Although the new DVD from Tino Corp. bills itself as a "State of the art
audio visual surround sound experience," the videos that make up the
meat of the presentation are often far from bleeding edge. The
collection of video clips, live footage, and a few assorted visual
goodies is a fun trip down Tino Memory Lane, and has enough features
and curios to keep avid fans of the cult of Jack Dangers and Ben Stokes
happy. But taken with a broader perspective, Tino
Vision falls considerably short of the high water marks for
music video collection DVDs.
The early days of music video were an explosive time for a creative new
art form. For every clip that had a band lip-syncing in a white
room, there was another take at marrying sound and image that was
daring, obscure, experimental, or just downright strange. The art
of the music video grew to eclipse the creative pace of filmmaking in
many ways by allowing directors virtually unlimited creativity within a
limited format to which not nearly as many expectations were
tied. Video art also found new outlets at clubs and parties and
raves as monotonous dance music and heavy drug use demanded a visual
accompaniment to keep the vibe alive. Somewhere around the advent
of those video walls and portable video mixers, the art of the music
video seemed to divide into two divergent paths. Clubland and
techno music helped keep the video as kinetic light sculpture thumping,
while would-be film directors began playing with narrative in their
short, four minute music promos.
Ben Stokes, who's work dominates this disc, is obviously from the
former school of thought, and his work seems most effective when
spliced together at parties and shows where the music is loud and the
attention span short. Sitting down to watch pieces for D.H.S.,
Meat Beat Manifesto, and others on this disc, it's clear that they
weren't necessarily devised for the home viewing format (at least not
without some mushrooms.) Most of the clips have a crudely
home-made feel as they have found clever ways to skirt around the kind
of budgets that Directors Series directors have been privy to.
That lo-fi and simple charm is what makes clips like D.H.S.'s
"Attention Earth People" a lot of fun, but it can run into a wall as it
does on the mostly CGI "Fromage" video that looks like a college art
school project.
Davy Force provides the disc with some subversive comic relief in the
form of the truly demented "Horned Grandma," and the Mission Control
ambiences that make up one of the disc's "bonus features" are some
great examples of simple visual and audio collaboration. Beyond
that, some live clips are interesting to check out once, but don't ever
reproduce the kinetic energy of actually being in a room with the Tino
crew with a full on video mix.
Curiously, the disc omits some of the Stokes' directed Meat Beat
Manifesto videos due to some licensing issue, but includes a track from
DJ Shadow that finds Stokes using the kind of crude, cut out
animation that people are bouncing around all over the internet these
days. The 5.1 surround sound mix insures that even if all of the
videos don't astound at home, they will all sound excellent, and there
is some truly great music here. In the end though, it just seems
odd to have these pieces of low budget, thin concept video art
collected for home viewing. While directors like Spike Jonze and
Chris Cunningham obviously get a bigger budget to work with when
directing for major labels, the creative work at any budget should
still shine through. Unfortunately in many cases here, the videos
just don't work on that level, making this a collection I am unlikely
to revisit as often as I would have thought based on the talent
involved.
Tino Vision
- Written by: Matthew Jeanes
- Parent Category: Reviews
- Category: Home Theater
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