Search - Celebration: The Video Collection on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 4/2/2018...

The bad reviews for this Madonna Video Collection were wrong. This was a great collection of videos with excellent picture quality. There were quite a few great videos that I knew but some I have never heard before. A must for Madonna fans!

2 of 2 member(s) found this review helpful.

Substandard picture quality and censorship ruin this DVD

litemakr | Phoenix, AZ | 09/29/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Before anyone gets on my case, I HAVE THE DVD and am watching it right now.

Let me start off on a positive note, the DVD set contains 47 videos on 2 DVDs. Some good ones are inexplicably omitted (Dress You Up, Oh Father, Bad Girl, Fever, This Used to Be My Playground, Substitute For Love, Nothing Really Matters, American Life, etc) but there is a lot of good material released here for the first time. The audio is generally excellent. The 5.1 track is not really a 5.1 mix, it is simulated and sounds terrible. Stick with the PCM stereo track, it sounds fantastic.

I won't comment much on the content of the videos. They are some of the most famous and influential music videos ever made. This is classic stuff. With the exception of Justify My Love (see below) all of the videos are uncut.

Now on to the picture quality...what the hell happened here? It's not as horrible as some people have claimed, but it is WAY below standard. There are serious compression artifacts throughout all of the videos. Pixellation, smearing, graininess, blotchy color, blurring, interlacing artifacts. It's all there and it looks bad. I am watching the DVD on an upscaling Blu Ray player on a 52" LCD 1080P television. It won't look as bad on a smaller TV, but it still won't look great. I have honestly seen VHS look better than some of the videos. The Immaculate Collection DVD, which was made from a 19 year old master, looks better.

The problem is that someone made the really, really stupid decision to use single layer DVDs instead of the industry standard dual layer DVDs. I suspect this decision was made late in the process to save a few cents and the program was re-compressed to fit in half the space. There is too much compression and too much picture quality lost. I'll bet the original master was for 2 dual layer DVDs and it probably looked very good. It is hard to believe that anyone at Warner quality control approved the picture quality on these DVDs. Didn't Madonna sign off on a release copy??

I thought it might have something to do with the age of some of the videos, but the most recent ones look just as bad. The brand new Celebration video only looks slightly better than VHS quality. And it is ridiculous that the widescreen videos are not in 16:9 format, even the recent ones filmed in 16:9 HD are in letterboxed 4:3.

There really is no excuse for this to happen, especially from a company as large as Warner and an artist as big as Madonna. Using single layer DVDs could have only saved them a few cents. On a $30 set, that is inexcusable.

I would strongly suggest not buying this DVD until Warner addresses the situation. I think outcry among the fans will (hopefully) cause Warner to do the right thing and release a corrected version on dual layer discs.

UPDATE - One more thing, the video for Justify My Love is CENSORED! This video was widely released uncensored as a video single in 1991 and sold millions of copies. And NOW, 18 years later, it is censored?? Just unbelievable.

Also, the Amazon description claiming the DVD has "unedited and never before seen footage of 'Justify My Love'" is completely false. There is no new footage at all. In fact, you actually see less because of the censorship.

If I could split my rating, it would be 4 stars for content and 1 star for quality."

Warner should be ashamed!

Dev Endra | 09/29/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"They should recall this piece of garbage. Fake 5.1 mix (minimal difference in sound, if any) and highly compressed videos on single layered discs. The only saving grace to this set is that it contains over a dozen videos that have never had an official release. But then again, what difference does it make if the release is official when the quality rivals that of a bootleg? Those videos by the way, look MUCH better on the DVD-R my friend made for me years ago from DJ promo videocassettes. That's just pathetic. I'm sorry I wasted my time looking forward to this all month, and now wasting $25 of my hard earned cash."

Official Tracklisting

Anonymous | 08/26/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For Immediate Release - August 26, 2009 - (Burbank, California) - Warner Bros. Records has confirmed the final track listing for Madonna's upcoming "Celebration" CD - The "Ultimate" Compilation - and "Celebration the Video Collection DVD" - both scheduled to be released on September 28/29th. The songs which were selected by Madonna and her fans have all been exquisitely remastered. "Celebration" will be available as a two-CD set as well as a single CD.

The "Celebration Video Collection DVD" will include unedited and never before seen footage of "Justify My Love" along with 27 Madonna videos to be released on a DVD compilation for "the very first time" including "Into The Groove" and "Give It To Me" as well as the just completed video of Madonna's new single "Celebration."

Madonna Celebration DVD Track Listing:

1) Burning Up
2) Lucky Star
3) Borderline
4) Like A Virgin
5) Material Girl
6) Crazy For You
7) Into The Groove
8) Live To Tell
9) Papa Don't Preach
10) True Blue
11) Open Your Heart
12) La Isla Bonita
13) Who's That Girl
14) Like A Prayer
15) Express Yourself
16) Cherish
17) Vogue
18) Justify My Love
19) Erotica
20) Deeper and Deeper
21) Rain
22) I'll Remember
23) Secret
24) Take A Bow
25) Bedtime Story
26) Human Nature
27) I Want You
28) You'll See
29) Frozen
30) Ray Of Light
31) The Power Of Good-Bye
32) Beautiful Stranger
33) American Pie
34) Music
35) Don't Tell Me
36) What It Feels Like For A Girl
37) Die Another Day
38) Hollywood
39) Love Profusion
40) Hung Up
41) Sorry
42) Get Together
43) Jump
44) 4 Minutes
45) Give It 2 Me
46) Miles Away
47) Celebration

In my opinion, there are some great videos missing: Holiday (American Bandstand Version), Causing A Commotion, Bad Girl (full version), You Must Love Me, Frozen, American Life (original/controversial version and flag/clean version), or any of her wonderful live performances

"