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Elvis - Destination Vegas (2007)
R0 - America - Wienerworld Ltd./MVD Visual Review written by and copyright: Jari Kovalainen (20th June 2008). |
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The Film
 I have to assume that it´s not easy to be a serious Elvis Presley fan and collector. Why? Too damn many cheap, quick and mediocre CD and DVD-releases coming on a probably monthly basis. The term “public domain” is quite feared among the fans and for a reason; same TV-clips and songs circulate in these various releases over and over again. It probably would be best to skip all of these “public domain”-releases outright, but you never quite know what these endless “CD collections” and “DVD documentaries” actually consist of. Perhaps there´s some material that you haven´t seen or heard before? One rare clip, outtake or home video. Something. It can be tricky for a person wanting “everything” from the artist like Elvis. When you go to a website like Amazon.com and search “Elvis + DVD”, you´ll get almost 500 results. 500? Sure, this includes 31 feature films from “The King” (from “Love Me Tender (1956)” to “Change of Habit (1969)”), some quality concert films and documentaries (e.g. “Elvis' '68 Comeback Special (1968)”, “Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970)”, and “Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii (1973)”) and even some fictional efforts (e.g. “Elvis - The Miniseries (2005)”). How about the rest? Your guess is as good as mine. Countless unknown releases from the smaller companies exist and it´s easy to fall for their fancy covers, marketing slogans and intriguing titles. “Elvis - Destination Vegas (2007)” is a prime example: a catchy title (Elvis and Vegas, wow!), promising slogan (“Contains rare photographs and unseen film footage”) and colourful cover art. What you actually get is another matter. Sadly. Despite the name and the back cover blurb, “Elvis - Destination Vegas” is really not about The King´s Vegas years. It´s a very mediocre documentary of Elvis, quickly covering all those aspects from his career that we´ve heard many times before; early years in Memphis in the 1950s, his manager Tom “The Colonel” Parker, early “controversial” performances and rising to “sex symbol”, military service in Germany, movie career, Memphis Mafia, 1968 “comeback”, Las Vegas, family, self destruction and, finally, death. All this might sound interesting on paper, but quite frankly Wikipedia or several fan sites provide the same, exact information. And do it better. There´s also tons of book available, that go far more deeper. To make matters worse, there´s no interviews or proper concert footage, mostly just a dull and monotonic narration (by Jon Cardwell). Selected TV-clips from the 1950s are the only ones where you can hear some actual music from Elvis, but all of them are probably found from YouTube. There are some photos, a few glimpses of film trailers and other vintage footage, along with some rough and shaky (“private 8 mm” apparently) home video footage of Elvis on-stage somewhere (due to the copyright reasons or the technical limitation, it´s mainly “silent” or “dubbed” with Elvis monologue from some concerts). This 8 mm-footage and selected photos are something that just might include some “exclusive” material (it´s claimed that it contains “over 100 rare and previously unseen” photos), but it´s quite hard to say for sure. You would need an expert to confirm it and I´m not the one. Still, if you must find one reason to get this DVD, the home video-footage would be it. The documentary itself is quite forgettable, also including some vague remarks and “facts” of The King. It also delves too much into the “dark side” of the man for my taste, since it doesn´t give any real insight behind the words in return. Producing company “Wienerworld Ltd.” is at least fair and states what is obvious to all of us; the documentary is “unauthorized”. Here are mainly the songs (or excerpts) that you can hear during the documentary; -Baby, Let's Play House -Heartbreak Hotel -Hound Dog -Peace in the Valley -Frank Sinatra & Elvis Presley: “Love Me Tender” & “Witchcraft” (medley) -Love me tender -Tutti Frutti -Ready Teddy Like said earlier, most of these clips are found from the various websites and other sources, and if you want to see the e.g. full “The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: It's Nice to Go Traveling - Welcome Home Elvis (1960)” (where you can hear the “Sinatra & Presley”-medley), you can get it on DVD.
Video
The documentary is presented in 4:3 and the majority of the material is culled from the vintage “Kinescope” sources (“a recording of a TV program made by filming the picture from a video monitor with 16 mm or 35 mm film camera”) and old photos. Some 8 mm material is also included, which looks clearly inferior. There are some compression issues and a few frame-jumps, but generally the documentary looks decent (considering the variety of the source materials). Still, make no mistake about it, some material looks just plain bad. “Single layer” disc is coded “R0” and runs 45:03 minutes (NTSC). 12 chapters.
Audio
The only audio track is English PCM 2.0 Stereo 48 kHz/16-bit (my PS3 said 1.5 Mbps, actually!), so that probably explains some of the compression issues (since PCM takes plenty of space). There are no subtitles. The narration is crisp and the vintage material sounds fair, so no major complaints. There are a few audio drop-outs, though.
Extras
Few extras are included (no subtitles of any kind). -Elvis photo gallery (6:23 minutes) has no music and like in the documentary itself, the photos (B&W and colour) are taken from the various sources. This also means that the quality varies as well (there are some ugly compression issues). -Unseen Footage (11:11 minutes) is a series of “private and public conversations Elvis had around the Vegas years”. This means that there´s a audio track with Elvis monologue (mainly at stage), with 8 mm-footage. The film footage and the audio track are not “in synch” and both are probably taken from different sources. The footage is divided into different sections. The first one runs around 7 minutes already, so don´t expect that much of the jokes and “impressions”. The “rant” and “press footage” are definitely interesting to hear, though, and the sound quality is pretty good. -Elvis in conversation with the audience regarding his early life. -Elvis does an impression of Bill Cosby. -Elvis rants to the audience regarding allegations of drug abuse. -Elvis jokes with the audience. -Elvis captured in press conference at Madison Square Garden. -Elvis does Inspector Clouseau.
Overall
“Elvis - Destination Vegas” is a rather cheap documentary and probably best to be avoided if you´re just looking for an in-depth, professional look of The King. This is certainly not the one. With the “larger than life” artists like Frank Sinatra and Elvis, it´s quite useless to make a documentary if you can´t get access to any proper music or concert/film footage, don´t have any interviews and not even new footage (how these locations look today) from Memphis, Graceland, Las Vegas, etc. In other words: You got nothing. Almost, in the case of “Elvis - Destination Vegas”. For the serious fans it might have some “exclusive” photos and 8 mm-footage, but that you have to confirm yourself. For more info, please visit the homepage of MVD Entertainment Group.
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