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List Price: $39.98 | | Label: Sony
Salesrank: 196540
Released: December 11, 2007 |
| Our Price: $15.68 |
| Used Price: $15.67 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
Special limited edition gift box containing the deluxe CD/DVD and a bottle of Celine's Enchanting perfume.
Taking Chances (CD/DVD/Perfume) Reviews:
wow 
2008-07-19 - a must have for every fan... it's brilliant, not only the songs which everybody probably knows, but the entire package and the things in it!
a must have
2008-03-26 - that's why i love amazon you have everything i want.
it arrived as i expected
Makes a great gift!
2008-01-07 - I bought this DVD package for my cousin, and I am sure that she will absolutely love it!
A total makeover for the greatest American Idol of all times...?! 
2007-12-11 - Celine Dion has returned to the recording studio and this is her first English studio album in over four years.
It is supposed to re-launch her career and to mark her re-birth and the beginning of a new era : a total makeover in music and in looks, like a calculated attempt to capture new listeners.
That is the meaning of the title, I assume, one simple, quick look at the CD's scary front cover is enough to understand what she is up to.
"Taking Chances" sees Dion teaming up with a host of internationally renowned songwriters and top, most expensive producers that have produced some of the biggest pop hits in the last five, ten years to produce yet another album of her signature over-the-top ballads.
Amongst the list of luminaries who twiddle a knob, knock out a lyric or strum a guitar for her are the all-conquering Timbaland, king of R'n'B balladry R Kelly, ex-Evanescence axe wielder Ben Moody, Christina Aguilera and Pink co-writer Linda Perry... and the always entertaining Dave Stewart, whose influence stretches cheekily so far that there's even a lyrical snip of The Eurythmics' "Here Comes The Rain Again" woven into the title track The Ultimate Collection.
The latest artist to enjoy an overnight makeover is Celine Dion.
Last month she was the standard bearer for pop naffness -the only big-name bellower you could rely on to produce music that was unfailingly cheesy, bombastic and insincere, the gold standard of middle-of-the-road rubbishness.
But now Dion is officially ...groovy.
Forget for a while her big hair and her revealing black, corporate clothes.
The eternal mystery of who exactly buys Celine Dion records - 175m and counting - may have been solved. And the answer could surprise you. It turns out that some of the most credible names in music are huge fans of the earnest Canadian crooner. Tim "Timbaland" Mosley - producer for Justin Timberlake and Missy Elliot - has been working on her new album, along with Ne-Yo, songwriter for Beyoncé and Britney...
Returning from her self-imposed recording exile in Las Vegas, and after such a long time she has disappeared from the pop charts, she wastes no time in taking on the pretender divas who have sprung up in her absence, yodelling like Shakira on "Eyes On Me" and indulging in some robust caterwauling in the vein of Pink and Kelly Clarkson on the title track, written by Dave Stewart .
The album begins in surprisingly restrained fashion, with Dion crooning softly over a near-acoustic musical backdrop, but the soft rock bombast kicks in soon enough.
She doesn't have the sensitive, raw touch to pull off her cover of "Heart's Alone" and to match the emotional and unparalleled version by Ann Wilson but she enters into the gutsy rhythm'n'blues feel of "That's Just the Woman in Me".
Elsewhere, Dion sticks to her bombastic power-ballad comfort zone, warbling away in the upper echelons of her range, smashing and crashing with her superpowerful pipes -- unnecessarily fully unleashed -- all the small feelings and emotions and nuances out of her songs, and riding those key changes with that air of barely suppressed insanity and tasteless, hystrionic record-setting vocalism which she and Mariah Carey have made all their own.
"Taking Chances" doesn't quite do what the title suggests, it's pretty predictable, overpolished and overdone (the perfume sample on this deluxe collector's edition is simply soooooo cheesy and tasteless).
One thing you can say for the Canadian balladeer is that you can always tell it's her. Mainly because of that cold, hard gargling noise she emits at the end of notes, making her sound like she's trying to swallow an ice cube. In her latest series of unconvincing over-emotings, the woman who gave us the theme song to "Titanic" Titanic (Three-Disc Special Collector's Edition) again proves the singing equivalent of a capsized iceberg: 90 per cent on the surface, 10 per cent beneath it.
My overall impression of this CD is that she is trying , but not succeding.
Considering Dion's history of calculated, crassly commercial music, it's tough to imagine her sound would change one iota.
The fragrance sample attached drags the rating very down.
Best track : "Taking chances".
