The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie Review

Requiem for an Era

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 3, 2014

The two sold-out concerts that legendary "piano man" Billy Joel played at Shea Stadium on July 16 and 18, 2008, just before the venerable structure was demolished, have already been captured in a superb concert film, Billy Joel: Live at Shea Stadium, which was released on Blu-ray in 2011. The Last Play at Shea contains many excerpts from that film (which is why its director, Jon Small, receives a credit), but the film is not a concert documentary. Rather, The Last Play explores the forty-plus years of history and subtext that underlay those two nights of celebration. No one had to explain to the thousands of music and sports fans who cheered through those standing-room-only performances why Billy Joel was the ideal choice to bid farewell to Shea Stadium. The structure and the star sprang from common earth. Blending concert footage with extensive interviews and archival footage, with narration by Alec Baldwin, director Paul Crowder (Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who) and writer Mark Monroe (The Cove) have attempted to tell the story behind the concert, or at least as much of the story as a 95-minute documentary can encompass.

Shea Stadium opened in 1964, which was also the year that the Beatles first came to America and made their landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Watching them was fifteen-year-old Billy Joel, the son of divorced immigrant parents, a former resident of the Bronx now living in Hicksville, New York, which, like the Queens neighborhood surrounding the new stadium, wasn't really considered "the city", even though Queens is technically a borough of New York. As Joel has repeatedly said in later years, his future trajectory was set from the moment he saw the Beatles on TV. His career as a performer began in the same year that Shea Stadium opened to the public.

Crowther, who served as co-editor as well as director, elegantly interweaves the checkered history of the New York Mets baseball team at Shea with Joel's early efforts as a pianist, band member and songwriter, including the relatively short period where he gave up on the East Coast altogether and headed west to play at a Los Angeles piano bar, an experience immortalized in the hit song "Piano Man". Through interviews with Joel, friends, former band members, daughter Alexa Ray, former wife Christie Brinkley and current wife Katie Lee, an incomplete but still intriguing picture emerges of a singer/songwriter who was never comfortable with stardom, because inside he remained a guy from Hicksville. (I say an "incomplete" picture, because certain topics remain unexplored, including Joel's heavy drinking and his attempted suicide, although others, such as his financial troubles, caused by trusting a close friend, and the collapse of his marriage to Brinkley, are addressed directly.)

Alongside Joel's career, Crowther tells the story of the stadium that was merely one aspect of the massive transformation of New York City and its environs overseen by visionary urban planner Robert Moses, who remains, even today, a controversial figure. Major moments in the stadium's history are recounted, including the Beatles' 1965 concert—the first rock concert in such a venue—and the remarkable comeback by the 1969 "Miracle Mets", who went on to win the World Series. Former players appear, as does the facility's veteran groundskeeper, Pete Flynn, who drove the Beatles to the bandstand for their 1965 performance and then, in 2008, greets Paul McCartney for his surprise appearance at the second of the two final concerts. Despite Shea's many shortcomings as a baseball stadium, Shea acquired the loyalty of both the Mets and their fans. Like any longtime resident of a neighborhood, it drew affection even for its flaws. Both those who played there and those who attended the games attest to its mystique.

All of this history feeds into the preparations and planning for the farewell concerts, including the roster of guest stars who join Billy Joel on stage. Excerpts from the appearances by Tony Bennett and Roger Daltrey are included, with brief clips of Steve Tyler, Garth Brooks and John Mellencamp. The longest section is devoted to McCartney's appearance, with an explanation of the crazed logistics behind his eleventh-hour appearance.

The film closes with time-lapse photography of Shea Stadium being dismantled. (For both environmental and safety reasons, it could not be imploded or demolished in the traditional manner.) As The Last Play at Shea suggests, however, by that point the structure was only steel and concrete. The spirit that had animated the giant coliseum had been inhaled and absorbed by the crowds attending the farewell concerts, and who carried it with them into the Mets' new home at Citi Field, where The Last Play at Shea had its premiere.

The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Virgil's Films' 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of The Last Play at Shea is as good as its diverse sources will allow. As discussed by my colleague, Jeff Kauffman, in his review of Billy Joel: Live at Shea Stadium, the concert footage is among the best-looking around, with a superb level of detail for both the band and the audience. (Note that, for The Last Play, the concert footage has been upconverted from 1080i.) Of equally good quality are the contemporary interviews with Joel, Christie Brinkley, Paul McCartney, former Mets Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Mike Piazza, and a wide array of other figures from the worlds of music, baseball and New York cultural history. The archival material, from footage of the Beatles at Shea Stadium to a variety of recorded sports broadcasts from the Mets' ups and downs, is blurry and washed-out by comparison, but this is typical for standard definition and newsreel footage from the periods covered by the documentary. The disparate sources have been digitally massaged to blend as best as possible, and the effect is often startling in its impact, as Joel's career and the stadium's history blend into a collage of eras passing before your eyes.

Virgil has mastered the 95-minute film on a BD-25 at an average bitrate of 18.00 Mbps, which is low, but the compressionist has been saved by the interviews, which require very little bandwith, and also by the digital origination of the concert footage, which makes it easier to compress.

The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track sounds very good in the brief concert sections, which suggests that the documentary's sound mixers returned to the original stems. (The two 5.1 tracks offered on Billy Joel: Live at Shea Stadium differed in quality and inspired controversy as a result.) The remainder of the film reflects the typical front-oriented quality of a documentary, with the focus on the interview subject, although Alec Baldwin's narration is shifted outward into the listening space and musical accompaniment sometimes occupies the front left and right. As one would expect from a documentary about a musician giving a climactic performance, the track is well-mixed with excellent fidelity and dynamic range.

The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• You May Be Right: Live from the Last Play at Shea (1080i; 1.78:1; 5:34): A complete performance of a signature Billy Joel song.



• Everybody Loves You Now: Live from the Last Play at Shea (1080i; 1.78:1; 3:21): A complete performance of a lesser known song from Joel's early career.



• Shea in the Rain (1080p; 1.78:1; 0:22): This is an animated rendering of which the latter portion, after the sky clears, can be seen in the film, but the rain sequence appears to have been cut.



• Time Lapse—Shea to Citi Field (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:38): This is the full version of the time-lapse sequence used to conclude the film.



• Steve Cohen Interviews Billy Joel (1080i; 1.78:1; 19:33): Portions of this interview appear throughout the film. This version has also been edited from what was evidently a longer interview.

The Last Play at Shea Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The core audience for The Last Play at Shea are the same people who sold out Billy Joel's two Shea Stadium concerts in record time. Billy Joel has fans worldwide, but a special breed of East Coast fan has always identified with the kid from Long Island whose songs routinely reflect and reference the world of his youth. In one of the film's best moments, Joel describes writing his signature composition from the album entitled The Stranger, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", and reflects on the couple named Brenda and Eddie who figured prominently in the lyrics. There were Brendas and Eddies throughout the audience on those two evenings, and they were saying goodbye to an important piece of their history, of which The Last Play at Shea is a scrapbook. Recommended.