T. Rex

Born to Boogie was the best movie ever to be produced and directed by any of the Beatles, being the work of director/producer Ringo Starr, who was fascinated by the cult of adoration that had coalesced around Marc Bolan and T. Rex, and rivaled the frenzy that greeted the Beatles when they'd first emerged nine years earlier. The ex-Beatles drummer decided to look into the phenomenon with several cameras rolling from what proved to be all the right angles and the microphones capturing facets of Bolan that were missed amid the reams of newspaper and magazine coverage, in terms of subtleties and influences, while also having some fun at the expense of earlier, less successful Beatles film projects (especially -The Magical Mystery Tour). Born to Boogie is witty, charming, exciting, and, above all, dazzling. The movie never made it onto laserdisc, and an MPI VHS release of it was so obscure that even a lot of fans never knew it was out in America. Here it's presented on disc one of this double-DVD set in a restored edition, transferred in high-definition and offered in about a 1.77- to -1 aspect ratio -- the complete movie can be viewed, but one can also watch one of two concerts from March 18, 1972 at Wembley Arena that Starr filmed (the other show is on disc two), and includes the original trailer. Disc Two contains the bulk of the archival material -- in addition to the other concert, there's an entire 48-minute documentary, Cosmic Rock, dealing with T. Rex and Marc Bolan and the era in which they dominated the pop/rock scene in England; there's also a documentary about the restoration of the movie, and a selection of outtakes, which amounts to a total-immersion experience not only of T. Rex and Bolan, but also of England in the early 1970s. The existence of original 16-track concert recordings as well as all of the film elements means that the 5.1 surround feature on this set has been fully exploited, although it's pretty cool in just plain stereo as well. The menus are easy to use and the chaptering on the film and the concerts, as well as the support features, is nice and generous, and one can only hope that this sets a precedent for how Apple treats the rest of archival footage. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide