Brian Wilson's Smile has quickly become one of my favorite albums of all time. I find it so beautiful that it has even brought tears to my eyes on most listens. The excellent DVD includes a complete concert performance of this complex, symphonic album without ever breaking the flow. The Chicago Reader ran a story on this impressive feat:

"With [Smile] I storyboarded every measure," Anderson says. "It was so dense and so complex the only way I could be sure I covered everything was to break it down that way. I got the album and put on headphones for about a week and wrote down everything and kinda mapped the cameras so they wouldn't get in each other's way."

The ten-camera shoot, on a Burbank soundstage in September with an invited audience of 500, was Anderson's first experience filming a concert in high-definition video, and the visuals are luminous, capturing Wilson and his 18-piece band in an inspired performance. The DVD was released late last month on Rhino as part of a double-disc set with Leaf's film, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile.