Pink Floyd - The Wall 25th Anniversary (Deluxe Edition)

The film is, for better and worse, the fruit of three artists in conflict--Parker indulging himself, and Waters in league with designer Gerald Scarfe, whose brilliant animated sequences suggest that he should have directed and animated this film in its entirety. Fortunately, this clash of talent and ego does not prevent The Wall from being a mesmerizing film. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof (in his screen debut) is a fine choice to play Waters's alter ego--an alienated, "comfortably numb" rock star whose psychosis manifests itself as an emotional (and symbolically physical) wall between himself and the cold, cruel world. Weaving Waters's autobiographical details into his own jumbled vision, Parker ultimately fails to combine a narrative thread with experimental structure. It's a rich, bizarre, and often astonishing film that will continue to draw a following, but the real source of genius remains the music of Roger Waters. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description
No description available for this title.
Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: NR
Street Date: 01/25/05
Wide Screen: no
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
Language: ENGLISH
Foreign Film: noSubtitles: no
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: yes
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve

Roger Waters knew when the album itself, a masterpiece all its own, was made that he wanted to eventually make an accompanying screenplay. The fact that the music of The Wall forms a story on its own is a testament to Waters' vision. There is very little script in this movie, it is more of a visual aide to the music itself, and allows us to see what Waters really wanted us to see when the album was originally released. It is like an art gallery more than a movie, where each scene is full of both powerful meaning and subtle expression.

It spotlights the roller coaster ride of Pink's tumultuous life, who is reportedly based on several influences. From Roger Waters' own personal past, to his views on the influence of drugs on music and performance, to thoughts of the mentally unstable former member of Pink Floyd, Sid Barrett, this movie will both shock and move you.

I honestly cannot describe this movie and give it the justice it deserves. You simply must see it.

As for the DVD itself, the remastering is truly phenomenal. From start to finish the video is crisp, and the sound.. my god the sound. I dont know if I will ever find a movie which possesses equal richness of sound. This DVD uses both senses to their fullest potential.

Some person commented that the widescreen format meant losing a portion of the picture. Au contraire, widescreen is the only picture where you capture everything through the eyes of the director's camera. It is the full screen format which loses the sides of the picture by stretching and trimming to a (roughly) 4:3 ratio. Unfortunately however, being only available in widescreen format on this DVD, those viewers with small televisions might be faced with a vertically short, albeit complete picture.

The DVD extras and menus are incredible. This is the first DVD I have seen which has menus to configure your sound system for optimum performance (speaker position and test). And the sound.. did I mention the sound?

This movie and DVD version deserves far more than 5 stars, and is the definitive "Final Cut" of Roger Waters' vision.


we don't need no thought control...   April 23, 2002
moongrenadine (high point, NC)
33 out of 35 found this review helpful

if there is one dvd that you must add to your collection, pink floyd the wall should be it. very few dvd videos out there offer so many extras to such a great film as this and not to mention you are already getting one of the greatest rock-n-roll operas of our time. or should i say one of the greatest films of our time period? in my life, i have never witnessed a film which successfully combine live drama, rock music, and state of the art animation such as the wall has done. bob geldof gives a truly amazing performance as pink who is slowly going crazy in his hotel room. guess what?? the viewer has the ultimate pleasure of taking this grand descent into madness right along with our lead character. through visions of war, godawful childhood memories, and a painful reminescence of a failed marriage we get a glimpse of everything which could DRIVE a person to complete insanity. pink floyd contains some of the most beautiful but insanely grotesque images ever placed on film and probability suggest few films can ever hope to rival the wall here. the wall is an emotional rollercoaster ride which everyone should take atleast once in their life if not many times. again, not a film that a serious dvd collector would want to be without so add this to your collection if you haven't already. i give this dvd my highest rating of five stars. please vote for me if this review was helpful to you and happy viewing.


Superb film, Superb DVD   June 15, 2000
32 out of 34 found this review helpful

I am partially biased to this film because I am a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I will put that aside for this review. This is one of the greatest "Rock Opera" movies I have ever seen (if you even consider it a rock opera). It has brilliant cinematography. Great effort was put in to attention to detail. In this film, everything is where it is for a reason. The story is wonderful. I believe that it is something everybody can relate to. Building up an emotional wall to attempt to combat the horrible things that occur in all of our lives, and the trauma that comes with the building of this wall. There is so much more to it than that though. So many references, so much deep symbolism in every scene. Some anti-war, anti-establishment undertones. On top of all of this, the DVD is wonderfully put together. Every menu screen has been put together with a different pink floyd song and scene from the movie. There are many great features, including director commentarys and makings of, interviews, cut footage (the "Hey You" scene that was cut out of the film), original trailers, production stills. It is wonderful. This is a wonderful DVD to own in my opinion. I have had it for a while now, and I still have not finished going through everything that is on the DVD. You won't regret this purchase.


The best audio commentaty track so far on a DVD!   April 6, 2000
James L. Chatfield (Canon City, CO United States)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

For those reading this review who haven't seen or God forbid haven't even heard of this disturbing masterpiece: WHAT THE HECK ARE YA WAITING FOR? True, it's not exactly the most uplifting and cheerful movie ever made, but even if you see it just once in your whole life, you will remember it always.

Basic plotline: Rockstar Pink (semi-autobiographical embodiment of Roger Waters, Pink Floyd's bassist, vocalist, and chief songwriter) has had a rough childhood, a rocky marriage, a few too many pills, and few too many gigs. So, to cope, he sits in a hotel room in front of a TV showing English WWII movies and slowly loses touch with reality through flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmarishly surreal animation by Gerald Scarfe (these bits are my favorites!). There is very little dialogue, as the movie serves as little more than a ninety-minute music video of the 1979 masterpiece album of the same name.

The cool thing about the DVD (besides finally getting to see the footage intended to accompany the song "Hey You" which was deleted by Waters himself), is the audio commentary provided by Waters and Scarfe, who actually (gasp!) TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE! So many of the DVD's I've seen with this feature simply let the director, or whoever's talking, ramble on about politics or people they met while writing another movie altogether while a scene that you would have loved to have some of their insight to is playing...ARRRRGH! Here, the rather witty duo explain each scene's meaning, inception, and even trivia bits like trick camera work. There's a hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000-ish bit of goofing around on Waters' part during the "Is There Anybody Out There?" sequence that was very surprising. I expected these guys, especially Waters, to be stuffy and dismal, considering the movie.

Secret trick by the way: the DVD has a LOT of interactive menus, and on all of them, save for the into/main menu, if you push the "9" on your remote, it will acitvate a different sort of sound byte. Nothing real exciting, but kind of amusing.

Other movies you might want to check out that actually have pretty good commentaries on them: Natural Born Killers Direct. Cut (Oliver Stone shows you all kinds of stuff you might never have noticed about the film). Clerks (Kevin Smith and members of the cast, including a very intoxicated Jason Mewes). Detroit Rock City (One of the commentary tracks is actually a series of interviews with KISS band members).