8.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Seeking to provide an unprecedented and intimate look into the history of the band and the legacy of its music, the Eagles partnered with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) to produce the film. Directed by Alison Ellwood (Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place), History of the Eagles is a meticulous creation featuring rare archival material, concert footage, and never-before-seen home movies that explore the evolution and enduring popularity of one of the world’s biggest-selling and culturally significant American bands.
Starring: Don Henley (I), Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh (III), Don FelderMusic | 100% |
Documentary | 42% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1, 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1, 1.33:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
You can’t keep a good band down. Even when you’re a member of it. That might be the single most salient lesson imparted to both fans and casual viewers (and/or listeners) alike as they review the epochal journey The Eagles have taken over the past several decades. Like many superstar outfits, The Eagles took a while to get their groove on, but once they started topping the charts, they were the band, at least for a little while, until that same success started fraying the edges of long simmering tensions between members of the group. It’s a story that’s been told a thousand, maybe a million, times in the annals of rock (and other music genres), but somehow it has a visceral intensity in this particular tale because the band members seem like “regular guys”, not unapproachable Rock Gods. In fact in one of the early moments in this absolutely fascinating documentary, Don Henley and Glenn Frey are in the back of a limousine after a concert, a little worried that their driver will be able to get the doors locked before the crazy fans do something unexpected (“You never know with these kids”). As they take off, Henley and Frey wax philosophical about why their fans are so ardent. “They think they’re up on stage”, Frey opines, while Henley talks about how The Eagles’ allure has more to do with the fact that the band looks like their fans, dresses like their fans and has a general worldview that mirrors that of their fans. It’s a compelling little piece of insight—just one of many this documentary imparts—that helps to show not just what knit The Eagles and their followers together but also how interior looking the guys were from their earliest days.
The History of the Eagles is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in a variety of aspect ratios as befits the many source elements. The bulk of the documentary is in 1.78:1 and 1:33. The accompanying concert disc is 1080i in 1.33:1. (Screenshots 1-17 come from both parts of the documentary, while screenshots 18 and 19 come from the concert disc.) Given the hugely disparate amount of material this documentary incorporates, things look pretty good overall. The contemporary talking head sequences of course look the best, with a nicely sharp image, accurate color and pleasing fine object detail. Even some of the archival footage has weathered the vagaries of time and its smaller millimeter sourcing rather well. On the other hand, there's some really ragged looking footage here, including old television appearances that look like they were sourced off of second or even third generation tapes. The bonus concert footage is relatively decent looking, though suffers from the red stage lighting, something that makes the midrange and wide shots look extremely soft and fuzzy. Close-ups fare considerably better. Given the historical significance of so much of this footage (much of which has never been seen before), it's hard to get too worked up over a less than totally pristine high definition presentation here. Anyone with appropriate expectations should be easily pleased with the overall video quality of this release.
The History of the Eagles (as well as the concert disc) feature both a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track as well as an LPCM 2.0 track. While it's obvious that some of this material had multitrack source stems to build a proper 5.1 mix out of, it's just as obvious that some did not, and at least some of the repurposed material has a kind of oddly processed quasi-phasing sound that I personally found a little distracting. I opted for the 2.0 track for that reason, but others' mileage may vary and those people may well find the 5.1 track perfectly acceptable. Fidelity is just fine in all of the interview and voiceover material, and is mostly excellent in the archival footage. The professionally filmed concert material sounds the best (including on the bonus disc), but some of the older appearances have some transitory issues. As with the video quality, the historical importance of these older pieces is such that any minor problems are easily ignored.
There are no "official" supplements per se, though some might count the third Blu-ray which features the March 1977 concert at the Capital Centre as a bonus.
You don't need to even be a particular fan of The Eagles to find much of this documentary fascinating, unless the vagaries of the music business don't interest you in the slightest. There's quite a bit of incisive self-reflection here that helps to make the foibles of "overnight sensations" (which of course they weren't) a bit more understandable. This is an impeccably structured piece that includes a lot of rare footage and crafts a careful and perhaps ever so slightly sanitized version of events, but which still exhibits enough "warts and all" attitude to make a lot of the documentary immensely compelling. Video (and to a lesser extent audio) quality here is fairly variable due to the vast array of source elements utilized, and some may complain about the concert disc apparently being incomplete, but otherwise The History of the Eagles comes Highly recommended.
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