Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - High Grass Dogs: Live DVD

 The Worst Video Presentation Ever
What was Tom Petty and his record company thinking to release this garbage on the public? The sound is excellent and other than a couple of missing songs from Tom Petty’s repertoire it’s a reasonably complete package. A few songs are played as a sort of unplugged style and this detracts from their presentation. The performance is excellent and the crowd (what little you see of them) looks like they are having a good time. So what’s wrong with this package? It is completely unwatchable that’s what’s wrong. This butcher job of a concert is presented as a “movie”. But this documentary/art film/video “movie” doesn’t work on any level. As a documentary it documents nothing. Between each song, cutting off all dialogue that Tom has with his audience this “movie” cuts to shots of equipment being unloaded/loaded and a couple of useless comments from a kid and some woman who says: “what do you want me to say?” Although probably shot full frame on good quality film this “movie” is matted to be very heavily letterboxed (approx. 2.35:1 rather than the usual 1.85:1) and does so at the expense of proper shot composition so that there are too numerous to mention shots of Tom Petty or other band members from the top of their instrument to their nose -not high enough to see their entire head -not low enough to see them playing their instrument. The look of this “movie” was made to look like some washed out grainy old film stock that was shot in the mid-sixties -it even adds fake frame damage every once in a while. There is no shot in this “movie” that lasts more than two seconds so you never can focus your attention on anything or feel like you have a feel for what’s going on. So again, while the sound is truly excellent (there is no DTS however), the video quality is second to none, the absolute worst concert recorded in the last 20 years that I have ever seen. If you buy this DVD you will be angry. Angry at Tom Petty and his record company for releasing this without any sort of warning on the box that this is NOT a normal concert video, but most of all you will be angry at yourself for not listening to this review. Final Result: Buy a different video! Sound: 8/10 Performance: 8/10 Video Quality: 1/10 Extras: 0/10
Submitted by a reviewer (Canada)
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 Expected more
I was quite disapponted for the song selection and expected more of on-stage performance. Audio and Video Quality is poor, only for the plaeasure of watching them on stage.
Submitted by mauricio.roa (Mexico, DF.) 
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 Great Set List and Amazing Sound
Intimate setting and a tight sound. Don't buy this DVD for any video awards. It's all about the sound. I watched it on my Toshiba widescreen in TW mode 2. If you watch full screen, lots of chopping off at the top of the pic. Don't worry about using the 5.1 surround audio option. Go with the PCM stereo.
Submitted by tstorring (Canada) 
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