Cimarron (1931)

I decided on Sunday to try another best picture winner.  I had made it through the first three films to win that award and decided to give number four a shot.  I had started to pop Cimarron in at several times over the last 4 months, but I just wasn’t sure about a 2 hour western from Edna Ferber.  It looked like a cross between a left over silent picture and a soap opera from the pictures I had seen.  When I finally got into the film, I was surprised to find a sweeping history of the Cravat family stretching from early pioneer days and the land rushes to a modern(at that time) 1920’s society.

The film starts by introducing the cast and the characters in solo shots.  When the movie proper begins, we get to witness the Oklahoma land rush.  This is an incredibly complex and well done sequence for the time in which it was shot.  Yancey Cravat, played by Richard Dix, is trying for a parcel of land and is outsmarted by a young woman named Dixie Lee.  He goes back to his wife and her family where he explains that he is going out to Oklahoma and take over the town newspaper.  With his wife and son (and a stowaway servant) in tow, Yancey heads to the Oklahoma territory and fixes to start publishing the Oklahoma Wig Wam.  The first story he wants to break is who murdered the last editor of the paper.  He quickly sleuths out who was responsible and after a couple of run-ins with the man, goads him into revealing his guilt at a town church meeting.

Characters come and go quickly during the course of the film.  Bad guy Lon Yountis (Stanley Fields) is shot down at the church meeting and never spoken of again.  A band of bank robbers that Yancey and his family meets up with at the start of their journey rides into town later in the film and are quickly dispatched as well.  Dixie Lee makes a couple of appearances and is branded a woman of ill repute.  The ladies club eventually pushes for her arrest and we’re shown her trial, where the townsfolk try to railroad her until Yancey steps in to act as her defense attorney and gets her freed.

Through the years we see Yancey rush off for adventure while his wife stays put and runs the paper in his absence.  She assimilates into society quickly and is always on the forefront of the newest styles.  Eventually she and Yancey have a second child, a daughter named Donna.  Where Cim, their son, tends to take more after his father, Donna is the epitome of the spoiled society rich girl.  When Cim decides to marry Ruby, the Indian girl who has been working for the family, Donna declares that she is going to marry the richest white man in town, and proceeds to do just that.

Cimarron isn’t a bad picture, but it also doesn’t seem to have a true plot to drive the narrative.  It reminded me in many ways of the way that Driving Miss Daisy just sort of hopped from one event to another without any really destination in mind other than to see how the characters deal with the societal changes that occur in their lives.  Yancey and his wife, Sabra, argue about an editorial he has written calling for Indian rights.  He tells her that one day she will be proud to have seen the editorial published by their paper.  Sure enough a few scenes later when they are looking for an editorial to re-run for the paper’s anniversary, that is the piece she chooses.

One thing you will not forget if you watch Cimarron today, is the acting of Richard Dix.  He looks like the stereotype of the silent movie star that over emotes and has just a touch too much make up on as well.  It’s almost distracting at times.

The DVD also contains a short called The Devil’s Cabaret and a cartoon,  Red-Headed Baby.  The short is an early Technicolor piece and despite plenty of groan inducing jokes and gags, has an amazing look.  The short is set in Hades where Satan & Co. Inc. led by Satan himself (Charles Middleton) is trying to figure out why so many people are going to Heaven instead of Hades.  Satan sends his assistant, Howie Burns played by Edward Buzzell to try to round-up some souls.  Howie goes to earth and steers the crowd away from a preacher with Satan’s souvenirs and the promise of a swinging night spot.  The women tear off their prudish gowns and dance a number in skimpy for the time speakeasy outfits.  Everyone ends up following Howie back down to Hades and after a musical act or two, he sends the guys to one dormitory and the gals to another because this is Hell after all. 

Red-Headed Baby is a cartoon with a baby doll and a toy soldier that are menaced by an evil spider.  The spider kidnaps the baby girl and the toy soldier charges after him.  This is an early Merry Melody. 

Cimarron was enjoyable and moved faster than I expected it to.  It gets 3 stars from me.  The Devil’s Cabaret gets a 9 on the Night Flight scale, and Red-Headed Baby gets a 6 1/2 on that scale.

Final Destination 3 Wal-Mart Exclusive Bonus DVD

Saturday was the first Saturday in May which means it was Free Comic Book Day.  It was also a really pretty day which meant a bunch of yard sales.  The wife and I took out and began hitting yard sales about 7:30 AM.  We made it to Comic World in Huntington and picked up some comics including the book I had been waiting for, the Free Comic Book Day preview of the revival of the Gold Key/Valiant heroes Doctor Solar and Magnus Robot Fighter.  The shop was busy, so we didn’t stay long.  We headed home via Route 2 and made a side trip to Crafts 2000 for the wife and Big Lots in Parkersburg for me.  She found some stuff, I didn’t.  When we finally made it home, we were just a few minutes ahead of a big storm.  There was a wonderful breeze blowing and the sound of the rain was ready to send me to sleep.  I decided to grab something short.

I had just picked up the Imax film Seasons narrated by William Shatner.  It was only 55 minutes, but I was afraid the falling of raindrops coupled with the sounds of Vivaldi might put me to sleep.  I decided to pop in the Final Destination 3 Wal-Mart Exclusive Bonus DVD that I had picked up at KV Fine Jewelry on Friday night. 

The first feature on the disc was a preview featurette for Snakes on a Plane.  I still haven’t picked up a copy yet, but I have caught bits of the film on cable.  The featurette made me want to sit down and watch it, so it did its job.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the disc or the time. 

The second feature is a collection of every death scene from all three Final Destination movies.  Since I hadn’t seen Final Destination 3 yet, I was a little sorry I chose this disc.  I now know how everyone dies in the third movie.  Oh well.  Feature 3 was a very informative look at the day in the life of the directing crew.  We start at nearly 5 in the morning with the Third Assistant Director (or AD) as he gets the actors trailers ready and unlocked.  He arranges a schedule for hair and make-up and then has to transport everyone to the location for the day.  We also watch the director and first AD doing their jobs as well.  It was a great way to see some of the less glamorous, day-to-day work that goes into making a film.

The fourth feature is just little mini interviews with the major characters from the film.  Not real in-depth, but it is still interesting.  The fifth feature is a montage of behind the scenes stuff with a Final Destination song playing underneath.  The disc is rounded out with previews for other films.

I give this disc an 8 on the Night Flight scale.

Vibe Fox In A Box Featuring Pam Grier Bonus Disc

When you talk about the icons of the Blaxploitation films of the 70s, you can argue about several of the men that starred in various films, but no one can dispute Pam Grier.  Not only did she star in several of Roger Corman’s classic women in prison films, but she was Coffy, Foxy Brown, FridayFoster and Sheba (“Sheba Baby”) Shayne.  Years later Pam would inspire Quentin Tarantino and from that the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch became Jackie Brown with Pam as Jackie Brown.

Most of Pam’s work with AIP has been brought to DVD in MGM’s Soul Cinema collection.  Three of her most famous films (Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby) were boxed together along with a bonus disc and released as Fox In A Box.  I had all three of the features, but the other night I was in Goodwill and I found the Fox In A Box bonus disc.  The disc has a featurette on Pam Grier and a second featurette on Blaxploitation’s connection to hip-hop music.  It’s obvious that both of the featurettes were constructed from the same series of interviews, but they are still both interesting. 

The Pam Grier featurette is a loving tribute to arguably the most important woman in black cinema.  Vivica A. Fox, rapper Foxy Brown, John Legend, T.I., and others are interviewed and tell how Pam Grier and her characters shaped and touched their lives.  Several of the men comment specifically on Pam’s uninhibited nature when it came to showing her body on film, especially her breasts.  The featurette tends to stick mostly to the three films that were included in the box, but brief mentions of her other films pop up occasionally.

The blaxploitation to hip-hop featurette is also entertaining, but woefully inadequate for such a large topic.  Once again the discussion is steered around the three Pam Grier films in the collection, but there are so many other important blaxploitation films that are not even mentioned that it’s hard to take this as a serious documentary featurette.  Shaft, Sweetback, Dolemite, and Superfly are not even mentioned.

Despite the fact that these featurettes were obviously produced to hype the DVD set rather than serve as truly educational films on the subjects they were discussing, they were entertaining.  Either one of them would have been right at home on Night Flight and I would have definitely come back for more.  For that reason I give the disc a 7 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Freak Out

The other night when I was at Wills, I purchased a couple of films I wasn’t familiar with.  One of them was District B13 which I watched and loved.  The other film was a horror movie comedy called Freak Out.  Freak Out concerns a couple of horror movies fans that end up having an escaped mental patient turn up in their back yard.  The Looney may be crazy, but he’s also a vegetarian that tells people that “meat is murder”.  The two buddies, Merv Doody and Onkey, decide to try to mold their Looney into a serial killer.

Freak Out is not nearly as good as District B13, but Freak Out isn’t bad either.  Keep in mind that Freak Out was an independent film that took just under 5 years to make.  It is a labor of love with some very funny bits and several jokes that fall flat.  It also has several layers of hidden subtext that may be missed upon first viewing.  The film really tries to be funny.  Even the music has humor attached to it.  A song used in a montage scene sounds suspiciously like Maniac from Flashdance, but the song tells us that copywrite infringement is a crime and not to be confused, because this song sounds nothing like that other song that you;ve heard before.  It’s a joke inside a joke, playing over top of the montage joke.

The DVD I got was a former rental and although the disc was marked Disc 1, the case makes no mention of a second disc, and no other disc was included.  I checked on eBay and apparently there was a 2 Disc version released.  Most rental places don’t cater to film buffs that want all the bonus features, so they often get special bare bones versions from the distributer.  Apparently this was the case here as well with the second disc just not being included.

The lead characters of Merv and Onkey apparently also made a cameo in the movie Evil Aliens, so now I need to try to check that out.  Dan Palmer, the actor playing Onkey, reminds me of Trevor Moore from The Whitest Kids U’Know, so that was running through my mind the whole time I was watching it.

Horror comedies are difficult to pull off, and low-budget, independent ones are even harder.  One of my favorites in this genre is Psychos In Love.  Freak Out is no Psychos In Love, but it is a hundred times better than any movie in the Scary Movie franchise.  If you can get it cheap, check it out.  As a movie I give Freak Out a 2 1/2.  If it had been on Night Flight as one of their films like J Men Forever or Nick Danger and the Case of the Missing Yolk, it would have been an 8 if for no other reason than the Arse Piranaha and the talking Looney doll.

Robotech Remastered Extended Edition The Macross Saga 4

Friday night was another night where I was looking for something short.  I had run some errands which had put me late getting to the DVD player.  I was also dealing with a bad cold or flu like illness and needed to get in bed as quickly as I could in order to be ready for work the next day.  I decided to finish out the Robotech AniMini DVDs with volume 4 featuring The Long Wait.  This episode helps to remind us of the differences in Japanese anime and American cartoons.  Not only does anime (especially 80s anime) deal more with giant robot battle suits and intergalactic war than most American cartoons, they also deal with more mature story lines like the separation from family and being on your own in hostile situations.  This episode finds Rick Hunter and Minmei trying to find their way to everyone else in the space fortress from their location deep in the bowels of the ship.  Rick is unable to find a way out and they must come to terms with their lack of food and the possibility that they may never find their way out.  American cartoons of the 80s never seemed to place their young characters in such desperate plights. 

There was one other major cultural difference brought to light in this episode as well.  Minmei and Rick have gotten filthy from their battles and attempts to repair Rick’s ship or escape their location.  When Minmei complains of thirst, Rick remembers some pipes with condensation indicating the presence of water in the lines.  He pries one of the pipes loose and they have a geyser of water to quench their thirst.  They also have a ready-made shower as Minmei points out.  She announces to Rick that she is going to take a shower and sends him out.  She then strips down and takes a shower.  In an American cartoon, this would not likely happen, but if it did, once Rick left Minmei to shower, the camera would have left as well.  In anime that is not always the case, a fact proven out by a scene in this episode of a naked Minmei showering.  If you thought Janet Jackson’s bare breast could give America heart palpitations, imagine their reaction to a naked female butt (and near side views of breasts) in a children’s cartoon.

The Long Wait is another well done episode of Robotech, and makes me more interested in eventually sitting down and watching the multi-episode discs I purchased at K-Mart years ago.  Give this one 8 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

The Making Of Fantastic Four

The Making of Fantastic Four was a bonus documentary DVD released by Wal-Mart with the 2005 Fantastic Four DVD.  I used to read and collect The Fantastic Four comics and I had taken my daughter to the theater to see the original movie for her birthday that year.  I didn’t think it was a bad film, but I wasn’t rushing out to buy the DVD even if there was a bonus DVD.  Fortunately I ran into the exclusive bonus DVD at one of the pawn shops I frequent and picked it up for a couple of bucks.  I needed something short on Saturday after running to some yard sales earlier in the day, so at about an hour this DVD fit the bill.

The disc breaks down to the five main characters in the film and shows how the effects were done as well as how the costumes were designed.  It starts with Ben Grimm, The Thing as played by Michael Chiklis.  Chiklis was in one of my favorite television series, The Shield, and I was excited to find out that he had been a comic fan growing up as well.  The scenes showing him in costume talking with Stan Lee who was there to shoot a cameo, show the here to for hidden inner fanboy side of Vic Mackey.  It is very touching.  He recounts how he told his brother when they were kids that if they ever made a movie of the Fantastic Four, he was going to play the Thing. 

The section on Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman is notable for showing how they shot the scene of an invisible Sue on the bridge.  She turns invisible, but her clothes remain, so she removes them.  She rematerializes for a bit in her underwear before going invisible once more.  This time she removes the underwear and a completely invisible Sue Storm walks through the crowd.  Of course the invisibility is a movie trick that was accomplished by having Jessica in a skin-tight, and nearly skin color, body suit walk through the crowd.  Thank God for making of DVDs.

The sections on the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic were interesting, but the other stand out was the section on Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom.  McMahon seems to be having a ball on the set and his good mood is infectious.  The wardrobe guys explain how as Doom progresses his wardrobe gets darker, but even at his darkest, McMahon can be found cracking jokes and goofing around, making him seem like a fun guy to talk to.

Judging this disc on the Night Flight scale, I give it a pretty solid 8, especially if you’re a comic book fan.

Magical Mystery Tour

I love The Beatles.  I’m not a compulsive nut or even a super-fan, but I love their music and what they did to the world of music.  I love their solo work and their different looks.  I have almost all of the early CD releases and I have two of their movies on DVD.  One of my Wills trips had turned up a copy of Magical Mystery Tour.  It was a region free disc and an import.  It was also still shrink-wrapped.  I bought it, but as is the story with a lot of my DVDs, I never got around to watching it. 

I had heard horrible reviews of the movie, which was actually made for British television, but I had never seen it.  With the psychedelic colors and the wild costumes and the music, I didn’t see how it could be that bad.  I was wrong.  Magical Mystery Tour is like someone took Monty Python’s zaniness and removed the humor and then crossed that with the cast of an early John Waters film and then threw in some Beatles music.  It’s a train wreck happening in slow motion… on a bus.

That being said, the musical numbers are still fine to listen to and enjoy, and the strangeness of the film will definitely make you keep coming back to it days after watching it.  I can see myself replaying I Am The Walrus or the scene with the band in the strip tease joint playing Death Cab For Cutie.  I just don’t see myself ever wanting to wait through the scenes of Ringo and his aunt, the magicians, or the kids on the bus.  The aunt and Ringo especially got on my nerves, and I wanted to know what was the deal with Paul’s nose in the magicians’ scenes.

I have only seen Yellow Submarine and Let It Be out of the 5 Beatles movies, and both of those were last viewed ages ago.  Never the less, I still think this was definitely the weakest of their films.  I also had some issues with the clarity of the DVD.  Perhaps it was because of its age and the fact it was shot for television, but several scenes looked horrible, like a bad video dub.  Whatever the case, I don’t think it would have made the film any more enjoyable.  I give it 1 1/2 stars as a movie.  If it had aired on Night Flight, late at night, I might have been more intrigued and more forgiving, so I will give it a 5 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Aeon Flux The Animated Series DVD Sampler

Back in 1991 MTV aired a series called Liquid Television.  Liquid Television contained lots of short animated bits and one of the greatest bits was Aeon Flux.  Each week the Aeon Flux segment would be continued until the final segment which completed the story arc.  My recollection of that final segment was that Aeon Flux fell to her death.  When a new season of Liquid Television started, a new Aeon Flux storyline began as well.  I don’t recall much about the second storyline, and I also don’t recall the later Aeon Flux television series.  I remember picking up a couple of Aeon Flux video tapes, but I never got around to watching them.

Fast forward to 2005.  Paramount pictures, part of the Viacom family that includes MTV, releases an Aeon Flux live action movie starring Charlize Theron.  The film is not a huge success, but a few months later it is due for release on DVD.  Along with the movie, Paramount releases a box set of the entire original animated Aeon Flux adventures.  In a cross promotional deal, Wal-Mart releases a DVD 2 pack containing the live action film and an exclusive DVD sampler disc of the animated adventures.  I didn’t buy it at the time, but ended up finding the bonus disc at Wills and adding it to my collection.

Last night I spent the better part of my evening grocery shopping with my daughter.  When I got home and we got the groceries put away, I needed something short.  I didn’t really want to do another Robotech mini-disc just yet, nor did I want to dive into another Universal monster movie.  I looked at possible Disney features when all of a sudden I recalled the Aeon Flux sampler.  I pulled it out and popped it in the DVD player.  There was a trailer for the box set as well as three episodes of the show; Pilot, Tide, and War.

Pilot was the shorts from season one of Liquid Television that I remembered, but they were all spliced together and there was a follow-up to Aeon’s death that I didn’t recall from the original show.  Of course that was nearly 20 years ago, so my memory may just be faulty.  The art in the animation was actually better than I remember.  I know I was impressed, but rewatching it, I notice bits that recall Geoff Darrow or Barry Windsor Smith or Moebius or any number of other great graphic artists.  The animation is a sheer joy to watch and Aeon with her skimpy action hero meets exposed cleavage stripper wardrobe.  The plot has Aeon trying to reach a mysterious figure whose picture she carries around as well as a map of the compound in which he is located.  There are gun battles and plenty of blood as Aeon makes her way across the heavily fortified compound.  Along the way she ends up with a nail in her boot and when she stands up outside a window, preparing to finish her mission, she places her full weight on the boot, the nail penetrates the bottom of her foot, she loses balance, and falls to her death on the ground below.  That’s where I remember the story ending, but a segment follows showing Aeon reborn and lots of foot fetish imagery.

Tide is equally as fun as the first segment although a bit more simplistic.  Aeon with the help of another woman captures and cuffs a male figure.  There is a struggle as Aeon attempts to get a key from him.  The key flies behind some equipment and when Aeon attempts to remove it the numbered tag breaks free.  At this point the a series of events begin to play out with only minor changes.  Aeon rushes out with the key and tries it on a numbered door working backwards from 6.  She has to shoot some guards on a stairway first, and then after the key doesn’t work, she ends up shooting a metal object that appears to be dangling off of a crane and attempting to dock inside a hole.  After shooting the crane bit, she rushes back to the room where the man and the other woman have started to get physical with each other.  As Aeon enters, they break free of each other and act like nothing is happening.  Aeon tries to get the tag and the room descends another level.  Aeon rushes out and the events repeat themselves.  Shoot up the stairs, check the key, shoot the crane, back in the room, repeat.  The minor differences and the build up of tension makes this perhaps more humorous than the first cartoon.  Once again Aeon is killed before the end of the cartoon and we find out that the crane device was attempting to pull a plug on the facility that cause it to flood.  The article behind the mysterious locked door turns out to be a second plug, unfortunately they get it too late.

War is probably the weakest of the three.  Aeon is killed off early on in the short and the rest of it follows a fighter from one of two warring factions.  It slips between the two sides in this war and never really captured my attention.

The sampler disc definitely does its job of making you want to pick up the full set.  I have the box set and have been thinking about how I need to sit down with it and watch the show from start to finish.  It won’t be for a while with my schedule and this project, but one day.  As for the sampler disc, Pilot and Tide both get 10s on the Night Flight scale.  War gets an 8 1/2.  The disc itself gets 3 1/2 stars.

Family Guy Peter Griffin Vs. The Giant Chicken

I was browsing through FYE back in late January and I ran across what appeared to be a FYE exclusive.  It was a DVD with all three of the Family Guy episodes that featured Peter Griffin fighting the giant chicken.  I have watched Family Guy, but I am not a rabid fan by any stretch.  At the same time, I am not a rabid anti-Family Guy person either.  I think it’s funny, but not as drop dead funny as Robot Chicken or Frisky Dingo.  On average I like South Park better than Family Guy, but there are episodes of Family Guy that I like better than certain episodes of South Park.  That being said, I own all of the Family Guy season sets as well as Blue Harvest and Stewie Griffin. 

Of the three episodes on the chicken trilogy disc, I had only seen one, the middle one.  The first episode on the disc was Da Boom.  Peter is out picking stuff up for a millenium party when he is warned about Y2K and how it would be the end of the world.  Naturally he overreacts and converts his basement into a fallout shelter to protect him and his family from the upcoming apocalypse.  When the clock strikes midnight, all of a sudden Peter is proven right.  Planes fall out of the sky, nuclear missiles launch, the world comes to an end.  Peter and his family now have to deal with the post apocalyptic world and their mutated friends (and eventually family).  The first chicken fight takes place during Peter’s early shopping trip as he explains to a man in a chicken suit why he never accepts coupons from chickens.  Apparently the giant chicken had given Peter an expired coupon and that started their city spanning fight with Peter punching and the chicken pecking until Peter appears triumphant and walks away.  The episode ends with a very special twist ending featuring live action actors from another famous series.

The second episode, Blind Ambition, finds Peter trying to do something that he can be publicly recognized for.  All of his buddies have some sort of award or press accolades, and Peter wants that too.  He ends up deciding to go for a world’s record, but choosing one that causes him to go blind (eating nickels).  This time the chicken ambushes Peter as he is standing on the sidewalk talking to his neighbors.  The fight gets more outlandish, culminating in a Raiders of the Lost Ark spoof with an airplane.

The final episode, No Chris Left Behind, concerns Chris getting kicked out of school in order for the school to improve its standings and receive funds for No Child Left Behind.  Lois talks to her father and he gets Chris accepted at a posh private school for the rich.  Once again the chicken appears out of nowhere and he and Peter are at it again, but this time they end up talking and decide that they don’t really recall why exactly it is that they are fighting.  They shake hands and end up going out to dinner with the wife of the giant chicken at an out-of-the-way restaurant.  The meal goes great, but when it is time to pick up the check, they begin to argue about who gets to pay for the meal.  This leads to another fight and once more Peter walks away the winner.

There aren’t any bonus features as this was done mainly as a promotional item.  All three episodes are enjoyable with Da Boom probably being my favorite.  However if you judge them solely on the chicken fights, No Chris Left Behind probably takes the prize.  Family Guy is a staple of Adult Swim which is about the closest thing we currently have to Night Flight.  So on the Night Flight scale Da Boom gets a 9, Blind Ambition gets an 8 and No Chris Left Behind gets an 8 1/2.  Overall, I would rate the DVD as 3 stars.

Devo Live

I don’t have a lot of music/concert DVDs in my collection.  I like music, but there aren’t many acts I am willing to pay full price for a DVD of their music.  Some of them are very disappointing like the DVD of Pink Floyd covers I reviewed earlier.  Some of the discs are simply video compilations.  Some of the concerts are so poorly shot that it feels like you’re watching a bootleg video somebody shot by sneaking a camera in to the concert.  However there are two acts that I have purchased every DVD of theirs that I have found whether it was new, used, on sale or full price.  One of those performers is the notorious G.G. Allin.  The other is Devo.

I purchased Devo Live in the Land of the Rising Sun at FYE in their used DVD section back when they were in the Kanawha Mall.  I watched it and loved it.  I found Devo Live later, but I don’t recall where I found it.  I logged it in to the list on the computer and the collection swallowed it up.  I knew it was there, but I kept forgetting to pull it out and watch it.  I decided that I wanted something different tonight and for some reason my mind remembered I still had a Devo DVD that I hadn’t watched.

I remembered seeing clips of Devo on Night Flight, but I wasn’t a big fan at that point.  In fact I really didn’t like Devo much.  I thought Jocko Homo was interesting, but I remember hearing their cover of Satisfaction and I hated it.  I went to Boys State in 1981 and still remember this huge debate we had about which version of Satisfaction was better.  I couldn’t see how anyone could enjoy Devo’s version.  A few years later I bought the Oh No, It’s Devo cassette tape and slowly got converted to Devolution.  One of my favorite pawn shop finds in fact was someone’s Devo CD collection that they had turned loose of.  There were several of the common CDs, but there were also several obscure Devo discs including the Claw Hammer re-recording of the debut Devo album.

Devo Live was recorded during 1996’s Lollapalooza tour at Irvine Meadows, California.  Devo performed 11 songs without any video screens or major props.  The set list opened with Whip It, which was probably the first Devo song I really liked.  Mark Mothersbaugh and the boys launch into it like they had never stopped.  The show continues with Girl U Want, Satisfaction and Uncontrollable Urge.  During Uncontrollable Urge the yellow jumpsuits start to get shredded and after Blockhead, when the group launches into Mongoloid, the suits are fast on their way to becoming audience souvenirs. 

Jocko Homo, Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA, Gut Feeling/Slap Yer Mammy, and Gates of Steel complete the main show.  The band then returns to the stage for an encore performing Come Back Jonee.  I would have loved to see Devo live, but this DVD is probably the closest I will ever get.  The DVD features the spud boys set and a brief interview backstage after the show, but that’s about it.  The sole bonus feature is the ability to watch certain performances with the multi angle function.  Not too many DVDs feature this function, and it is probably one of my least favorite bonuses.

Devo Live is 55 minutes long, but it feels like 15.  For a band I didn’t care for when I first heard them, Devo’s music now has the ability to instantly bring a smile to my face and this DVD had me smiling for the entire 55 minutes.  Due to its length, I will rate Devo Live on the Night Flight scale and give it, not surprisingly a 10.  As for the actual DVD, I give it a 9 only because it was light on bonus features.  Even a static discography would have been nice.