7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
Five-time Grammy winner Lady Gaga headlines her first solo HBO concert event when Lady Gaga Presents The Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden debuts Saturday, May 7. Taped Feb. 21 and 22 at Madison Square Garden in her hometown of New York City, the special spotlights the pop sensation on her sold-out world tour, accompanied by a ten-piece band and ten backup dancers.
Starring: Lady GagaMusic | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: Dolby TrueHD 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Let’s clear one misconception up right away: Lady Gaga is most definitely not following in Madonna’s footsteps, at least not in any meaningful way. Whatever imprint Madonna left on the pop cultural landscape, musical or otherwise, has been all but eradicated by Lady Gaga’s presence in merely a few years’ time. This insistence that Lady Gaga is the “new Madonna,” simply upping the shock value to considerable new levels, ignores a few (maybe even more than a few) salient facts, not the least of which is Lady Gaga can sing. I’m not here to disparage Madonna, and I actually like some of her midcareer albums, but only the most charitable would ever call her a world class singer. She’s nasal, thin and has a peculiar Minnie Mouse quality, especially in her earliest recordings. Around the time of True Blue her voice matured significantly, and she almost certainly took some voice lessons to help with control and timbre, but Madonna is an event, not a singer. By contrast, Lady Gaga is both an event and a singer, and that mere fact separates her from her supposed progenitor in no small way. The fact that Lady Gaga didn’t simply rest on the laurels of what is really a rather incredible voice shouldn’t detract from the fact that first and foremost the woman born as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is a musician of considerable strengths and nuance. But Lady Gaga quite obviously recognized a long time ago that pop music superstardom is not built on voice (or in fact talent) alone, and is as much about image as it is about anything intrinsic like the ability to sing. And that brings us to the exterior element of Lady Gaga’s persona, one which in fact can be seen as an evolution of sorts of Madonna’s career long attempt to push the cultural zeitgeist envelope. Once again, though, comparing Madonna to Lady Gaga is a bit like comparing a gnat to a dinosaur. Where Madonna poked and prodded at sexual taboos and lascivious onstage behavior, Lady Gaga simply throws all caution to the wind and quite simply goes for broke with both the most outré costumes imaginable and an overtly suggestive style and dance moves that leave little if anything to the imagination.
Lady Gaga: The Monster Ball Tour – Madison Square Garden arrives on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. While the sharpness of the image here is truly spectacular at times, this transfer is hampered by two recurrent issues which may bother more persnickety videophiles. Because of the aggressive lighting scheme, especially an ultra- saturated blue that bathes the stage and players at various moments, a lot of the action dissolves into posterizing on several occasions. This same aggressive lighting scheme, including a sort of lit wand that Lady Gaga holds (and aims squarely at the camera), also results in noticeable banding, as well as some heavily blooming whites. If you can overlook this issues, though, the rest of this concert looks fantastic, with bright, brilliantly rendered colors, exceptional fine detail and generally solid contrast (within the limits of the lighting as mentioned above).
Lady Gaga: The Monster Ball Tour – Madison Square Garden features two Dolby TrueHD mixes, a 5.1 surround mix and a 2.0 stereo mix, both of which offer Lady Gaga's hook laden dance ready music with sterling fidelity. While some of Lady Gaga's actual albums can suffer from too much emphasis on the bass, the mix here is really superb, allowing Lady Gaga's agile vocalizations to penetrate through the swirling dance rhythms. That said, there's certainly no lack of low end, especially on the 5.1 mix, which offers incredible bass and kick drum as well as numerous low frequency synths and guitars adding to the thunder. The arena noises are well modulated and aren't too distracting from the music onstage, and hall ambience is really well rendered on the 5.1 track. There's really some surprising clarity in the multilayered band accompaniment here, and Lady Gaga and her backup singers all sound fantastic throughout the concert.
When Lady Gaga looks out on the cheering, adoring throngs in Madison Square Garden and says, "I'm gonna kick your ass, New York!," there's little question she means what she says. For all the culture shock Lady Gaga supposedly engenders, there's simply no denying the woman's protean talents, which are abundantly on display throughout this concert. Despite this being a huge and completely glitzy affair, at its core The Monster Ball Tour features something that is all too often lacking in megaconcerts like this: a little thing called "heart." Lady Gaga has heart in abundance, and all I can say is, more power to her. This Blu-ray looks really sharp most of the time and sounds incredible, and this release comes Highly recommended.
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