Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie Review

Should you reflex-ively buy this Blu-ray?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 4, 2012

Can it be mere coincidence that hot on the heels of the recent Blu-ray release of Roger Vadim’s campy 1968 science fiction extravaganza Barbarella , we’re now being treated to a live concert Blu-ray by the iconic 1980s (and beyond) band Duran Duran? For those who don’t get the connection right off the bat, Duran Duran kind of copped their band name from a Barbarella character, Durand Durand, played by Milo O’Shea in the film. O’Shea’s character was actually the bad guy of the film, but Duran Duran fairly quickly established itself as pop-rock heroes back in the day and at one point were called the “prettiest boys in rock”, something that evidently was meant to be a compliment. That very façade of varnished glamour may have led some to dismiss the band’s musical ingenuity, something that was perhaps exacerbated by lead singer Simon LeBon’s overly nasal quality. While cynics may have been quick to deride Duran Duran as being all style and not much substance, record buyers approved of the band’s offerings, and Duran Duran quickly eclipsed a number of other stylish dance outfits that first hit the charts at about the same time as LeBon, Simon Rhodes, and the Taylor boys (ABC, anyone?). Duran Duran seemed to epitomize the glitzy 80s in a way few other bands ever did, but like the 80s themselves, the band faded as the decade came to a close, losing a couple of members to various maladies (like exhaustion), and seeming, for a while at least, to become yesterday’s news. Rather incredibly, though, the band (in a slightly different personnel assemblage) took the charts by storm again in 1993 with a decidedly more mature sound that included their gorgeous ballad “Ordinary World”, a song that immediately reestablished them as pop-rock dynamos and led to a resurgence of interest in their 80s material as well. Now more than thirty years after they first rose to international prominence, the band has released this live concert video, recorded at Manchester's MEN Arena in 2011.

It probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that a band which helped to define the MTV generation should present a live concert video that is awash in bells and whistles, with a variety of techniques and gimmicks spicing up the visual presentation. Some of this ingenuity seems to either mimic or outright cull from Duran Duran’s early 2011 live YouTube collaboration with legendary filmmaker David Lynch. Here we get everything from black and white footage interspersed with (at times filtered) color sequences, lots of wild projections floating above the players (including what looks like snippets from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin), and various other elements, like quick flashes of animation (which evidently are also being projected to the live audience) filling up the frame.

The visual aesthetic was the subject of quite a bit of planning, as evidenced by this quote from Nick Rhodes, taken from the press sheet accompanying this release. “We wanted to create a dynamic, interactive show, combining new technology with edgy design. The brief for our lighting designer was ‘Pixel Punk’. This manifested itself in the convergence of hi-tech screens with a powerful, asymmetrical lighting rig. The primary aim was to re-invent our songs visually and introduce material from the new album as a unique sensory experience. With this in mind, the screens were populated by science fiction, supermodels, anime, psychedelic patterns and graphic design. Four massive mechanical arms were programmed to swoop down over the stage, firing beams of light, like the aliens in War of the Worlds. And the audience was integrated with the show, as live cameras were turned on them, projecting their images behind the band. Hanging high above the stage, four giant heads presented another dimension to the production, as they came alive as band members, skulls, robots and a girl transforming into a leopard.”

Rhodes continues, “The show is a journey. It was already our movie, but the challenge loomed to translate this into a film that tells the same story for those who were not there on the night. In this case we used many cameras, to ensure no detail escaped. We deployed both slow motion, animation and various stylized film grads, which give the performance a dreamlike quality in places. But most of all, I think A Diamond in the Mind truly captures the widescreen energy and vibrancy of what really transpired that night, when Duran Duran played live in Manchester.”

But it’s the music that should be most important, and the good news is that Duran Duran has lost none of its swagger with the passage of thirty years. Simon LeBon had some well publicized vocal problems in 2011 which forced the band the cancel quite a bit of their tour which had already launched in support of their newest album, All You Need is Now. LeBon seems to have recovered admirably. While he still sports that lurching, quasi-yodeling nasal affect in his midrange, his upper range, the area of his voice that evidently created all his problems last year, sounds really clear and appealing, with a newfound maturity that has burnished his timbre considerably. Nick Rhodes seems to be sleepwalking, probably intentionally, through a lot of the concert, staring into the camera like he’s in a trance (and who knows, he might be). Some of the finest playing is by guitarist Dom Brown, who contributes some concise but blistering solos.

Duran Duran Live in Concert 2011: A Diamond in the Mind features the following songs:

• 01. Return to Now
• 02. Before the Rain
• 03. Planet Earth
• 04. View to a Kill
• 05. All You Need Is Now
• 06. Blame the Machines
• 07. Safe (In the Heat of the Moment)
• 08. The Reflex
• 09. Man Who Stole a Leopard
• 10. Girl Panic!
• 11. White Lines
• 12. Careless Memories
• 13. Ordinary World
• 14. Notorious
• 15. Hungry Like the Wolf
• 16. (Reach Up for the) Sunrise
• 17. Wild Boys/Relax
• 18. Rio
• 19. A Diamond in the Mind

Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Duran Duran Live in Concert 2011: A Diamond in the Mind is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 2.35:1. The visual ingenuity of this concert isn't especially well served by this high definition presentation, for a few reasons. The concert itself is subject to the quick cutting ethos that is standard operating procedure for so many concert directors these days, but in this case, that also includes cutting between various film and video stocks that don't jive together that well, especially when thrust up against each other in such rapid succession (individual snippets between edits rarely last longer than a couple of seconds throughout the entire concert). But the extreme filtering and other gimmicks added to the imagery works to the detriment of the overall look here, with rampant softness and a lack of fine object detail. Large swaths of the concert are also subject to banding and posterizing, two regular bugaboos of these live concert offerings. While there's nothing horrible about this transfer, it never really pops with the clarity one might hope for in a 2011 live concert feature.

Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Duran Duran Live in Concert 2011: A Diamond in the Mind has two lossless audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix and an LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Fidelity is superb in both of these tracks, but perhaps surprisingly, the LPCM 2.0 mix features a slightly more bombastic low end which may make it preferable to some listeners. The 5.1 mix nicely splays the layered instruments across the front channels, while audience sounds and ambient hall reverb fill the rear channels. Occasionally LeBon's vocals are just slightly buried in the mix, and the backup vocalist is almost negligible a lot of the time, but otherwise the instruments are prioritized really well and there's a nicely shimmering clarity to the band throughout the concert

Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Duran Duran 2011 (1080i; 12:09). This is a fairly interesting overview of what the band was up to in 2011, including their collaboration with David Lynch and Simon LeBon's laryngitis, which temporarily put the kibosh on their touring activities.

Bonus Tracks include:

• Come Undone (1080i; 4:49)


• Is There Something I Should Know? (1080i; 4:39)

Duran Duran: A Diamond In the Mind Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Duran Duran Live in Concert 2011: A Diamond in the Mind proves that Duran Duran is still ready for their collective close-ups, and the concert is an extension of the band's early exploitation of the then new music video format. The concert itself is a mostly high energy affair (though it kind of starts out in a depressingly low key way, with minor keyed ballads), and the visual ingenuity on display here is quite interesting a lot of the time. That very ingenuity is undercut, however, by the director's insistence on nothing but quick cuts, perfect for the ADHD generation but really annoying for anyone with an actual attention span who wants to actually see what's going on. The video presentation here is not quite as good as might have been hoped, but the audio is spectacular. With caveats noted, this release comes Recommended.