kevathens, July 30, 2007 11:09:00 PM CEST
The Good, the Bad and the Queen "The Good, the Bad and the Queen" dir. Stephen Pook


A psychedelicized sufi dance. Here's a tubed sampling of sufi dancing, whirling dervishes, and more traditional (I think?) hadras.

youtube - Myspace
         
Very great.
         
oh i love this song... and the vid is nice too. simple but cool, just like the music.
         
genius, it builds and builds and builds... and just when you think you know where it's going it goes batshit.

One of the few vids to turn my head for it's originality and effectiveness.
         
I'm not so convinced....

Firstly I can't tell from Stephen's Myspace page if this was something he'd shot for the commission specifically or something he had hanging around and put together for the track and submitted.

For my liking it works overall and is interesting to the western eye.
But...
It fails for me in the last section (exactly where it should kick arse!) and the main reason for this I feel is that it for all intense purposes looks like mr pook ran out of good footage of the dancing.... The split/mirrored screen for me doesn't add an awful lot more to the intensity of the track and allows him to recycle footage and use weaker shots.

If this was indeed a commissioned piece (I'm sure good,bad,queen vids don't have big budgets by any means) he must have had enough for a plane ticket to north africa, a decent camera (a camera with high-speed capability would have helped a great deal in these closing scenes) and a big lump of solid to make friends with.
If it was commissioned he must have been going ape-shit at Damon for writing a 6 minute song and been begging for a slightly shorter radio edit with the same effect.

I reckon this was made by Stephen out of footage he'd shot whilst running around for the beeb.
Don't get me wrong, I like it. But it's got some serious flaws.
         
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