Arena: An Absurd Notion

this was one of my first videos that i owned(at the tender age of 15!) It is mostly concert footage of duran duran at their height performing. that in itself makes the video worthwhile. But Miles o'shea's potrayal as dr duran takes the cake.... And if you watch carefully you see bits of barbarella thrown in.

the weak spot is the Wild Boys video.... I love the video but the way it is edited in is rather weak...... But all in all it is truly a good movie!

Filmed and released during the height of Duran Duran's popularity, this concentrated bundle of self-importance tries in vain to straddle two genres and only succeeds in spoiling them both. Footage of the group on-stage during their 1984 Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour is interspersed with (and interrupted by) loud, overplayed vignettes of an invading alien force, which results in an effect similar to constant channel-flips between MTV and an episode of The Transformers. The inclusion of Milo O'Shea, reprising his role as the evil Dr. Durand Durand from the film Barbarella (source of the band's name) is a cute nod, but hardly enough to overcome the surrounding trainwreck. Even the band's performance, what little we actually get to see of it, is sub-par, as if we've caught them on the last few dates of a particularly draining tour. Die-hards and casuals alike should try to forget this one ever existed.

Decent concert ruined by pointless cuts.

This film captures Duran Duran at the height of their powers and popularity, in Oakland, CA on their 1984 US tour. All their big hits are there: Hungry like the Wolf, Is there something I should know?, Rio, Union of the Snake, Save a Prayer, Wild Boys, Planet Earth, The Reflex and Girls on Film.

The movie accurately captures the energy of the band, plus the adoration of the fans.

Unfortunately, this is all ruined by cuts to an attempt to make some sort of sci fi movie in parallel. The parallel movie borrows from Barbarella, the movie from which Duran Duran got their name. However, it adds nothing to the concert. Worse than that, it wrecks the concert. The cuts are in the middle of songs, and are incredibly irritating.

Leave out the sci fi bs and this would have been a good concert film.

One of the most bizarre companion videos to an album ever made, IMO, Milo O'Shea reprises his role as megalomaniacal Dr. Durand Durand from Jane Fonda's old babes-in-space flick BARBARELLA, and winds up making it a lot more interesting than the movie which spawned it.

Having somehow escaped the corrosive destruction of The Matmos, Dr. Durand, still just as loopy as a test monkey in a centrifuge chamber, decides he wants to conquer Earth and simultaneously wreak his revenge on the poofy-haired teen idols who have "taken his name in vain," and stolen what he perceives to be in his warped brain, a piece of his past glory.

Mind you, I'm giving this vid-movie more credit for having a plot than it probably deserves. What director Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER) was about here is images, textures and sound, and ways to combine them that would either leave you mesmerized, or with an intense migraine. Anyway, aside from the story nonsense is some great concert footage of The Boys, and as I mentioned before, O'Shea's OTT performance, which works splendidly here.

Which is not to say that ARENA is for all tastes. DD fans or people who enjoyed the accompanying album who'd like another perspective on songs like "The Reflex," "Save A Prayer," "Union of the Snake" and "Rio" will want to check this out.

But good luck finding it. Except as a rental, ARENA is out of print in most places. Maybe VH1 or MTV will show it on some extremely rare occasion...

This remains one of my favorite movies of all time. It is not by any means good, it is really embarrassing at points. But it's immensely entertaining, and 20 years on it's even more entertaining for new, kitchy reasons.

This is a Duran Duran concert shot in Oakland for the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour. The concert footage is mixed in with an absurd, stupid plot line. Duran Duran, the bad guy from Barbarella, has been awakened in deep space by the chants of screaming teenage girls. So he discovers the band Duran Duran has taken his name and he sets out to destroy the band, setting up shop under the Oakland arena and kidnapping fans with enormous hair to supply power to his positronic ray that will allow him to control the universe. Yes, really.

Duran Duran were one of the best of the new wave bands from the 80s. When they came out they seemed to be another pretty boy band more concerned with image than music. However, they wrote their own music and played their own instrument. Seeing them again last year, they have actually gotten better with age -- they have never sounded better. Their entire catalog has held up much better than one would have thought 20 years ago, particularly their first three near perfect albums, Duran Duran, Rio, and Seven.

Back to the DVD. The concert footage remains thrilling. The audience is in hysterics, and the boys really put on a hot show. The theatrics, the staging, the costuming were all brilliant, yet the music still towered above everything else. Back then and now, they really put on one hell of a good show. The storyline footage has taken on a campy, nostalgic aura and is still compulsively watchable despite inducing cringes. Oh my god, did we actually do those things to our hair! It is really great seeing bands such as Interpol and the Killers being inspired by and ripping off the original pretty boys, and it makes me feel old to realize some of these kids weren't even born when Duran Duran first hit.

Duran Duran has really held up, and Arena is a thrilling, trashy masterpiece of camp. Time has turned this show into a kitschy work of art.