Popumentaries have really gained momentum in the last ten years. It seems like there\u2019s a new documentary about pop and\/or rock icons released every week, though most of them skip the theater and come straight to DVD. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the overwhelming majority of them aren\u2019t very good. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re still waiting for a great Marvin Gaye documentary. Even a decent<\/i> one would be nice. I mean, he\u2019s just as deserving of a high-budget Eagle Vision Entertainment has bundled two of their Marvin Gaye releases into one collector\u2019s edition DVD. The marketing phrase \u201ccollector\u2019s edition\u201d implies that there is something unique about this package, but there isn\u2019t. They\u2019ve just combined two previously released DVDs into one box. This set includes their 2005 \u2013 mediocre at best \u2013 documentary What\u2019s Going On: The Life & Death of Marvin Gaye<\/i> and a 1976 concert filmed at the Edenhalle Concert Hall in Let\u2019s start with the concert. Greatest Hits: Live In \u201976<\/i> is a real treasure. Filmed during the I Want You <\/i>tour, the concert features a healthy and happy Marvin Gaye who puts on as good of a show as one would expect from the beloved and charismatic Prince of Motown. He covers lots of ground too: \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On,\u201d \u201cInner City Blues,\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On,\u201d \u201cSave The Children\u201d and \u201cDistant Lover,\u201d among others, are all in the lineup. Gaye and his band also perform a rushed Motown Medley (\u201cPride & Joy,\u201d \u201cLittle Darling (I Need You),\u201d \u201cI Heard It Through The Grapevine,\u201d etc.) to satisfy all of the audience\u2019s expectations. If the concert falls short in anyway, it\u2019s that all of the songs receive that funked-up, borderline-smooth-jazz,\u201870s cocaine-enriched soul music treatment. It doesn\u2019t serve the music well, at least not as well as the Motown format does, but he\u2019d have to bring the Motown house band The Funk Brothers on tour with him to pull that off. <\/p>\n What\u2019s Going On: The Life & Death of Marvin Gaye<\/i> is a hastily assembled 100-minute documentary that does a pretty poor job of documenting the artist\u2019s life. Look, you\u2019d need a lot more than 100 minutes to say all there is to say on Marvin Gaye, but 100 minutes is still a pretty long time and the documentary doesn\u2019t make good use of this time. Still, the film does feature interviews with Motown President Berry Gordy, his two ex-wives Anna and Janice, the brilliant Marvin Gaye biographer David Ritz, and quite a few others. These interviews are informative but brief. The best feature of the film is the archival footage of Marvin Gaye himself, some from interviews, some from performances. The end result is a short-winded look at one of Perhaps it\u2019s asking too much, but I don\u2019t think so. Doesn\u2019t Marvin Gaye deserve more than 100 minutes? It\u2019s Marvin Gaye for God\u2019s sake. What\u2019s Going On: The Life & Death of Marvin Gaye<\/i> only confirms the need for a dedicated filmmaker to take on the task of documenting, exploring, explaining, and preserving the Prince of Motown\u2019s legacy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":29354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6968],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40918","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-marvin-gaye","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40918"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}