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Details
Title: Celtic – The Official History
Release Date: 2008
Review By: joebloggscity (2009)
Review
If you only buy one Celtic DVD ever and you don't like reading books, then this is possibly the one to get. The Celtic History DVD is like a mini opus on your screen, and takes us on a hand-led tour of Celtic's history from inception to 2008, covering the first 120 years of our club's existense. To put this together, the care and attention to detail is excellent and is no simple rehash of old videos. Lots of new interviews with former Celtic managers (inc even Liam Brady), former players (inc George Connelly) and old board members (inc Fergus McCann and Michael Kelly(!)) makes this DVD one that really holds your attention. It's as much an eduction as it is entertainment.
The first two DVDs handle the transition of the club from its inauspicious beginnings and carries on through to the 70's/80's, educating viewers on the club's background and then onto our highs and lows through the ages. The last two DVDs concentrate more on the last 20years (Stopping the ten, Seville etc).
The best touch, and possibly the first I can recall ever seeing, is that various fans' voices were given a spot in the collection also, such as Brendan Sweeney (Celts for Change) and Gerry Dunbar (Not the View), which personally I think was a good touch and very well deserving too.
The main surprise is that the producers have been given greater leeway than is usually the case, allowing interviewees to even be a touch controversial, for example the DVD takes us through the "Celtic Takeover in the early 90s" in detail and allowed old board member Michael Kelly to have a little kick at his old opponents (still bitter it seems).
Any weaknesses? One problem is that some were unhappy at the lack of coverage of goals and match highlights in the collection, but that is being silly as the collection was never meant to be about goal videos galore which are more than aptly met by other other Celtic DVD's and on YouTube. Beyond that, well maybe it was so good we wanted it to be even longer, especially on the earlier history where 2 DVD's for the first hundred years and then 2 DVD's for the last 20 years is a bit of an imbalance. Possibly a future set of DVDs can be released to meet those interested on the earlier history in further depth.
Overall, a perfect buy, and after a record of generally poor quality DVD's (knocked up it seems by some guy reading "Dummy" guides) its a welcome relief to see Celtic release something of this quality.
Very highly recommended, and hopefully the success of this will lead to Celtic bringing out more DVDs of this high quality.
Product Details
- Production year 2008
- Running Time 400 mins
- DVD Region 2
- Release date 18/09/2008
- Number of discs 4
- Catalogue No. CEL020
- Barcode 5023328289082