DVDs:

	Director's Series, Vol. 1 - The Work of Director Spike Jonze Clint Barr, Bryan James 'B.J.' Bowden Palm Pictures / Umvd, 2003 average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Accompanied by an informative 52-page booklet, this two-sided DVD (one in a three-disc series that includes the equally dazzling work of Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham) also explores Jonze's artistic evolution with an entertaining selection of video rarities and three half-hour documentaries, the best being a revealing and very funny interview with rapper Fatlip after his dismissal from the Pharcyde. Commentaries for the music videos are consistently worthwhile, supporting Jonze's own belief that his best videos were made for artists whose work he genuinely enjoyed. Lucky for us, his pleasure is infectious. --Jeff Shannon

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Jonze shines in this stunning collection!

Spike Jonze has always been the class clown of music video directors, churning out some of the silliest videos ever made. "The Work of Director Spike Jonze" is an excellent "greatest hits" collection of his work, which includes groundbreaking videos for Weezer, Fatboy Slim, The Beastie Boys, and Björk (she's the only artist who makes an appearance on all three DVDs...she knows how to pick the right directors!)

Anyway, I found the commentary very interesting, except for the two Beastie Boys videos. There was a great deal of dead air and lack of interest in their commentaries. Most interesting, however, is the commentary from Tony Maxwell, the guy in the dog costume in Daft Punk's "Da Funk" video. He discusses his first encounter with claustrophobia while wearing the costume and how they had to destroy the costume to get him out of it. Fatboy Slim gives pretty good commentary tracks, plus he's sitting in a bathtub when he gives it, which is pretty funny. And finally, Christopher Walken himself is on hand to talk about working on the "Weapon of Choice" video...and it's f***ing hilarious.

The documentaries on the flipside are very good as well, especially the Torrance Community Dance Group preparing for their appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards (which I had the good fortune to watch live). In the documentary, Spike Jonze invokes the work of Christopher Guest as he seamlessly creates an excellent mockumentary that keeps the laughs coming.

While this collection may not be as thorough as the Michel Gondry DVD, it's still essential for any Jonze fan...or for any music video fan in general.

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Awesome videos by an amazing director

Spike Jonze is an amazing music video director and this DVD is a great collection of his groundbreaking work that dominated MTV for much of the 1990s. He is probably the most influential director of the medium, and this DVD serves as a great showcase for his diversity.


Essential

To those following the Director's Series, Spike Jonze is not a hidden secret, and here the feast of offerings is certainly enough to feed the fans--good range and detail. But the real discovery here is for folks who haven't been familiar with him all along, the Amazon searchers who were actually seeking railroad spikes, Elvis Costello's "Spike", or (of course) Spike Jones and the City Slickers. Hopefully a few of them will stumble upon something worth exploring.

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Side A = Awesome. Side B = Mediocre

Side A: A nice collection of music videos that made Spike Jonze a household name well before Being John Malkovich. Such "hits" as Praise You, Sabotage and Buddy Holly are all there, but it's his lesser known work that really makes this DVD worthwhile. Did you know that Notorious B.I.G.'s Sky's the Limit was directed by him? Did you know that the guy in that Wax video was really on fire? And look! It's Sofia Coppola in the Chemical Brothers' Elektrobank! The commentaries were pretty weak though. There is nothing by Jonze himself, and the band members and actors don't offer much insight (other than that Rivers Cuomo is a pretentious poser, but we already knew that).

Side B: A bunch of shorts and documentaries (including a mockumentary about the Torrance Community Dance Group of the Praise You fame, starring Jonze as "Richard Koufey"), but nothing remarkable, really. The most amusing offering here was his "audition tape" for Rockafella Skank, which was a precursor to Praise You.

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Only for Jonze fans

Reading the other reviewers here, it's clear that they are familiar with Jonze's work and think this is a great disk.

I came to it from the other direction. Having seen Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (Superbit Collection), I wanted to learn more about Spike Jonze. On that score, this disk fails miserably. It basically contains a lot of his early works, music videos and longer experimental pieces (30 - 60 minutes), but has neither analysis of his work or interviews with Jonze.

For me, the most enjoyable (and interesting) piece on the disk was a 30-min. mockumentary about the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group that outclasses anything Christopher Guest (This Is Spinal Tap (Special Edition), Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind) has done. The difference lies in Jonze's integration of real people and places with the fictional ones, so there's always the open question of what is real.

I have since done a Wikipedia search under "Praise You" and "Fatboy Slim," which produced a useful discussion of what was going on in the piece on the Torrance Community Dance Group. Recommended for those unfamiliar with Jonze.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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