If you like David Bowie and suffer from insomnia, this may be the DVD for you. It is targeted to a very narrow demographic. If you are a fan of Bowie and have a thirst for everything bearing his name you can get your hands on, definitely rush out for this. If you have an interest in getting some deeper information, going beyond the albums in question, and have a high tolerance for boredom, this may be for you. If you are a casual fan, or you are interested in the creative process, this is not for you. I like Bowie, and this did succeed in making me more interested in expanding my Bowie listening beyond the usual suspects, but beyond that, it has a short lifespan.
I cannot claim any deep knowledge of David Bowie, his history, or his creative process. At one point in my early stage of musical discovery, he was one of those guys I just would not listen to, if for no other reason than I did not want to. I started listening to Bowie when I heard "I'm Afraid of Americans." From there, I picked up some more of his recent albums, and then the two disk "best of," and it was official, I love the music created by this man. Listening to him opened my eyes to a larger world of music, and helped me to move beyond my purely rock and metal world. I opened to a more artful world of music. I picked up this DVD in a hope of continuing my musical education. Sadly, it caused me to prematurely nod off to dreamland.
In order to hold an audience's attention, and potentially bring in a wider and more varied audience, a documentary must be made interesting. It is not often that content alone is enough to keep someone invested for a feature length runtime. A documentary, in order to be truly successful, must bring content into contact with style. This style doesn't need to amount to much, but editing style, graphics and multimedia integration, plus well performed narration are integral to the final work. This program does not bring anything to the table other than uninspired graphics, dry narration, and a progression of talking heads. While the heads may be giving some interesting information, I was struggling to keep my eyelids up.
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