correct and easily heard in every other theatrical or home video version of the film that's ever been released. Not here. It's a very visible goof. Maybe someone at Warner bumped the 'mute' button for a few seconds when cleaning up the mix, or something. Oops..

It's a shame, and since the disc is out within a fortnight I'd have to wonder if Warner will correct it, but fans of PERFORMANCE might like to be pre-warned of this defect before they decide to shell out for the disc. I suppose PERFORMANCE can go in the pile with some of the Bonds, the MPI TEXAS CHAINSAW remaster (which had similar audio screw-ups), and other releases which are almost there, except for unnecessary technical mishaps. So close, and yet so far...

The Lucas blog with his comments on PERFORMANCE is here.

http://videowatchdog.blogspot.com/20...rformance.html

 

[AndySvn]

All this waiting, and the dang thing is going to get recalled. I might get it anyway-I've only been waiting forever for this thing to come out.

 

[AlanBrom]

Is there any definete word that the disc will be recalled? Having "Memo From Turner" messed up would be a huge dissapointment!

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I doubt very much Warner will recall these discs for a missing line of dialogue.

 

[AndySvn]

I shouldn't have used the word "recalled", but then again, if enough people complain about the error it could get pulled for correction.

 

[paul_goz]

I have been waiting for this for a long time as well, but the review does not mention if the soundtrack is the original or the dubbed version....

Uncut is a misnomer as well, the rated X cut was 107 minutes and 20 seconds...

Maybe they plan to release the ultimate edition on the 40th anniversary???

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

It sounds like the song is intact, but a spoken line of dialog was left out of the mix during the song.

Regards,

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

Yeah, Turner says, "Here's to old England!". It isn't subtitled, either. It's an significant line and I have no idea how it could have been omitted, but it was and the right thing to do would be to cancel and recall this release and reinstate the line.

 

[Bjorn Thoresen]

Well, the Warner chat is coming up on February 26; if this issue isn't addressed before then, it should certainly be brought up at that time.

I've been waiting years for this to make its way to DVD, and I'm quite disappointedto find it has such an obvious flaw, especially as all other home video versions of Performance, which otherwise pale in comparison to the new DVD, do contain the missing line of dialogue.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

Just watched the disc - it looks great, sounds great, and the missing line sticks out like dog balls, with Mick turning back through a doorway with a flourish at a peak moment in the song and mouthing the words, but you can't hear what he's saying. Too bad, as it really stands out. Warner, did it ever occur to anyone to actually watch the disc before releasing it?

As an aside, the other lines that remain during the MEMO FROM TURNER song are all very funny and I've been reciting them for the past couple of days. "It was Mad Cyril!" "We've been courteous!".

 

[Bjorn Thoresen]

Was there any response to this in the WB chat?

 

[Mark Zimmer]

There was clearly a consciousness of some kind that the line was missing; if you look at the closed captioning, it says "[mouthing] Here's to good old England" or whatever the line is. But I don't know if Warner does its own captioning or whether they contract it out to someone and they didn't notice the missing dialogue. It's difficult to know for certain if you're not familiar with the film because there are (especially early on) so many lines that are inaudible, so this almost feels like an echo of those occurrences. The dangers of being artsy, I guess.

 

[Bjorn Thoresen]

If the captions were created using a master with the line already muted, then the captioners would have followed the audio and indicated [MOUTHS], perhaps basing the text on a dialogue list of the film created from the correct audio. But the captions were likely created far downstream of the audio mastering where the line went missing.

It seems like a different audio source for the song was used to improve fidelity, at the disastrous cost of sabotaging the actual content of the audio.