News Burning Ambition Documentary

Spaldy said:
A blu-ray edition has been seemingly leaked.View attachment 46090
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This would have been a cool cover (the stage set with the decor, the band members from different eras and tours, and the big Eddie), but why not colorful?

^probably random picks. BNW and AMOLAD are two of the most liked Reunion era albums (RFYL Part 2, wow), LOTB is one of their best stage sets, WST is iconic, FOTD is iconic by name and song.
 
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Philip Naslund also watched the documentary premiere, and Maiden's page noted it in his Instagram post. Nice. :)
 
Dick Brucinson said:
Did NPFD get a lot of coverage?
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Not a lot like anything in the movie, but it was mentioned. Adrian talked how he was really proud of SIT and SSOASS and felt band was going in the right direction. But he couldn't come up with anything for NPFTD and after hearing that it would be recorded in Steve' barn, he was not thrilled about it. Add touring life and burn out, he was leaving. The usual stuff. There's also a interview I've never seen where they make fun of Janick and put him on the spot to give interview, it's from 1990 I believe. In that interview they say that new tour is going to be "amazing and new material sounds strong"... And then it cuts to RH video 1993 where they talk about Bruce wanted to leave.
One thing I didn't know is that a lot of Adrian' gear was remaining in the studio and they wanted to force Janick to play it instead of his own, but Janick said no.
 
BludBrutha said:
View attachment 46098

Is this accurate?
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Absolutely not true, you can't see 90% when all this mentioned does span only about 50%. Idk what fan expected, I had my own, but this documentary is not for die hards. This one is real commercial thing and you can't expect FOTD and VXI deep dive making of. I knew 80% or more of the movie, but there is still a lot of new live footage, interviews, their perspective and it's edited really good. Don't expect too much, but you won't be disappointed, it's different than other documentaries they have, but it's same level quality.
 
My Burning Ambition thoughts (mild spoilers).

If you're a hardcore fan going into this expecting a deep dive on which guitar strings Adrian used in 1984, how Weekend Warrior was carefully crafted or if they really did perform Back in the Village live then you're going to be very disappointed. It's not that kind of movie.

Indeed, the albums and the songs themselves are barely even discussed and whenever we do get a song it's almost always a live version, something that I think would make Steve happy since he sees Maiden as a live band first and foremost. The track list itself is interesting. Who would have predicted we'd get The Book of Souls on here? And if I have a genuine complaint about any part of this film it's that we get nothing from Seventh Son.

It took a while for me to figure it out but this morning I finally realised that this isn't a film about the albums or the music or any of that stuff. It's about the people. The people in the band and the people who love the band (and the impact it's had on them).

There's a pivotal section about halfway through when the film focuses on Poland 84 and then segues into RiR 85. I did wonder at the time why they chose to hyper focus on those moments in particular when it became clear that these were two pivotal moments (on the same tour no less) that connected the band with audiences from two very troubled parts of the world (Eastern Europe and South America) who had never experienced anything like this before. As part of the narrative, it now made total sense.

Burning Ambition skips over a LOT of stuff and events and that's probably going to piss some fans off. Going back to the lack of any direct album discussion, there's no mention of Martin Birch for example. I was surprised how much time they gave to the Blaze era though as like a lot of people, I thought they might skip that over. The reunion era is given time but most of the focus is on Bruce's cancer scare and Nicko's stroke, rather than how many stadiums they sold out. There's also a few interesting time jumps, such as we see the creation of Ed Force One (and Bruce's piloting) AFTER the cancer story. Chronologically it's nonsense of course but from a storytelling perspective it works more.

That's what you have to go in remembering. This probably isn't going to laser focus on your favourite thing. It's trying to tell the rise, fall and rise again of an institution in under 2 hours from the perspective of the people who care the most on and off the stage. And for me it worked tremendously well. The 2 hours flew by and the film didn't out stay its welcome. We also get a smattering of unseen archival footage (which tells me that Maiden have a lot more in their vaults that they're letting on) and restored live clips. Here's hoping that the blu-ray comes with plenty of extras.

Oh and the Eddie animated scenes were wonderful. 4/5

A funny thing happened in my screening. About halfway through, three middle aged women walked in and sat down. They were waving their phones about (with the flashlight on) and talking loudly for several minutes. I asked them to be quiet and was ignored so I had to turn on my inner Eddie and told them to shut up. A minute went by and it finally dawned on the three yapping idiots that they weren't watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 and they left.
 
Kalata said:
Philip Naslund also watched the documentary premiere, and Maiden's page noted it in his Instagram post. Nice. :)
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Alongside Erik Grönwall, one of the finest newer classic metal vocalists. Näslund is playing on his newly released solo record.
 
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Ledges Bitten In Dust said:
Didn't know it's that expensive. But do we really need 4K of fan interviews?
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The fan interviews make up less than 30% of the footage. The bulk is restored and remastered archive material and it looked great on the 4K screen I saw it on. I'll be buying this set, especially for the added bonus of HDR.
 
I enjoyed it, tears at a few moments, the bit where they were talking with the fans from Lebanon, Kosovo and the cop who had trauma from 9/11, and at another part that I can't remember but most likely Nicko saying something heartfelt. The Paul letter was something that I may have heard of once before, but had forgotten about, and it certainly felt like it was putting a new spin on a pivotal event from the band.

Negatives, it goes from BNW to the present day in lightning speed. And I disagree with @Spaldy, I think the Eddie animations are awful, they look bad and they always seem to interrupt interesting parts of the narative for a couple of minutes.
 
Spaldy said:
The fan interviews make up less than 30% of the footage. The bulk is restored and remastered archive material and it looked great on the 4K screen I saw it on. I'll be buying this set, especially for the added bonus of HDR.
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I'll buy it of course, I'd like more to see concert from some tours released, LOTB or TFP, but if this is destined to be first release after 5 years, I'm buyin.
 
srfc said:
I enjoyed it, tears at a few moments, the bit where they were talking with the fans from Lebanon, Kosovo and the cop who had trauma from 9/11, and at another part that I can't remember but most likely Nicko saying something heartfelt. The Paul letter was something that I may have heard of once before, but had forgotten about, and it certainly felt like it was putting a new spin on a pivotal event from the band.
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That letter can be found in the Infinite Dreams book and is from 1979…

srfc said:
Negatives, it goes from BNW to the present day in lightning speed. And I disagree with @Spaldy, I think the Eddie animations are awful, they look bad and they always seem to interrupt interesting parts of the narative for a couple of minutes.
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Some (not all) of the Eddie animations were pretty bad and disrupted the flow of the film, but they did not bother me that much.
 
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