Eagles

Image Entertainment and Geffen Records jointly released the documentary Hell Freezes Over, built around the Eagles' reunion tour, with DTS sound encoding available. Even the early sections, depicting the participating members (which doesn't include co-founder Rusty Young or Bernie Leadon) reflecting on the decision to reunite for the national tour, are interesting for the song fragments that you get in rehearsal, as well as the short interviews with Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmit -- a few fan comments and you're suddenly immersed in the group's mostly acoustic rock treatment of "Hotel California," which includes a great acoustic guitar break by Walsh. The camera angles are great, constantly moving you around the stage and all of the shots assembled with a great deal of fluidity. Although the members soon pick up electric instruments, the rest of the concert is a kind of novel approach to the music -- even on the full electric numbers such as "Get Over It," they keep the best elements of an "unplugged" performance, holding on to the same close spatial relationship and also capturing the closeness of the members musically. That is made even more clear in the much more intimate "Desperado," which constitutes the 99-minute program's denouement. The 12-song feature gets 15 chapter markers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide