{"id":10467,"date":"2015-01-18T15:42:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T20:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10467"},"modified":"2015-01-18T15:49:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-18T20:49:24","slug":"dvd-super-duper-alice-cooper-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10467","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"SuperDuperAliceCooper_s\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: <\/strong>eOne Films<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 May 27, 2014<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Documentary \/ Music<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Extensive chronicle of Alice Cooper, the original shock rocker, using a dense collage of stills, video, and interview footage.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Deleted Scenes (20:43) \/ Rare Footage (11:03) \/ Metal Evolution Interview Scenes (11:44)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A fascinating historical collage of rock star Alice Cooper, directors Sam Dunn, Reginald Harkema and Scot McFayden\u2019s took the audio from extensive interviews and created vivid montages using stills, music, and archival concert video to trace Vincent Furnier\u2019s ascension from an asthmatic teen living in Detroit to a pioneering rocker with a flair for macabre subjects and theatrics, including hanging, beheading, and using an assortment of weird ideas and extravagant costumes designed to shock parents and deepen the band\u2019s attraction among what Alice Cooper himself describes as the fringe fans.<\/p>\n

Manager Shep Gordon (himself profiled in the equally raucous 2013 doc Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon<\/strong><\/a>) recognized the only way for the band to distinguish itself was to emphasize the outrageous, and manager and star fed off each other\u2019s energies to create incidents guaranteed to piss off parents (shipping LPs draped in panties helped), draw media attraction, and on more than one occasion, benefit from unexpected luck.<\/p>\n

The utter dismemberment of a chicken at a concert in Toronto guaranteed the band made international headlines, and as the doc works its way through the late sixties \/ early seventies, one can see the band slowly evolving from the Phoenix high school cover band The Earwigs to the L.A. based The Spiders, and aided by an Ouija board, eventually settling on the name Alice Cooper.<\/p>\n

The hard drinking, touring and combustible nature of a rock band\u2019s lifestyle ultimately took its toll, and Furnier eventually changed his name to the band\u2019s moniker, went solo, and navigated through several personal and professional career peaks and valleys.<\/p>\n

One can argue the interviews are selective – there\u2019s no critics \/ historians, fans, or the full band chiming in their memories of the early years – but with so much visual, aural, factual information (if not a dollop of hyperbole), Super Duper Alice Cooper<\/strong> is a great rock documentary, if one that\u2019s unique for never once showing any of its interview subject onscreen.<\/p>\n

The lack of face time doesn\u2019t take away from the doc\u2019s impact. The decision to restrict interviews to audio-only ensures everything onscreen stems from a treasure trove of stills and rare performance extracts, but it does take some acclimatizing, given the natural curiosity in wanting to see Cooper in person.<\/p>\n

The grunge factor that dominates much of the archival video footage adds to the film\u2019s look, and indeed the three directors, each contributing respective sound, picture, and animation skills, did an astonishing job in balancing the delivery of information with a fluid visual style.<\/p>\n

Alongside the Robert Evans doc The Kid Stays in the Picture<\/a><\/strong> (2002) and The U.S. vs. John Lennon<\/a><\/strong> (2006), this is another leap in the use (and not\u00a0over-use<\/em>) of Adobe After Effects in creating visual transitions that are elegant yet never full-on ADD. The film\u2019s title design is also a great blend of grainy film and video, and the use of intertitles and transformation scenes from the 1920 silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/strong> starring John Barrymore reflect Cooper\u2019s theatrical and grisly alter-ego. The footage also serves as markers tracing Cooper\u2019s health issues as his stage persona, booze, and drugs reduce Vincent Furnier to an exhausted vessel. (The most disturbing footage isn\u2019t Cooper being guillotined or hacking up a baby doll, but his emaciated state during the cocaine years.)<\/p>\n

eOne\u2019s DVD features a heavily compressed transfer \u2013 it\u2019s fine, but the subtleties in the grays are the most affected \u2013 which probably stems from the lengthy bonus interviews consisting of excised trims, most augmented with straightforward stills, others just standalone interview footage of Cooper. There\u2019s also a gallery of longer extracts of the rare video interviews featured in the doc.<\/p>\n

It would\u2019ve been great to hear the filmmakers discuss the film, its genesis and production, but as a package, the DVD is fine. There\u2019s some shared information on the early years between Super Duper<\/strong> and Supermensch<\/strong>, but each film branches out in different directions, although the latter film also includes more details on Gordon\u2019s publicity stunts, as well as the lawsuit between the band, Warner Bros. Records, and Frank Zappa which kept an album flipping between in \/ out of print status over a seven year period.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating historical collage of rock star Alice Cooper, directors Sam Dunn, Reginald Harkema and Scot McFayden\u2019s took the audio from extensive interviews and created vivid montages using stills, music, and archival concert video to trace Vincent Furnier\u2019s ascension from an asthmatic teen living in Detroit to a pioneering rocker with a flair for macabre subjects and theatrics, including hanging, beheading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3288,3283,2711,3284,3285],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2IP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10467"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10492,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10467\/revisions\/10492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}