Madonna - The Girlie Show (Live Down Under) (1993) Review

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(More customer reviews)I remember travelling to London to see Madonna's opening night of this Tour in September 1993. I was very excited & moreso because up until that point I thought that the Blonde Ambition was the most lavish spectacular ever brought to stage & screen. What could Madonna do next? The Girlie Show is definitely not a duplication of Madonna's 1990 Tour. Lavish, yes, but it does not go the Greatest Hits route. Madonna at the time was getting a lot of bad press due to the nature of her Sex book (which is very bland really) & her Erotica album (which I feel is one of her best). The Girlie Show therefore had to be something else & it is. Lipsyncing aside (Erotica/Justify My Love/Vogue), The Girlie Show is an impressive hommage to spectacles of old from harlequins to troubadours, 70s Disco & Deitrich, Madonna's Tour demonstrates her cultural awareness & her influences. The show, like the Blonde Ambition Tour is divided into segments.
SEGMENT 1: The Dita files. A series of darker dance numbers performer by Madonna in her Dita outfit. Erotica, the show's opener is Madonna's sole presence on stage, with dancers in the background. Good for what it is. But does not get the juices flowing, as the songs lyrics promise. Fever rocks - not one of my fave songs by Madonna, but she gives it plenty of life & sings it live! as well - she lipsynced to this one in London. Quite a sexy routine also with 2 dancers. Madonna flirts with the crowd. Vogue is an elaborate spectacle, with Madonna, Nikki & Donna wearing what look chandeliers on their heads, & indulge in artsy dancing. Cool. Rain demonstrates Madonna can sing & harmonise.
SEGMENT2: 70s DISCO. This part of the show is a partayyyy sequence with a totally blinding version of Express Yourself, moving into the feather boa dance routine of Deeper & Deeper, before slowing down a bit for Why's It So Hard & then In This Life, which has Madonna alone on the steps singing about lost friends. Bless.
SEGMENT3: WHAT IS GOING ON? SECTION: Madonna does Like A Virgin as Marlent Deitrich, dressed up as a man flirts outrageously with dancing girls on Bye Bye Baby & then proceeds into the most unexpected live! song ever - I'm Going Bananas. Nuts.
THE HITS: We then move into a wondrous rendtion of La Isla Bonita, spanish dancing et al & then a Military version of Holiday, which gets the audience livened up & Madonna genuinely appears to be enjoying herself & smiling without force.
The traditional expression save the best for last is true here. The encores are two very different sounds & images. Madonna goes to Ascot Horse Racing is the theme of Justify My Love, a very decadent type of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, with eloquent top hats, tails & lavish dresses (which is more 1920s than 1780s). Madonna's outfit is a combination of man-woman. The song is sultry & one I would never have imagined to be done live. It livens up at the end with the dancers all performing a hand-clapping routine. Bonkers. The showstopper is again a song I was not expecting, yet one of my faves. A totally reworked version of Everybody which breaks into Dance To The Music & then becomes all funky. It is euphoric & the total climax to the show IMHO. Add to this a secret clown who turns out to be Madonna & you have the impression that depsite the lack of greater hits like Papa Don't Preach/Open Your Heart, etc that Madonna does want to entertain her crowd & moreover interact with them. She does so well, or at least as warmly as I've ever seen her. Bad press asides, the sheer content of the show alone is enough to remind fans why they attended the show (& there are A LOT at this show - & she played 4 nights at this cricket ground as well as performing in other Australian cities!!!!) & why Madonna is one of the best at her game

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Suicide Girls - The First Tour (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)"Suicide Girls" started out as just a website to display creator Missy Suicide's "erotic photography." This is a different category than "porn," but I guess at some point it's splitting hairs. If we can place this DVD on a continuum with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or Maxim on one end and "Barely Legal" or "Shaved Asian" on the other, I suppose it would be closer to the former. Of Course, considering most of the Suicide Girls come from the punk subculture, complete with the tattoos and piercings to prove it, that would have to add to the kink factor somewhat. Then again, compared to the "Girls Gone Wild" franchise, SG has a far lower perv factor; i.e. you can watch this without feeling all icky afterward. You may want to put on actual porn, though, so that can be a strike against SG, even though that's hardly their fault. Heck, the girls themselves seem to have a bit more going on in their heads than the "Gone Wild" variety. Actually, in the interview segments that pepper the main attraction of the disc, they have precious little to say to prove this, but they just seem smarter. I mean, they HAVE to be smarter, don't they?
As for what you actually get for your hard earned perv budget, the main thing is a 94 minute "documentary" of the girls as they embark on a cross-country tour of burlesque shows, usually in venues normally reserved for music. Within that are profiles of the various girls on the tour: a short "interview" gives way to a short example of their stage routine (pasties and duct tape are involved) gives way to a filmed photo shoot (this time without the pasties and duct tape, thankyouverymuch). There's plenty of music to accompany the segments, not all of it punk. A complete listing in teeny-tiny print can be found underneath the disc's back cover. But wait, there's more! You can also watch the movie without the interview segments, which cuts down on the running time considerably. An interview with Missy is the closest you'll get to actual information here, as she discusses what she was trying to do with the site, which was present "real" girls of all shapes, sizes and body modifications in a "sexy" manner. Mind you, by all sizes they seem to run the gamut from thin to really thin, though at least none of them seem to have much interest in implants, which works for me.
The rest of the disc has some mildly fun outtakes and a music video by Probot featuring some Suicide Girls which is much better with the mute button. I guess if Missy is serious about expanding the franchise, we can expect calendars, books and, one would guess, "Toys." There's already a CD of some of the girl's favorite goth tunes, so I guess the sky's the limit.
So while you can expect to have fun with this, don't expect your life to be changed or anything. On the down side, this disc may cause a serious medical condition with the scientific name of "Blue Balls." Fortunately, there are all sorts of web sites where this can be cured. Or so I'm told.

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Now comes SuicideGirls: First Tour, a DVD featuring the unique mix of punk and burlesque that made the SuicideGirls first national tour such a hit with audiences. Beyond the stage performances, this DVD follows the women along for an intimate behind-the-scenes look at life in the van, along with exclusive video fantasies conceived and performed by the touring company. The millions who have already discovered SuicideGirls will have to own their first appearance on DVD, while new fans will be curious to see what all the buzz is about.

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