Review of In Bed With Madonna

Introduction

This DVD presentation is a short journey behind the life on and off stage, of one of the most successful female singing artists since the 1980’s. The insightful journey delves into a variety of subjects covering sex, love, family, friends and fame. The visual biography follows Madonna on her tours and shows the affection and care she expresses to her fellow dancers and how she embraces them more than just friends. Her Father’s thoughts about his daughter and her career are given voice, it also explains about the “give and take” relationship her Brother and herself share, and she explains about her feelings about the early death of her Mother.
The track ‘Like a Virgin’ is featured and describes how Madonna expressed her artistic talent on stage, “lewd and obscene behaviour” was what the news said about it and due to public opinion there was a threat of arrest at one point, but the police left with no incident. Madonna also expresses her frustration and anger when problems occur relating to the smooth running of the shows, technical faults and heated backstage arguments are examples that feature. It also shows the bonding between other famous celebrities, the fans and the press towards Madonna and her success.

Video

This DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 and is a combination of black and white footage and colour. The black and white footage seems less clear and a more softer picture, the black colours are bold enough but seem to overpower the lighter shades. The slight rough quality to the picture could be how it was intended, to give a sense of a documentary feel as it is being filmed.
The colour sections of the DVD are during Madonna’s tours as she is performing on stage, the transfer is clear and looks a lot better than the black and white scenes, the black colours are bold and the stage lighting fades into the darkness smoothly and has an edge to the range that blends nicely too. Apart from the make-up and lighting affecting the look of skin tones on the performers, the colours are contrasted well and you can judge this by looking at the body areas while they are dancing in between the distortions.
The shows are filmed well and look impressive in the widescreen ratio giving full shots of the stage and dancing activity, a variety of angles are used for example close-ups, long shots and reverse angles and even the stage costumes look good and go with the theme of each song, especially the world famously known pointed bra worn by Madonna and used during ‘Like a Virgin’.

Audio

The DVD starts with the familiar MGM logo and is in Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound; surprisingly the rest of the disk is only in Dolby Pro Logic 2.0 and therefore doesn’t give the ultimate impact to Madonna’s music when played as it could do in Dolby Digital 5.1 or even a DTS track. The dialogue and more importantly the singing is clear but the music scenes are drowned out slightly by a pounding sub woofer which sounds good, but has it’s own discreet channel in a Dolby Digital 5.1 set-up but is constantly there in this case. There aren’t any audio effects in this feature but listen out for the jumpy thunderclap that separates two scenes!

Features

The first screen consists of just a language selection for the rest of the DVD, the main menu comes after and it a pale coloured background featuring Madonna lying down with a black slinky number on! The title is top centred and the available options are play, scene selection, language options, and trailer that are presented in a fancy text font. Nothing is animated and there is no audio overlaid either.

Conclusion

An informative look into Madonna’s lifestyle and interesting in some respects, for example the way in which she prays before going out on stage. Most of the scenes seem to feature Madonna either in her nightgown or in a make-up chair but when you think about how often she probably is in and out of hotels and backstage rooms maybe this is how she is most of the time. Dedicated to her work and demanding a lot from around her, it is a hectic life that doesn’t seem to have any time for breaks. Although I’m not a true fan of Madonna I found that even the look of her shows in colour and her singing was enough to draw me into the experience and make me sing along or start tapping something to the beat.