For most of its' circulating life, the Wall at Earl's Court has been a mixed bag at best. While it is a professionally-filmed version of Pink Floyd's most ambitious stage production, the actual copies of it in circulation ranged from washed-out and wavy at best to nauseatingly unwatchable at worst. Thanks to the magic of DVD-R (and another fine collaboration of the good people at Harvested and Hop the Pond productions), this is no longer an issue.

This doesn't mean it's all beer and skittles, though...while the video quality is largely very good (the best ever seen for this material, really), an occasional glitch and a wee bit of cover bleed still pop up to remind us that the source tape, while good, is still a few generations removed from the master. Harvested does have a few tricks up their sleeve to balance this out though, in the forms of compositing in films and projections as well as switching to other superior-quality video sources every now and again, though this has a couple of minor cons too. The audio is obviously a nice clean soundboard source, its' only drawback being that the drums can sound a bit like cardboard boxes at times.

The fact that this show was filmed by professionals gives it an immediate edge over the Nassau Coliseum show, largely due to a bevy of closeups (revealing, among other things, some really goony guitar faces from Gilmour, Peter Wood having a spastic fit during 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)', and Roger Waters graphically demonstrating the shortcomings of British dentistry), a larger number of cameras, greater access for cameramen, and a fair number of nice dolly shots. This redeems some moments which were irredeemably dull on Nassau...for example, 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)' goes from squirm-inducing blackness to a great exercise in atmosphere. And did you know that the surrogate band 'froze' in place at the end of "In the Flesh?" and the drum kit dropped below the stage? Thanks to the magic of on-stage cameramen, now you do.

Performance-wise, it's alright for a 'Wall' show...we spend the first half watching roadies gradually build a "great fucking wall" (to borrow a phrase from Gilmour) in front of the band, and the second half is spent peering through holes in the Wall (or in the case of 'Nobody Home', at Waters' goofy hotel-room set) until the band comes out from behind it. As mentioned above, 'The Thin Ice' and 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)' are tres atmospheric, the band backlit by eerie orange and green spotlights as the camera slowly roves around in front of the stage. 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)' is livened up some by some neat band's-eye-view shots of the giant teacher puppet...Nick Mason doesn't seem too excited by this though, as he looks like he's never been more bored in his life. Meanwhile, David Gilmour looks as though he's constructing a sandwich instead of playing a guitar solo and, while making a clenched-jaw guitar face, looks frighteningly like John Kerry for a moment. Discuss.

The squirm factor takes a bit of an upswing as we look at pitch blackness for half of 'One of My Turns' before enduring an excruciating rendition of 'Don't Leave Me Now' before some nice wall-building shots and a dramatic first-set finale to complete the wall redeem us. The second set opens with a mostly-squirmy 'Hey You' (see below), and chugs right along. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice Waters taking in an episode of "The Brady Bunch" on the hotel-room set during 'Nobody Home' shortly before he regales us with some of his worst vocal work to date on 'Vera'.

Now, remember what I said above about how professional cameramen drastically cut down on the squirm factor? That makes it *that much more inexcusable* when we spend the entirety of 'The Show Must Go On' looking at the top quarter of Mr. Screen while *absolutely nothing happens*. Thankfully, zombie Gary Yudman comes out to pester the audience some more immediately afterwards, looking like Lurch from "The Addams Family" and sounding like Goliath from "Davey and Goliath". When he's finally done with his spiel, we kick into the bombastic brightly-lit last quarter of the show featuring exploding flamepots during 'In the Flesh', some nice flying pig footage and Waters-speak (augmented here by a goofy/wistful grin to show off some horrific teeth), and a surprisingly powerful and well-shot 'Run Like Hell'. By the time the band finishes playing Fascist Dress-Up, we get a quick puppet show ('Stop'), a quick cartoon show ('The Trial'), and then a collapsing cardboard wall. The band dutifully marches out (undaunted by Waters' mercifully-silent clarinet playing) for a rendition of 'Outside the Wall' and goes home.

Now, how well does the 'remastering' and editing work out? Overall it's a huge plus, but there are a few more specific points to be made. Backdrop films, plagued by terrible flickering on previous versions, have been composited in when possible (e.g. 'What Shall We Do Now?', 'The Trial', etc) and finally rendered watchable. The only really iffy portions of these composited backdrops comes during 'Waiting for the Worms' (sourced from 'The Wall : Live in Berlin' and thus plagued by that annoying 'graffiti wall' overlay), and 'The Trial' (where the 'blank' portions of the wall itself have a white brick wall composited in, causing a strange effect when someone walks across the stage). On occasion, the video will switch to a different source for the sake of a more dramatic presntation (as in 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)') or to break up a boring bit (like 'Hey You', which previously consisted of four minutes of absolutely nothing happening, but now switches to a fantastic crane shot swooping up over the Wall from backstage). However, usually the alternate source will be from film (from the 'Behind the Wall' special, to be specific). While the film source is even better than the video source, it is kind of jarring to go from full-screen video to wide-screen film all of a sudden, and kind of takes you out of the show a little bit...although it is funny to see Gilmour's hair change a bit in the middle of 'Comfortably Numb'. Thankfully this isn't a make-or-break deal except for the most anal-retentive OCD sufferers.

While the extras aren't as amazing as the feature itself, it is an absolutely extensive treasure trove of stuff. Scans of tickets, passes, the program, Gerald Scarfe's storyboard for the film are accented with spinning news articles, and joined by photos of various memorabilia (props, costumes, etc) and data sheets on every venue and a full crew list.

Anyway, if you had to read this entire review to understand that this is worth picking up, you shouldn't be on the internet. While the Wall shows were displays of excessive bombast and Waters' obsession with himself, they are still essential viewing for any fan and this is as good as it gets. Highly recommended.

'The Happiest Days of Our Lives'	'What Shall We Do Now?'	'Hey You'
'Comfortably Numb'	'In the Flesh'	'The Trial'

Screen Captures are from Harvested's 'Divided We Fall'

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