Buy David Bowie: The Stars (Are Out Tonight)
Okay, so I’m not even sure this belongs here; see, I bought the deluxe edition of The Next Day, David Bowie’s 2013 album, and it came with a DVD that had four music videos on it. These music videos are varied in style and such; some of them, like this one, definitely has pretensions to actually being a “short film.” But anyway, three of the music videos have listings on IMDB, and the fourth one didn’t, so I guess I’ll talk about the three that did? Anyway, this is probably the most obviously “short-filmy.” David Bowie and Tilda Swinton play a sort of average English couple, but they’re also being stalked by a couple of weird stars who have moved in next door. It’s kind of a statement, I think, about how celebrities crave normalcy as much as normal people crave celebrity or something. Anyway, there’s some dialogue, not much and the movie plays for a bit before the song takes over. Even in this kind of strange mixture of music video/short film, Swinton is really good as the situation starts to affect her and she kind of goes nuts. Also, Norwegian model Iselin Steiro plays one of the celebrities and suit and hair and even his body movements and mannerisms are all very much intended to evoke a young Bowie and boy do they? This guy looks exactly like a circa early seventies Bowie. Anyway, well, I recommend The Next Day Extra because the album is great and the bonus CD is great, but this video is just . . . okay. Average. 2 stars.
tl;dr – Tilda Swinton in a David Bowie music video and she’s good, but the video isn’t anything to seek out on the whole. 2 stars.