Jonathan Livingston Seagull dvd movie.|
Jonathan Livingston Seagull cheap dvd videos, dvd movies for sale |
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List Price: $14.99 Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $1 Features • Color • DVD-Video • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 23 October, 1973 DVD Release : 02 October, 2007 |
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull description There isn't a lot of middle ground when it comes to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which comes to DVD in 2007, 34 years after it was released theatrically, 15 years after it appeared in the VHS format, and nearly 40 years after the first publication of Richard Bach's novella. One person's poetic is another's pretentious; while many find inspiratio ... review details |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Needs more Neil, fewer birds |
| This was Neil's first project for Columbia Records, following up his glorious "Moods" album on the MCA label, the one that opens with what would become his signature tune, "Song Sung Blue," and closes out with several songs that seem to hint he was already in "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" mode: "Walk On Water," "Theme," "Prelude in E Major" and "Morningside." Having just listened again to the JLS soundtrack for the umpteenth time, and then having watched the movie for the first time, I would suggest that any ND fans out there who, like me, went decades without seeing JLS should continue avoiding that movie at all costs, and give another listen to "Moods" again.
The main problem with the movie is that Neil ran out of songs about halfway through the film, at which point either there's no sound at all for many long minutes at a time (I exaggerate slightly -- there's the occasional sound of ocean waves crashing into shore), or you get to hear James Franciscus' voiceover as Jonathan. Now, Franciscus was a fine actor in his day, in projects as diverse as "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" and the underrated TV show "Longstreet," but his was not the voice of JLS. Neil should've written another half-dozen songs and they could've had a better movie just with the seagulls flying around and letting Neil narrate/sing the whole thing, kind of like "Tommy" but as a bird opera. Instead, we get one really good song on the soundtrack, "Be," which you'll notice appears four times out of 12 tracks, so clearly Neil recognized he had a dearth of good material so he had to stretch out the good stuff as far as it would go. "Dear Father" is okay, but feels like it's half-finished, and it appears three times. "Skybird" starts out great, but also feels unfinished, and it appears twice on the soundtrack. See the pattern here? The rest of the songs aren't really even songs -- just snippets of songs. If you want to listen to a well-thought-out spiritual odyssey, then listen to "The African Trilogy" songs on the "Taproot Manuscript" album. Much better stuff. |
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