Ronnie Wood documentary "Somebody Up There Likes Me" at BFI London Filmfestival

Mike Figgis’ enthralling documentary about the turbulent life and career of Ronnie Wood, legendary rock guitarist and long-time member of The Rolling Stones.

Saturday 12 October 2019 21:00
BFI Southbank, NFT1
On sale12-09-2019 10:00 am

Sunday 13 October 2019 11:30
ODEON Luxe Leicester Square
On sale12-09-2019 10:00 am

[whatson.bfi.org.uk]





DJ NIGHT: IT’S ONLY ROCK & ROLL (BUT I LIKE IT)
Sat 12 Oct 21:00-01:00
Benugo Bar & Kitchen, BFI Southbank
Free

Inspired by the Ronnie Wood chronicling documentary Somebody up There Likes Me, Festival favourites Sadie Lee and Jonathan Kemp celebrate the best of classic rock. Expect to hear The Rolling Stones, The Faces, Bowie, The Kinks and more.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2019-11-06 14:23 by bv.

Is anybody on here going to see this documentary on one of these screenings?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-04 12:14 by TheBlackRose.

How much is it to get in?

Quote
Harlem Shuffler
How much is it to get in?

£13 à £14

This looks good.. hope to be able to catch it at some point.

On opening night there looks to be an accompanying after party of sorts
Sat 12 Oct 21:00-01:00
Benugo Bar & Kitchen, BFI Southbank
Free
DJ NIGHT: IT’S ONLY ROCK & ROLL (BUT I LIKE IT)

Inspired by the Ronnie Wood chronicling documentary Somebody up There Likes Me, Festival favourites Sadie Lee and Jonathan Kemp celebrate the best of classic rock. Expect to hear The Rolling Stones, The Faces, Bowie, The Kinks and more.

[www.uncut.co.uk]

[iorr.org]


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

Looks great.
But doesn't Figgis have it backwards? His quote about Ron Wood's "eclectic musical tastes" is IMO not so. The great story about Ron Wood is that his life has always played out like a movie. It is one of the great rockn roll tales. He never strayed from the Blues/Rockn Roll path. He lived out every rockn roll clichee with flair and style; and humor. He has aged with grace, and developed his hobby of painting into a real profession. I mean he's been a winner all the way.

Look forward to watching it one day



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2019-09-05 16:27 by Meise.

These members of the filmmaking team are expected to attend the festival:

Louis Figgis, producer; Peter Worsley, producer;

Ronnie Wood, special guest.

Wonder if Ronnie's documentary will get a better distribution deal than Bill Wyman's.....which seems to be struggling at the moment.

Just seen this tonight an interesting film but in my opinion it could have been a little longer both Ronnie and Mick were in attendance amongst other well known faces.

Nate

Quote
Nate
Just seen this tonight an interesting film but in my opinion it could have been a little longer both Ronnie and Mick were in attendance amongst other well known faces.

Nate

Nice to hear Mick made the premier!!

Looking forward to catching this when able

When will it be released for the general public? (Theaters or home)

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

!!!!!!!!!

Don Was in attendance too, also Ben and Tom Waters.

Satisfied since 1976

Really enjoyed the film. Mick slipped in when the lights went down and sat down with Ronnie just in front of us. His hair was lovely!! He and Ronnie were giggling like a couple of kids at times. Ronnie made a little speech at the start but they disappeared pretty quickly at the end

I'd prefer Mick showing up at one of Ronnie's upcoming show (right on stage, of course)

'Somebody Up There Likes Me': Film Review | London 2019

10/12/2019 by Stephen Dalton


Courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment

THE BOTTOM LINE
Plenty of substances, not much substance.


Oscar-winning director Mike Figgis shines a spotlight on Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, with backing vocals by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart and more.

A Rolling Stone gathers very little moss in Somebody Up There Likes Me, a slender documentary portrait of Ronnie Wood from Oscar-winning director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) which condenses the veteran rocker's half-century career into a brisk 71 minutes. Still a gloriously photogenic interview subject at 72, with his cadaverously craggy features and perennially jet-black plume of crow-feather hair, Wood muses here on his long service with the Stones, his sideline passion as a painter, his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, and more.

World premiering at the London Film Festival ahead of a planned commercial release next year, Somebody Up There Likes Me should prove an easy sell to undemanding Stones fans and music-friendly fest programmers. But for serious rock scholars and fans of quality documentaries in general, this lightweight vanity project will feel disappointingly thin and perfunctory.

Wood's life story reads like social history of post-war Britain. Born in 1947, the son of working-class “water gypsies” on the western fringes of London, he followed the long and winding road to rock superstardom via art college and a youthful infatuation with American R&B. By his early twenties he was sharing a stage with Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck and others. A chain-smoking, heavy-drinking party animal for over 50 years, he finally paid the price for his vices. Over the past two decades he has checked into rehab at least six times, mainly for alcohol addiction.

Figgis skips through all this juicy material in an oddly haphazard manner, vague on chronology and light on detail. Wood's three marriages and six children barely merit a mention, barring a brief late appearance by his current wife Sally. His surgery for lung cancer in 2017, which inspired the film's title, is dispensed with in a 30-second aside. His side career as a visual artist serves as a framing device between interview sections, but his paintings only figure fleetingly in the film.

Besides interviewing Wood at length, Figgis also assembles an impressively stellar guest list of friends and collaborators including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Rod Stewart, singer Imelda May and artist Damien Hirst. Alas, most of these skillfully evasive media veterans offer only banal insights into the indestructible rocker's psyche. “He's very like me,” Richards cackles, “great immune system.” Figgis also recycles archive video of his own informal conversations with Led Zeppelin's notoriously thuggish manager Peter Grant and former Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren, both long dead, though this sequence feels like a superfluous detour only tangentially related to Wood.

Still sparky and youthful at 72, Wood himself comes across as an affable and cheery soul, but not much given to revealing self-examination. At one point he summarizes his attitude to life with the deliciously Spinal Tap-like aphorism: “if you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Figgis shoots Somebody Up There Likes Me in conventional rock-doc style, with scarcely a hint of his signature formal experimentalism besides a brief split-screen sequence and an on-screen graphic depicting guitar chord tabs. The musical interludes include specially shot present-day performances alongside excellent archive footage drawn from Wood's long multi-band career. These vintage clips are the film's strongest selling point, although there is curiously little Stones material here. Wood's extra-curricular collaborations with legends like Bob Dylan, Prince, David Bowie and Aretha Franklin are also absent. Yet more baffling omissions from a documentary that could have been a rich widescreen canvas, but ends up feeling like a watercolor sketch.

[www.hollywoodreporter.com]

Quote
Fishstain
Ronnie made a little speech at the start but they disappeared pretty quickly at the end

Mick stayed at the afterparty until about 11.30 and Ronnie until almost the end towards 1am.

Ronnie has led a full, eventful and varied life (so far) and 71 minutes seems a bit on the mean side to me. Hope all who attended enjoyed. I'm sure it will end up on BBC 4 at some point.

Quote
CJFP
When will it be released for the general public? (Theaters or home)

It isn’t going to attract a huge audience so it’s likely that it will go to DVD and download fairly soon, perhaps in time for the Christmas market.

Weren’t the BBC going to show a documentary about Ronnie in the near future? Perhaps it will be this film.

Quote
mattleeuk

Quote
Fishstain
Ronnie made a little speech at the start but they disappeared pretty quickly at the end

Mick stayed at the afterparty until about 11.30 and Ronnie until almost the end towards 1am.

And at 2 AM (ish) he excitedly posted a video showing his "latest creation"
The man is amazing.
[twitter.com]

Translated from amazon.de:
Mad Lad is the first album in a trilogy that Ronnie Wood and his band will release in the coming years. Each one of them is a tribute to his musical role models. He chose Chuck Berry for the first album because he was not only a lifelong fan and toured with him, but also to commemorate his sad death over two years ago.

The album will be released on the occasion of the tribute of Ronnie Woods at the premiere of Somebody Up There Likes Me at the London Film Festival on 12.10.19. The detailed documentation by director Mike Figgis sheds light on Ronnie's life both in the Rolling Stones and in the art studio. The film will be released in spring 2020.

I read his book and I was fascinated!
I hope to see this movie soon ... Ronnie was the first Stones I saw live playing. It was 1985 and I had recently become a Stones fan but I still didn't know all the members well, but it was the early 80s and I missed the big tour, at the time it seemed that the Stones would not be together again.
In 86 (if I remember correctly) I went to a blues festival in Pistoia Italy, Bo Diddley materializes on the stage and after a while introduces Ronnie Wood! It was fantastic!

Quote
riccardo99
Translated from amazon.de:
Mad Lad is the first album in a trilogy that Ronnie Wood and his band will release in the coming years. Each one of them is a tribute to his musical role models. He chose Chuck Berry for the first album because he was not only a lifelong fan and toured with him, but also to commemorate his sad death over two years ago.

The album will be released on the occasion of the tribute of Ronnie Woods at the premiere of Somebody Up There Likes Me at the London Film Festival on 12.10.19. The detailed documentation by director Mike Figgis sheds light on Ronnie's life both in the Rolling Stones and in the art studio. The film will be released in spring 2020.

I wonder who the next one will be! Didn't know this until now!

would be great the tribute to jimmy reed .....

Ronnie and Mick T did a few
Jimmy Reed tribute shows back in 2013 … but hey ..... do it again



ROCKMAN