This movie was very inspiring and fun to watch. Unlike Shine A Light, this shows the true nature of human beings. Shine A Light is full of plastic people! Clinton for example! Stones have sold out and could learn a lesson from watching these two guys!!!

Also, where are all the Metal acts that have made it and are touring now. Slash and Lars spoke about how they loved Anvil back in the day. Why has Anvil not been asked to open for them? METALLICA?

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Who's Driving Your Plane?
This movie was very inspiring and fun to watch. Unlike Shine A Light, this shows the true nature of human beings. Shine A Light is full of plastic people! Clinton for example! Stones have sold out and could learn a lesson from watching these two guys!!!

Also, where are all the Metal acts that have made it and are touring now. Slash and Lars spoke about how they loved Anvil back in the day. Why has Anvil not been asked to open for them? METALLICA?

can you Imagine if Bush was on stage with them. I would loose all respect.

I don't like politics in with my stones...

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tatters
There was a great review in the New Yorker magazine.

Here it is.

The Current Cinema
Rock Solid
“Anvil! The Story of Anvil.”
by Anthony Lane
April 20, 2009

The most stirring release of the year thus far is a documentary. No surprise in that, given the current state of feature films, or in the fact that “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” is a documentary about a heavy-metal band. But this film is about a failed heavy-metal band, which sounds about as purposeful as a vegan shark. Back in the nineteen-eighties, Anvil was, if not huge, on the verge of hugeness. It was never, according to the movie, one of the Big Four—a term that I always associated with the Paris peace conference of 1919, but which, on further inspection, turns out to refer to Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer. (Specialists might prefer to file them under thrash metal, that delicate subset of the genre, but “Anvil!” is wise enough to steer clear of such hairsplitting, not least because, in a world where most of the guitarists look like exploded spaniels, there is an awful lot of hair to split.) Still, Anvil had its adherents, and we find a swarm of them in a clip of the Super Rock Festival of 1984, in Japan, where the band’s lead singer, Steve Kudlow, can be seen onstage playing his guitar with a sex toy, thus raising the question of whether he takes his plectrum to bed.

Kudlow is seldom known as Steve. To his friends and admirers, for visible reasons, he is Lips. In 1973, in Toronto, he met a fellow-local named Robb Reiner, a drummer by vocation—and no relation to the Rob Reiner who directed “This Is Spinal Tap,” the great mock documentary about heavy metal, though both bands would relish the freak coincidence. The decision that Lips and Robb reached as teen-agers, to rock together, is one that they have stuck to for thirty-six years. That symbiosis has come to fuse the pair so unbreakably that, at some points in the documentary, you can scarcely tell them apart—never more so than when they bicker, which is half the time. “Why am I your fall guy, constantfuckingly?” a plaintive Reiner asks, amid the angry fallout of a recording session. “Because I love you,” Lips replies, quite without embarrassment or doubt. I have noticed something similar in the bond between Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, of the British group Status Quo, and we should celebrate the way in which pairs of aging rockers tend to wind up like lovely, crumbling old married couples, with each one finishing the other’s sentences and pining when he has to go away.

“Anvil!” gets going in the present day, with the band half-forgotten, and Lips on the skids. We watch him delivering prepared meals to schools in Scarborough, Ontario, driving along snowy roads and musing on shepherd’s pie and meat loaf. At one point, he wears a food worker’s hairnet, thereby morphing into a dead ringer for Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.” Reiner, meanwhile, has some sort of demolition job, which at least allows him to use a power drill—a short hop, surely, from the task of hammering out the beat in “Metal on Metal,” still the band’s signature song. Even here, though, the men’s ponderings have a sublime tone—a muted chord of resignation and expectancy that immediately puts you on their side. “After all’s said and done, I can say that all has been said and done,” Lips remarks, sounding like a bankrupt in Dickens or a derelict in Beckett. (The film’s director, Sacha Gervasi, went from being a roadie for Anvil, in the eighties—the musicians called him Teabag, because he’s English—to working on an archive of Samuel Beckett material, so this film may represent an unrepeatable chance to merge his interests.) Many such gems fall from the mouth of Lips; after everything on tour goes “drastically wrong,” he gently points out that “at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on.” How can you not love a man who thinks like that, dredging the television of consolation from the swimming pool of disaster?

In tune with this tiny hint of optimism, Gervasi uses his film to trace the recrudescence of Anvil. Progress is bumpy at best. Early on, we watch the band gather for Lips’s birthday, with the words “Happy @#$%& 50” prettily inscribed in red icing on the cake, and a couple of long-term fans, Cut Loose and Mad Dog, all too welcome to join in. Out of nowhere, a European tour is arranged, and Anvil finds itself pounding away in a half-empty bar in Munich, with one loyal customer seated on an easy chair, headbanging all by himself. Nothing could be sadder than that, although Lips comes close when he exclaims, as the light fades at a Swedish outdoor festival, “Well, here we are backstage, trying to talk to Ted Nugent.” With all respect, that’s not the highest of human ambitions, is it? Spirits are raised by the sight of a Romanian venue with a capacity of ten thousand, and by rumors that “the mayor of Transylvania” himself may attend—a charming touch, in the gore-friendly world of thrash. In the event, the audience totals a hundred and seventy-four. The tour is organized, more or less, by a diehard Anvilista named Tiziana, who is incapable of booking train tickets, although her follow-up phone calls have the authentic tang of rock chick (“ ‘A’ like ‘ass,’ ‘S’ like ‘Sodom’ ”), and she, too, salvages something at the last minute by unexpectedly marrying the lead guitarist, Ivan Hurd.

Back comes Anvil, to the small comforts of home, and to a few more snippets of information, carefully staggered by Gervasi, about what that home consists of. I was unshaken by the news that Lips has a mother named Toby, and Robb has a sister named Droid, but the sequence in which Lips’s sister Rhonda lends him more than twelve thousand dollars to cut a new album (“He’s my dear brother and I’ve always loved him”) yields the shock that you get only from unvarnished goodness. We are shown a photograph of the infant Reiner with his father, a survivor of Auschwitz, and if, like me, you have been shamefully ignorant of Jewish Canadian heavy metal and its family background, here is your chance to atone. No wonder that Lips stumbles so badly when Cut Loose, the fan from the birthday bash, finds him a job in telephone sales. “I’ve been trained my whole life to be polite,” Lips says, and he duly fails to close a single deal. No wonder, too, that, as he mails off a tape of new songs to a former producer, solemnly licking the stamp, you fear the worst.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2009-10-04 19:50 by drewmaster.

Bumped, for guitarbastard.

(quote) The scene where Lips gets a little physical with a club owner who refuses to pay him, and the scene in which Lips and Robb accuse each other of being willing to settle for mediocre takes when recording their thirteenth album (as if they had the ability to do anything OTHER than mediocre takes), and then appear to briefly break up and then get back together, certainly appear to have been staged. Scenes like that help to tell the story. (unquote)

- I dunno man, I'm not sure they could pull that off. Lips and these guys aren't actors. Hell, they're barely even musicians.

i finaly saw this incredible documentary in the cinema.
thats one of the best movies i've seen for quite a while and probably the best rock n' roll documentary of all times. it's not mainly funny how some people say, but it's so honest and touching. i have so much respect for those sweet guys!
go to see it, if you haven't yet!
ANVIL RRRRRRRRRULES!

Awful band, GREAT film

You can't help but root for them, but sadly there's a reason they never made it big. And its still not took off for em even after all the press/media interest this film has given them over the last year or so

They just arent very good. They werent when I were a mere pup in the early 80s going to metal gigs, and they werent when i saw em supporting AC/DC at Giants Stadium last summer



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-05-09 03:49 by andy js.

My favorite doc is Gimme Shelter, but I did enjoy the Anvil film a lot. Great to watch that and Spinal Tap back to back. I agree with andy, they were pretty awful, but you can't help but feel for those guys.

i dont think they are awfull...and its not spinal tap. it's a really touching story about friendship and dreams...

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andy js
Awful band, GREAT film

You can't help but root for them, but sadly there's a reason they never made it big. And its still not took off for em even after all the press/media interest this film has given them over the last year or so

They just arent very good. They werent when I were a mere pup in the early 80s going to metal gigs, and they werent when i saw em supporting AC/DC at Giants Stadium last summer

It's heavy metal. How can you tell whether it's good or not?

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Brue

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andy js
Awful band, GREAT film

You can't help but root for them, but sadly there's a reason they never made it big. And its still not took off for em even after all the press/media interest this film has given them over the last year or so

They just arent very good. They werent when I were a mere pup in the early 80s going to metal gigs, and they werent when i saw em supporting AC/DC at Giants Stadium last summer

It's heavy metal. How can you tell whether it's good or not?

I just laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair.
Great one, Brue!

I really wanted to like this, but it was just so damned boring.

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Brue

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andy js
Awful band, GREAT film

You can't help but root for them, but sadly there's a reason they never made it big. And its still not took off for em even after all the press/media interest this film has given them over the last year or so

They just arent very good. They werent when I were a mere pup in the early 80s going to metal gigs, and they werent when i saw em supporting AC/DC at Giants Stadium last summer

It's heavy metal. How can you tell whether it's good or not?

wow what an ignorant thing to say

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redsock
I really wanted to like this, but it was just so damned boring.

yeah, not so many sex scenes and collapsing buildings...
man, how can you call that movie boring?? then live is boring too....

Oh, now, now. I don't think ignorance is involved here, just a distaste for metal. I'm in that camp, I mean, I've always been a huge LZ fan, and I enjoy some very early AC/DC, but it mostly ends there-- the hair bands just baffled me for their apparent lack of talent and exaggerated image (so many of these bands in the 80's looked and sounded so similar)... but I know a lot of folks who just loved that stuff, and I have to respect that. Hey, if it sounds good, it is good, so listen away and enjoy. But for those of us who were NOT moved by that genre, what Brue says is totally true, and well, kinda funny.

Great Documentary.

Unlike most people commenting on the documentary here, I like Anvil, and have seen them a number of times before the documentary was released. Actually I was watching them at the Sweden Rock Festivial which is featured early on in the tour and have met rob and Lips.

Their early albums are certainly better than the last album 'This is 13' but on the whole an inspiring movie about the power of self belief and more importantly, Once a Rocker, always a rocker.

Wonder if Jagger would have kept plugging away in the dives in his 50's if he wasn't making the big bucks? probably would have gone and completing his economics degree and become an accountant.

Fair play to the band, If you don't like the music fair play, but you gotta respect their spirit.

There are bands that are a lot worse than Anvil : Mastodon for example...

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Tate
Oh, now, now. I don't think ignorance is involved here, just a distaste for metal. I'm in that camp, I mean, I've always been a huge LZ fan, and I enjoy some very early AC/DC, but it mostly ends there-- the hair bands just baffled me for their apparent lack of talent and exaggerated image (so many of these bands in the 80's looked and sounded so similar)... but I know a lot of folks who just loved that stuff, and I have to respect that. Hey, if it sounds good, it is good, so listen away and enjoy. But for those of us who were NOT moved by that genre, what Brue says is totally true, and well, kinda funny.

so you can't tell who has talent and who doesn't?

Well, keef, if I say they were 'talentless,' then I offend fans of this genre. Certainly all those guys had showmanship, and they knew how to shred/play power chords and the wild hammer-on solos, and they bashed their drums really loud, but to me, the musicianship is pretty lacking, while to others, they totally rocked. So I chose the word apparent-- It was apparent to me that these guys didn't have a load of talent, compared to most other groups that made it big. It was more about image: hairspray, ripped jeans/leather, toting around girls with massive, fake breasts, and partying/ drugs... than it was real musicianship. As it appeared to me.

I'm Canadian and reside not all that far, relatively, from where these guys came from, and I'd certainly heard of Anvil through the decades.. maybe that had something to do with it.. especially since I am not a heavy metal fan, per se, but I thought it was a very cool and entertaining film. If anything these guys are and always have been kinda goofy and that's what I liked about them in the film. They might not be the world's greatest musicians or singers (well, ok, they're clearly not) but at least they are sincere and wear their hearts right there on their sleeves, for better or worse, warts and all, for all to see, and even after all these years (30 I think) they still obviously love what they do. You don't have to be a heavy metal fan to find this film enjoyable.

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Tate
Well, keef, if I say they were 'talentless,' then I offend fans of this genre. Certainly all those guys had showmanship, and they knew how to shred/play power chords and the wild hammer-on solos, and they bashed their drums really loud, but to me, the musicianship is pretty lacking, while to others, they totally rocked. So I chose the word apparent-- It was apparent to me that these guys didn't have a load of talent, compared to most other groups that made it big. It was more about image: hairspray, ripped jeans/leather, toting around girls with massive, fake breasts, and partying/ drugs... than it was real musicianship. As it appeared to me.

i was talking about metal as a whole not just this band. they are bands in every genre with no talent

more than the music, the film is about people doing what they love to do.
the idea is to get invested in the characters, not like the music.

the film moved me, and i had been a fan before the film, so i continue to like most of their tunes.

As was I, referring to the genre as a whole.

You're right, Canadian, 100%. We've gotten a bit side-tracked.

thanks tate.
have an awesome day!

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Tate
As was I, referring to the genre as a whole.

yup here's a bunch of guys with no talent playing normal run of the mill noise








this dude can sing the phonebook and make it sound soulful:



same band from the first clip. the lead singer is now playing lead guitar, the bassist is singing lead, the lead guitar player is on drums and the drummer is on bass:



check out this drum solo:




i don't even feel like posting any king's x

look at the @#$%& footwork:

See? See?!! I went and offended you!! That's why I say it's all from MY perspective. All professional musicians have talent-- but it's relative. That drummer singing Yesterday while thumping away on his double kickpedal has talent, but not more than your standard well-trained professional drummer (I didn't like his voice much, but he did fine). He was showing off-- going back and forth from buzz roll to loud rolls, but what he was actually doing was standard metal stuff, fused together by that mechanical double kickpedal sound, which I just don't like. John Bonham did it all with one foot (single pedal), with great volume control. finesse, and brilliant musicality-- while his left foot kept time on the high-hat. A lot of metal drummers get big cheers from rolls and flying around the kit. It's fun, no doubt, but my appreciation and allegiance lies with musicians who are more about the music and less about the show. I honor and respect your appreciation of the music you love, though... that's what is important. If it sounds good, it is good.

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Tate
See? See?!! I went and offended you!! That's why I say it's all from MY perspective. All professional musicians have talent-- but it's relative. That drummer singing Yesterday while thumping away on his double kickpedal has talent, but not more than your standard well-trained professional drummer (I didn't like his voice much, but he did fine). He was showing off-- going back and forth from buzz roll to loud rolls, but what he was actually doing was standard metal stuff, fused together by that mechanical double kickpedal sound, which I just don't like. John Bonham did it all with one foot (single pedal), with great volume control. finesse, and brilliant musicality-- while his left foot kept time on the high-hat. A lot of metal drummers get big cheers from rolls and flying around the kit. It's fun, no doubt, but my appreciation and allegiance lies with musicians who are more about the music and less about the show. I honor and respect your appreciation of the music you love, though... that's what is important. If it sounds good, it is good.

well plus billy sheehan and paul gilbert were in mr big and i hope to god you know who at least 1 of those guys are. i am a drummer i i can tell you bonham never played a pattern as complex as whats in that video with just 1 foot. mike mangini flies around the kit faster than anyone i've ever seen but he is also a teacher at berklee school of the performing arts so yes he knows way more than what he shows here in this clip: