New video compl-Greatest Olympic Perf.

[KwanFan1212]

Wow, I will probably order this as a Christmas gift for my mom (she will remember several of those older performances), but any collection of great Oly programs that doesn't include ANY Michelle Kwan from 98 is not that great of a collection in my biased opinion, LOL

There are SOOO many great performances left off this collection. MK, B&S, Ilia Kulik, Dimitriev & Miskichunuk, Scott Hamilton (yes I know it wasn't his best but he did win the gold medal and is considered one of the greats), Brian Orser, Paul Wylie, Katarina Witt, and those are just off the top of my head! Wow.

 

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Considering all the performances missing in this tape, I doubt I will get it. I'm still not sure if the tape will have the actual music the skaters were skating to if they will replace it with generic music because of copyright.

I agree Ice Castle that I wish a company could take the time to do the best Olympic Performances and do them by discipline and released them separetely. More tapes to sell and more coverage too.

 

[mpal2]

I'm torn over getting this or not. The benefit would be seeing some of the older clips of skaters. The bad news is that I don't agree with their greatest list to some extent and I would have some repeats since I have already taped some events.

 

[guinevere]

I don't think so-because both Sarah Hughes and Alexei Yagudin are on the video-and they're both from the same Olympics.

I meant to say per discipline - so they could have Hughes and Yags, but not Hughes and Kwan (or Slutskaya, for that matter).

But after reading all the other posts about this compilation here and on other sites, I agree that there is a NA slant to the skates they chose, and several of the omissions are questionable. ITA with the idea of putting out a comprehensive best-of-the-decade series. I would definitely buy that, and if it were an ongoing series, it would never end up feeling dated - just put out the next in the series at the end of each decade! There would always be something left off that would bug somebody, but it would allow for a much more comprehensive look at great Oly performances.

guinevere

 

[thvudragon]

OMG, they have T&D on the tape, but not G&P How dare they snub the most technically capable Ice Dancers in history! And of course, they've totally snubbed B&S. I guess they're not really looking for "Great Performances," just performances that cater to the NA audience.

TV

 

[lulu]

OMG, they have T&D on the tape, but not G&P How dare they snub the most technically capable Ice Dancers in history! And of course, they've totally snubbed B&S. I guess they're not really looking for "Great Performances," just performances that cater to the NA audience.

TV

ITA-they are missing SO many great performances. I wouldn't have a problem with all of the performances they put on tape-(even though I think some of the ones they left out are better than some of the ones are included on the tape), if they had included some of the many great ones they had left out.
It does seem to be marketed towards skaters who are popular with a North American audience. (Although I'm suprised if this was their marketing campaign they did not include Michelle Kwan, since she has such a huge fan base, but they did include Midori Ito, who I really like, but she doesn't have a huge fan base in America. Not saying Midori doesn't have fans, just not as much as Michelle Kwan does in America.)

Anyways, this is hardly "A Greatest Olympic Performances Ever" tape.:sheesh:

 

[SusanBeth]

Isn't this being marketed for NA ? Even if they are selling Olympic performance videos worldwide, the videos don't necessarily have to have the same content. Personally, if I were in their place, I'd slant the videos I sold in NA to interest North Americans. I would slant the videos to suit the most people in any country.

I have been longing to get to see many of these programs. I will gladly buy them. I hope they sell well enough for the company to offer more.

 

[sk8ing_lady2001]

Will pass.

I agree with you. I would buy it, though, if Michelle was on it.

 

[show 42]

This is an odd assortment of performances, I think I have most of them on tape anyway. To leave out Michelle's 98 skate and Paul's spectacular 92 Oly silver win is unbelievable........I'd like to know who made the final decision? However, if I didn't already have most of these skates on video already, I might be tempted............42

 

[hockeyfan228]

Advantages of this collection:

* Except for some voice-over narration at the beginning and end of the complete skates, and some muted commentary by Button and McKay in the background of Cousins' performance, you hear only the music for much of the programs. It's great to watch Yamaguchi, Boitano, Cousins, Sale & Pelletier, Yagudin, Gordeeva, Hamill, and Grinkov ('94 LP), Torvill & Dean (Bolero ), and Curry mostly without value judgements or babbling. There's a little bit more voiceover when Witt skates Carmen.

* There's some wonderful (short) archival footage of Henie (as an 11-year old), Heiss, Button, Barbara Ann Scott, and Wagner and Paul.

* There are some partial performances of varying lengths: Protopopov's '64 LP, Pakhomova/Gorshkov, and Peggy Fleming, as well as much of Janet Lynn's '72 LP on footage from a Japanese film producer.

What is there not to like?

* That there's any commentary whatsoever.
* That there's not enough archival footage.
* It seems that the producers might not have been able to get the rights to some really great performances from ABC, or at least for the entire program.
* The selections

The only Russians on the tape are Gordeeva/Grinkov, much loved in the US, the Protopopovs, also loved in the US, Pakhomova/Gorshkov, who didn't compete with and beat Babilonia/Gardner, and Yagudin. Forget about Kulik or Petrenko '88 or any of the Russian dance teams or any Rodnina, etc. The only Canadians on the tape are Sale/Pelletier and some archival footage of Wagner & Paul and Barbara Ann Scott. There's no mention of Orser anywhere, nor Karen Magnussen, and only a small mention of Elizabeth Manley, while much was made of Witt's competition with Debbie Thomas. So its seems to me that this is being marketed solely to a US audience.

However, that's what comes with getting the good stuff.

 

[moyesii]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who was annoyed by the serious omissions on this tape. Whenever the commercial airs during the GP broadcasts, it's a real turnoff not to see MK or Nancy Kerrigan included. How shallow to include only the gold medal performances. I suppose that if S&P weren't awarded a second gold medal at SLC, they wouldn't have been included on the tape either :\

 

[Zhenya's Girl]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who was annoyed by the serious omissions on this tape. Whenever the commercial airs during the GP broadcasts, it's a real turnoff not to see MK or Nancy Kerrigan included. How shallow to include only the gold medal performances. I suppose that if S&P weren't awarded a second gold medal at SLC, they wouldn't have been included on the tape either :\

What's wrong with this? Gold means gold. Not silver, not bronze, but GOLD. The best of the best. I wouldn't want to watch anything less!

Cynthia Marie

 

[lulu]

They do include non-gold medal performances-includinng clips of Eliazabeth Manley, Debi Thomas, Midori Ito, and Alexei Yagudin's 5th place performance in Nagano. It is who they leave out that is a little bit


Rodnina and Zaitsev are included on the tape-just misintroduced as the ice dancers Pakhmova and Gorshkov.


Oh, well-at least it saves me $30.00.

 

[Germanice]

They do include non-gold medal performances-includinng clips of Eliazabeth Manley, Debi Thomas, Midori Ito, and Alexei Yagudin's 5th place performance in Nagano. It is who they leave out that is a little bit

Well, I must say now I'm surprised. Alexei's 5th place performance in Nagano is on it, but not his Gold medal program from SLC 2002? That's really strange indeed ...

Anke

 

[lulu]

Alexei's 2002 OGM performance is included. Here is a link to a list of all of the performaces.http://www.frogsonice.com/gateway/skatefans/msg32183.html

 

[hockeyfan228]

What's wrong with this? Gold means gold. Not silver, not bronze, but GOLD. The best of the best.

The set is advertised as the "best", not "gold." Some gold-medal performances are not among the best, and some silver- and lower performances are among the best, especially those from the school figures era.

 

[berthes ghost]

The tape is really funny in that the narrator makes at least one factual error for each performance. Sometimes it's minor, but sometimes it's blaringly hugh like, like misidentifying the 3 time gold medalist Irina Rodnina as someone nowhere near as famous.

It is strange that they would include Midori Ito, and not Nancy Kerrigan (94) or Michelle Kwan (98).

Midori made history by landing the first (and last) 3axel by a lady at the Olys. They make a big deal of it on the tape.

I'm still not sure if the tape will have the actual music the skaters were skating to if they will replace it with generic music because of copyright.

90% is origional music. There are one or two that are not, Rodnina for sure and possibly the Protopopovs. I'm not sure about Peggy, they play Sampson&Delila but I didn't think that that was in her LP. The old clips like Dick and Brabara-Ann are most probably not origional music, but they are short clips that don't show much anyway.

I wonder if these are just LPs and Free Dances

It's 95% LPs. They show short clips of SP for Midori and Kristi and Oksana and Nancy. They show the SPs of Sarah and Alexei, but I fastfowarded over both, so I can't tell you much.

I've been meaning to post an inventory of the factual errors on the tape, as I found them quite funny, but haven't gotten around to it.

Here's some examples:

"Ito fell in the SP, as did American Nancy Kerrigan. Despite also stumbling in the SP, Kristi finished 1st" Either I need new glasses, or he and I watched 2 different Olys!

"Boitano had taken the silver medal at the 84 Olympics behind Canadian Brian Orser." Boy, I'm gonna call up the 2 Brians and congratulate them, but think I'll let Scott find out his loss from someone else.

 

[show 42]

I'm going to agree with lulu.......perhaps a collection of Bronze, Silver, and Gold performances from the Olympics would be in order. Several of the medal winners from previous Olympics went on to receive additional medals in the following Olympics.....would be fun to see this progression......42

 

[SusanBeth]

It's far from perfect, but I've enjoyed it. I have to say, they did not do Peggy Fleming any favors showing those clips of her performance. The camera angles, in many cases, are different than I am used to seeing. I like that usually. However in Peggy's clip, the camera spends some time focused on her rear. That is- until she does her layback. Then, the camera was focused on her chest. I could have skipped that.

 

[Spirit]

I am so disappointed in this DVD set.

I have long wanted to see certain highly regarded performances which no one (hello, ESPN Classic?) ever shows, particularly Torville & Dean's Bolero and Peggy Fleming's long program from the '68 Olympics. (I'd also like to see Peggy's Nationals performance in Philadelphia.) The collection is obviously not complete, but it has much that I didn't and which I have been looking for, so I bought it.

THE DVD'S ARE NOT DIVIDED INTO CHAPTERS!

You press "Play" and watch. If you want to view a specific performance, you must fast forward through the program until you reach it, just like a video tape. Why did they even bother with DVD?!?!

Then there's the narration. This isn't a set of performances from which the viewer can choose certain ones to replay at his or her leisure -- which is what I thought it was -- this is basically a documentary like you'd see on TV. The narrator -- whose voice comes through more loudly than skating commentators -- talks over the beginning and end of G&G's gold-medal winning skate, and most irritatingly, over T&D's performance from Sarajevo.

T&D was the one I was looking forward to the most. I wanted to see what was so special about it that it could earn so many perfect scores. Well, I saw, and I was very, very impressed. I was thoroughly enraptured by their performance, until, 30 seconds before the end, the narrator barges in in a loud voice and starts talking, utterly ruining it! The entire effect of their beautiful skate is shattered!!! And there's no option to turn it off. The historic moment when they receive their scores is not shown.

The second performance I wanted most to see was Peggy's skate. They showed a clip which lasts about a minute, but no more. Why?!?! They don't say. If I had known it wasn't the full performance, that might have influenced my decision to buy it!

Dorothy's skate, at least, was shown in its entirety, and in that instance, the narration waited until the end.

Then we come to Sale and Pelletier, and we see some blatant favoritism. They showed their entire short program (the only one I know of in which they did that), followed by their entire long program. And the cute fall at the very end of their short program, which everyone laughed at, was edited out! They faded away straight to the long program, as if they were embarassed to show it! B&S were mentioned only by necessity and appeared only briefly in the medal ceremony.

Three hours of footage and sound, at least, can easily fit onto a single DVD. Each of these DVD's is an hour in length. This could very easily have been a single DVD for less cost.

After seeing how they truncated Peggy's performance, I just turned it off in disgust.

What a wasted opportunity.

And yes, I will be sending this feedback to the production company, as well.