From The Shadows Of The King To Solutionary Dynamics

Over the years David Stanley wrote books, made videos and held speeches about Elvis. The fact that we had to remove a lot of ‘contributions’ to the news item about the release of this DVD/CD shows that David is a little controversial, to say the least. Open minded like we are, we gave the DVD a chance and here is our verdict.

Design

The cover is well designed, and points out a bit that the DVD is more about David Stanley than about Elvis, given the coloured picture of David and the sober black/white image of Elvis and David.
The menu of the DVD is clear, no extra gadgets, but to the point. The image quality is good overall, although sometimes there are nasty effects when David is in front of the blue background.

Content

The signature keynote before an audience starts very fast, maybe a bit too fast for non-native English people, but after the introduction David slows down a little and tells his story in an animated way. It’s obvious David studied communication, and in this presentation he shows he is a specialist. His story about being the King’s little brother, being part of that family (and he was!), working for him, and about Elvis’ death are very clear and sometimes touching. The second part of the keynote is about life after Elvis, and the way David packed himself might be a good lesson for others, since some people need that those “open doors” are shown to them. Still, to most of us fans there will be not much new to learn, although most of the separate anecdotes are good to hear. People hoping for new footage or pictures do not have to buy this DVD, since there is nothing available. In the background some known pictures are shown, but that is all.

Conclusion

We are glad to have seen this DVD, especially the bonus-stories. The sceptical people can stay away from it, they only will complain anyway, saying David is making money out of Elvis/us and so on. We don’t feel we have to judge people that are making money out of Elvis (otherwise we had a very busy job), we just judge the product. In this case an interesting one, especially for relatively ‘new’ fans. The ‘old troops’ can pass it, since there will be not much new for them.