The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 21, 2019

Forgive me my punning sins (if you're able to, anyway), but is Cleopatra in denial? I've been giving the iconic music label brickbats for a number of their Blu-ray releases that featured only lossy audio, but at least those were by and large "dramatic" entries, though some of them did have musical content. But here is a concert video of a legendary star and band, in this case appearing with other legendary stars, and Cleopatra once again is bringing out a Blu-ray with Dolby Digital audio. It's enough to make an ardent audiophile search for a nearby asp, especially since Cleopatra has authored the disc to default to the Dolby Digital 2.0 track, rather than the ostensibly better Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Unfortunately, that's just part of the problem with this release, which is also another Cleopatra Blu-ray release whose video is encoded via MPEG-2, in an interlaced presentation that features some recurrent combing artifacts.

The good news here is this is a really high energy and very fun concert, with Chrissie Hynde regularly engaging both the audience and her bandmates, as well as several special guests. The Pretenders sound full bodied and at times almost relentless, and the guest stars, some of whom (like Shirley Manson) seem a little gobsmacked to be performing with personal heroes, typically sound great as well.

The set list for the concert is as follows:

The Wait
The Losing
Back on the Chain Gang
Talk of the Town (featuring Shirley Manson)
Only Happy When It Rains (featuring Shirley Manson)
Day After Day
The Bucket (featuring Kings of Leon)
Up the Neck (featuring Kings of Leon)
Drive (featuring Incubus)
Message of Love (featuring Incubus)
Precious
Fools Must Die (featuring Iggy Pop)
Candy (featuring Iggy Pop)
Mystery Achievement
Brass in Pocket
Middle of the Road (featuring Iggy Pop, Shirley Manson, Kings of Leon and Incubus)

The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pretenders With Friends is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Rock Fuel Media, MVD Visual and Cleopatra Entertainment with an MPEG-2* encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. As mentioned above, there are recurrent combing artifacts visible throughout this presentation (so much so that even garnering nine screenshots for this review proved to be a bit of a challenge). There are also some weird looking moments that I'm frankly not sure are due to kind of odd looking noise (if it is noise) or some addition of equally odd looking digital grain (if it is digital grain) made to give the image a distressed appearance. With those two potential stumbling blocks out of the way, the transfer boasts a rather vivid palette, and in close-ups at least detail levels are rather good. Midrange and wide shots can often look pretty fuzzy, something that's only exacerbated when the players are moving quickly around the stage. Compression is iffy at times, and there are moments that almost resemble upscaled video, with stairstepping evident on edges of items. I will say that the concert looks at least marginally better in motion than some of these screenshots might suggest.

*Kind of oddly, the interstitial menus are encoded via AVC, as is the "Decades Rock Confidential" supplement.

The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pretenders With Friends features Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes, though as mentioned above, the disc is authored to default to the stereo track. Within the context of lossy audio, I guess things sound "fine" here, but wouldn't it be great if they sounded excellent? A lossless rendering almost certainly would have upped the energy of the midrange and lower frequencies, which can sound just a tad anemic here, though the overall mix has sufficient energy and vocals are nicely prioritized throughout. I'm giving this a 3.0, though I'm sure there will be music fans out there who feel even that middling score is too generous.

The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Decades Rock Confidential (1080i; various) is a bunch of short interview snippets (which is why I'm not including timing) featuring Chrissie Hynde, Martin Chambers and several of the guest stars. Why this is split into little one minute or so tidbits is a bit of a mystery to me.


• Slideshow (1080i; 2:25)


• Trailer (1080p; 4:02) offers significantly better video quality than much of the concert in my estimation, probably due at least in part to its progressive presentation.

The Digipack also comes with a DVD of the concert, as well as a CD. There's an insert booklet with stills and credits.

The Pretenders with Friends Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is a wonderful concert hobbled by an inadequate technical presentation. Pretenders fans may well want to check it out, but my hunch is they're not going to be over the moon about this release.