Nice article. Surprised they didnt mention the brilliant use of "Jumpin Jack Flash" in 'Mean Streets' though... or the piano and guitar coda of 'Layla' in 'Goodfellas' when they start finding all the dumped bodies....Christ, theres so many...

(and I've never been able to think of that Tiffany bubblegum hit "I Think We're Alone Now" after the creepy way Max Cady (DeNiro) sings a line from it to Juliette Lewis in 'Cape Fear'....)

I am very curious about Champagne & Reefer, with Buddy Guy. That must be an absolute highlight!

in my view, Scorsese's specialty leans more toward pre- or non-rock forms--film & film history and Italian-American culture in New York City in the 20th century. His use of rock songs in his films is often powerful--and is a trick he leans on all the time, as he noted in Shine a Light publicity--but I think his pov is off in The Last Waltz and the Dylan film. From viewers' reports, it actually sounds like the Stones movie may be his most successful music project, though my opinion of Last Waltz and NDH is a minority one.

Scorsese is "a" great director, because somehow he communicates an inimitable energy in all his films--it has been suggested that this is due more to his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, than to his direction--but I think this usually results in the films being raw in some key way and so falling short of more meticulous or at least less frenetic masters of the form. And I think Scorsese would probably agree; passion for film history is his best trait, and anyone who subscribes to the "best director ever" slogan should see some of the documentaries he's made about other films and directors. His recent work has been way off, in my view: Gangs of New York had an embarrassing story, and The Departed suffered from Scorsese's infatuation with vibrant male personae (Robbie Robertson, Liam Clancy... Mick Jagger?), in the form of Jack Nicholson. The Aviator was pointless, or maybe suffered from the lack of an actual vibrant male persona, and his other historical films like Age of Innocence are misfires.

so I think at some level Scorsese doesn't "get" rock and roll, and the news that he's moving on to a Bob Marley documentary makes me cringe. Nevertheless the raw energy he always brings promises to make Shine a Light a really thrilling movie--I'm looking forward to seeing it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-02-15 02:00 by cc.

<<< Nevertheless the raw energy he always brings promises to make Shine a Light a really thrilling movie - I'm looking forward to seeing it! >>>

And so you should be, because outside of the issues (minor criticisms levelled at the film by those folk that have seen it - myself included) that feature in past pages on this thread, the bottom line is that it will tick 95 percent of boxes for 95 percent of people ... hardore fans and casual observers alike. DO indeed look forwerd to seeing it, because unless you wish to delve way way way too deep for your own (and anyone else's) good ... you will take it for what it is - and I virtually guarantee, you'll like it a great deal.

>> he communicates an inimitable energy <<

yeah, that sounds right! thanks cc

Havent all stones movies kind of focused on MICK to be honest? I think there is like one shot each of Charlie and MICK T in Ladies and Gentlemen, and LSTNT is really MICK, MICK, MICK.... and really even GIMME SHELTER(they just briefly show keith, Taylor, Watts and Wyman during Satisfaction, and HTW. Do you even see Keith at all for JJF at the beginning. If you do, it's brief for sure.

the sound is/was Keith, the performance has always highlighted Mick. The 2 components are what drives the Rolling Stones. What's the beef?

I am looking forward to this film a great deal, and was just pointing out that the focus has always been on Mick so I really dont see people getting their balls in an uproar over this fact. I guarantee you probably see more of the individual band members in this one than GS and Ladies and Gentlemen.

Just look at Happy from L&G. We get a good view of Mick shaking his rear, and Keith only is visual when Mick joins him at the microphone for the chorus. But that might also have something to do with the fact that the Happy we're seeing is not the Happy we're hearing in that much appraised movie.

I like the notion of Scorsese and "vibrant" male personae. I'll go and think some more about this. Maybe it's time to pick up some earlier movies from his hands and watch them again to see any parallels. Meanwhile I pray I am not getting to obsessed with theoretical matters and will enjoy the boys to the full when I will be watching Shine a light for the first time.

look forward to the film by all means - it's very lively and exciting and you'll love it to pieces.
meanwhile, if you want the discussion to move away from the criticisms people have expressed,
then maybe one tactic might be: don't keep bringing them up.

>> and was just pointing out that the focus has always been on Mick so <<

yeah, that's already been pointed out a few times: Scorsese gives the subject pretty Standard Treatment in that sense.
for people who like that Standard Treatment, i'm sure it's fabulous.
the poster for the film represents the "apportioning of attention" fairly well.

does anyone who was at the Beacon remember if Buddy Guy's set was filmed?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-02-16 01:09 by with sssoul.

From now on I seal my lips until I finally get to see the movie. Oh, the damned temptation to fill my days of anticipation with speculation.... Never mind.

Indeed I am always disapointed when I see a movie about the stones (from a performance point of view).

First I think the quality of their music (on their movie) is very different from what it is usually performed on stage. I don't think it is better or not.. just different. I have seen them many times : sometimes they are incredible... the best rock roll band for sure and very far from the others.. sometimes (rarely but it happens) they are very bad.. and sometimes between the two.

So when you see them one of their best night.. it means you are lucky, you understand these guys are very the best (they can be the best).

When they make a movie, I think they try to hide their particularities, they tend to reach the standard rock roll bands (as much as they can , since they are not standard). So, as a fan, I have the feeling to see something more particular, less rock n roll (but certainly much more easier to be appreciated by a non fan)... and less natural. A good bootleg sounds better..

And I don't like overdubs (I have seen an extract of Biggest Bang DVD, sometimes the sound was not synchronized with Mick's mouth... is anyone agree with me or was it my extract which was of poor quality... in addition the crowd doesn't look like the real one.. too much extra people (handsome girls and men) which are not fans.. they are not looking happy, singing, and acting like the Fos section used to - it's my favorite place, Keith's side).

Secondly, I think that this movies are too much concentrated on Mick. When you see them live, you have the choice to follow the one you want.. that's very important. You make your own movie...

But I think I will go to see Sorcese's movie... and make my own idea.

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with sssoul
okay so let me try my old routine of asking for lessons in how to appreciate things better -
i do have a jaundiced eye when it come to cinema so ... do any of you Major Scorsese Fans feel like outlining
what sorts of greatness you expect his direction to bring to a Stones concert film?
(go easy, please! because so far Kent's observations are - sorry! - having like the opposite effect.)

I try sssoul
i see some qualities in Scorsese style that could fit very well to make a great stones "concert movie"
1) Of course his love of the band and the well known massive use of their music in his movies. if you have seen the departed... well i was "moved" by the way he used gimme shelter (incidentally in this great scene the song is interrupted suddenly to some dialogue and different piece of soundtrack, and then suddenly is back again... just give a sense of the way he works, sometimes weirdly)
2) His love of form. He is a formalist. The pack of great people he has recruited to film a rock concert tells a lot. And the stress to have the setlist in sdvance tells the need to control everything. His greatnness, imo, is that at the end usually the outcome is far from icy, empty and glossy form as happens with other pefectionist artists (Greenaway comes to my mind and others). He always takes care of what is in front of the camera that happens to be the whole thing character AND actor, fictional reality AND film set. He works on the duality of the image. I think what someone calls "energy" comes from there. So here he has a piece of history of music, live. Rolling Stones produce a kind of paradox for him (maybe everyone?) i think: time that passes...but... A kind of persistent present that has the depth of 40 years playing.
3) He loves fiction. That is connected to point 2 in the sense that he makes documentaries from the standpoint of a fiction lover, a disciple of Fellini... This paradox also is part of his great art and very promising in my view
4) He made the great move of refusing to film Rio and bring the Stones to the Beacon. In that move he showed how much he understands, imho, where the greatness of this band remains nowadays

>> I don't like overdubs <<

there were apparently no overdubs at all in Shine a Light - but if we're talking about synchronizing:
in one particular archival snippet, there's an absolutely masterful feat of synchronizing.
bravissimo, to whoever did it!

and maumau, thanks for that Appreciation Lesson - i'll ponder what you've written
and will be interested in your impressions when you've seen the film.

meanwhile, finetuning a previous question: David Tedeschi is the editor of Shine a Light.
Thelma Schoonmaker is the full name of the editor cc was referring to as the one Scorsese's often worked with.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-02-14 13:31 by with sssoul.

based on the trailer, and what I have read this movie is going to kick some serious ass. Bring it on.

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Bashlets
I am looking forward to this film a great deal, and was just pointing out that the focus has always been on Mick so I really dont see people getting their balls in an uproar over this fact. I guarantee you probably see more of the individual band members in this one than GS and Ladies and Gentlemen.

Probably true, although I think its worth mentioning that over the last couple of decades the Stones have transformed the visual and performing aspect of their live show to the extent where its now less about Mick than it used to be (part of which was necessary because of the size of the venues they play which require more 'projection' on the part of other band members). Woody is more of a 'performer' than Taylor ever was (the arguments about their respective playing ability is irrelevant in this case) and Keith is also a lot less 'reserved' on stage in the last couple of decades than he was in the 70's.

does anyone know if I can download it somewhere

What - you mean a film that hasnt even been released yet??

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zeppelin
does anyone know if I can download it somewhere

that's very naughty.

My city has an Imax theater. How lucky am I?

Took the kiddies to a movie about Mummies last weekend and saw the promo clip for Shine A Light and now the whole family wants to see the Stones.

They were never interested in going to a concert but now they want to see the movie.

You take what you can get.

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Lord Sinclair
You take what you can get.

Aaaah, but you can't always get...... Ah feck it!!!!

JumpingKentFlash



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-02-14 16:41 by JumpingKentFlash.

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with sssoul
Thelma Schoonmaker is the full name of the editor cc was referring to as the one Scorsese's often worked with.

thanks, with sssoul, I meant to look that up. I've edited my post for post-erity. Perhaps I should find somewhere specific that makes the case for her, I left that vague... I've read it in a few different places.

with sssoul, thanks for the very perceptive remarks about Scorsese's talents re the band and film.

er ... i think you must mean cc and maumau, angee - i didn't make any remarks about his talents -
i'm not well versed enough in the language of film-making
(but free popcorn for the first person who recognizes that obscure Stones reference!)

true, tres sorry, with sssoul. you asked the question about it, sorry.

thanks, cc and maumau. cc, I guess i don't usually see much of a problem with scorsese's fascination with larger than life or charismatic male characters/actors/people. he's italian, after all. :-) in the departed every male character was fleshed out by the actor, producting a film filled with excellent performances...i do think the nicholdson character was a little over the top at times, but without going into detail here, many of the other actors gave the best or near-top performances of their career. that film would show the director can indeed focus on more than one man at a time, at least in their scenes together. maybe marty should have interviewed a few fans or read a few books or ... fan boards to learn more about the other members of the band, especially Keith. He seems to work more viscerally as expressed above.

Here's a good article from The Times:


Rolling Stones: Shine a Light
In the great new Martin Scorsese documentary Shine a Light, you'll see The Stones up close and personal

Bryan Appleyard
Watch the Shine a Light trailer

Martin Scorsese has said of Shine a Light, his new film about the Rolling Stones: “There’s no more answering of the questions. The questions are always going to be the same, so what’s the answer? The answer is perform, and we’re going to show you the performance.”

As I came out of a screening of the film, a couple of young film hacks were whining that it didn’t “tell us what they’re doing now”. And one review of the Berlin film festival screening moaned that it was “simply another in a long line of concert films”, describing its documentary content as “peripheral and sporadic”.

Film hangers-on being slightly more stupid than the rest of us, you will probably be hearing a lot of this kind of stuff. Don’t listen. Shine a Light will blow you away, as it did me.

Related Links
Shine a Light
Rolling Stones
Bill Wyman rolls on
It consists primarily of the Stones performing over two nights at the Beacon theatre, New York. They have guests – Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera, Jack White – but really, this is all about the four surviving (le mot juste) members of the band.

The show material is set up by black-and-white footage of a nerve-racked Scorsese and an aristocratically remote Mick Jagger discussing the set, and lots of vague hanging around. Weirdly, the Clinton clan appear at one point. “The Rolling Stones are waiting for YOU!” Hillary says disbelievingly to Bill. Then the performance footage is interrupted by clips of old interviews with the band. These circle round the theme of passing time. They enhance the sense of celebration and wonder. Against all the odds, against all the ephemerality of youth, against the self-inflicted punishment of the rock life, against Altamont and the death of Brian Jones, the Stones are still rolling. The questions have all been asked; the only answer left is to perform. This is what the Stones do, and this is what Scorsese, supremely, does. “The music stays. And the performance stays. This is something that I found inspiring. So I decided not to interview anybody.”

Scorsese has said he looked for a story for the film, but didn’t find one. In fact, he did. The performances themselves become a story, with extraordinarily vivid characters and songs as chapters. Never has Ron Wood been so Ron, Charlie Watts so Charlie, Mick Jagger so Mick and Keith Richards so, well, Keef. Buddy Guy produces the most moving moment in the film when, after an exquisite solo, Richards simply hands him his guitar. And I just didn’t know Aguilera could be this good. Scorsese hired the best cameramen in the business to shoot the performance, and it shows.

Yet, although the film says so much about the Stones, it says even more about Scorsese. This is, in some very fundamental sense, an autobiography. “When I was growing up,” he has said, “in my neighbourhood, there was music everywhere. In the summer, especially, you could hear the record-players and jukeboxes. They were always outside on the street. One was playing swing and another had ballads. Then somewhere else, say, on the second floor, there was opera. It was like a series of mini-concerts.”

He says the Stones in particular “fuelled” films such as Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. The music made him imagine scenes in movies. We all know about this. People now routinely talk about the “soundtrack of their life”. The car stereo and the iPod give us music everywhere, enhancing, layering and dramatising reality. Scorsese showed us how this works.

He is an operatic director. The Coen brothers, in No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson, in There Will Be Blood, and many other contemporary directors have aspired to a pure, stripped-down form of storytelling. Scenes stand alone without any strong sense of directorial manipulation. But Scorsese cannot let anything stand alone. He loads every shot with expressive devices: who can forget Robert De Niro tumbling through flames to the sound of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the opening sequence of Casino? Or he produces virtuoso, look-at-me camera effects, such as the interminable shot in Goodfellas when Ray Liotta takes Lorraine Bracco into a nightclub, and our own amazement at the shot matches her amazement at the street power of her new boyfriend.

The soundtrack has always been an essential aspect of this manic desire to wring the maximum effect out of every scene. As Scorsese has made clear, the record-players and jukeboxes of his childhood accustomed him, as they did all of us, to the idea that life itself had a soundtrack. Whereas in prerock films music was a self-conscious add-on, in postrock films, thanks largely to Scorsese, it became the natural accompaniment to the action. Mean Streets (1973), the movie that first established Scorsese as a modern master, is simply awash with pop and rock. No fewer than 23 songs – two by the Stones – are listed in the credits. Raging Bull (1980) has 29, Goodfellas (1990) 43, including the Stones’ Gimme Shelter, a track Scorsese can’t seem to live without. It appears most recently in The Departed (2006). These figures aren’t so amazing these days, but that’s because of Scorsese. He is also responsible, I believe, for the pervasive use of pop and rock tracks in advertising.

The point is not just that he used music, but that he did it so well. In the 1930s, in films such as Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein and Prokofiev laid down the rules for music and movies. For example, they showed – and Eisenstein wrote about – how a single chord could echo the composition of a shot. Scorsese is not that cerebral – he’s too much of a performer – but he is just as great an artist. He doesn’t just chuck in any old tracks: he matches music to scene with impeccable taste. There is no more Scorsesean effect than the hard-rock track, one to which we might imagine ourselves bopping happily, laid over sequences of appalling violence. And, at such moments, there is no more dazzling expression of the discontinuities of modern life.

Meanwhile, Scorsese has punctuated his career with filming, not just using, the music. This part began when he was second unit director on Woodstock (1970), the rock-doc that, for baby-boomers, defined the genre. In The Last Waltz (1978), he filmed the Band’s farewell concert. He was blessed with an unparalleled lineup of stars, from Dylan to Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris. But he didn’t just point and shoot. Through colour, editing and camerawork, he captured the epic sadness of the occasion. It was a farewell to rock innocence. But he also made Michael Jackson’s Bad video, a brilliant gangster/horror short, and, in 2005, No Direction Home, a documentary about Bob Dylan that Scorsese managed to turn into a masterpiece without actually meeting the singer. He is now planning films on the lives of George Harrison and Bob Marley.

There is an obvious theme here: Wordsworthian emotion recollected in tranquillity. A filmed concert is not the thing itself, it is a record of emotional intensity. By rejecting interviews and an excess of documentary content, Scorsese has made the act of recording the whole point of Shine a Light. But, though both films seem to look back, he makes an important distinction between The Last Waltz and this movie. “It’s a very different thing. The Last Waltz was a kind of elegy, looking back... It was more to do with a kind of a... not resignation, but an acceptance of time passing. In Shine a Light, in my mind, the Stones are still immediate. They still are as young [as they were in] the 1960s. They still are as young as the way they appeared in the 1970s. In my mind, Shine a Light is something that’s still of the present time, and is defiant.”

This is the thought of an older man – Scorsese is now 65. (There’s a very funny old-guy moment in the film when some lights come on with a blinding flash and a crashing sound, and he remarks that it has cleared his sinuses.) Where once he might have been content to live with rock and pop as ephemera, he now wants to assert their timelessness and significance. “In my mind,” he says, “I did this film 40 years ago.” But he had actually to make it – to get it out of his mind – to preserve those 40 years.

This is, perhaps, an obvious baby-boomer impulse, the desire to preserve the lives of the postwar generation. “This might,” he says, “give some sense of what it’s like as a working band on stage, for generations to come, for them to see this and appreciate who the band are.” As in the late 1960s, there is a need to insist, through film, that this is not just cheap music. Jean-Luc Godard’s Stones film, Sympathy for the Devil (1968) – which Scorsese regards as a masterpiece – is, in its way, a precursor to Shine a Light. That film also sees the sweaty practice of rock as of lasting significance.

The superior rock doc is a widespread phenomenon at the moment. At Berlin this year, audiences saw Neil Young’s rock doc CSNY Déjà Vu, about the 2006 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Freedom of Speech tour, protesting against the Iraq war. But the desire to preserve the rock experience on film goes further than that. On the straight performance front, Damon Albarn has brought his cartoon band to life with Gorillaz: Live in Manchester. And there’s Alvi and Moretti’s straight documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, about Iraq’s only heavy-metal band, Acrassicauda.

As so often with Scorsese, Shine a Light is a technical tour de force, a visceral hit and a film that expands in the imagination. Precisely because of the sheer quality of the filming, one sees Wood, Watts, Jagger and, preeminently, Richards for what they are: extraordinary, exotic, extravagant creatures, adepts of a strange ritual in which we have all, at one time or another, been participants. But it is also an artist’s autobiography, a tale told through feeling rather than event. In the midst of Scorsese’s mean streets, boxing rings, casinos and shoot-outs, there has always been music, there has always been the Stones. That’s the way it was. There’s no more answering of the questions.

Shine a Light opens on April 11. The Rolling Stones will be in London’s Leicester Square on April 2, as Shine a Light premieres simultaneously there and at 100 cinemas across the country via live satellite. Cinemagoers nationwide will experience a Rolling Stones concert as never before – as the fifth member of the band, from the front row and from behind the scenes. For details, visit www.shinealightmovie.co.uk. Tickets are on sale from March 7 www.bryanappleyard.com

JumpingKentFlash

Great read, thanks for posting

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paulywaul
Great read, thanks for posting

You're most welcome.

JumpingKentFlash

Thanks JumpingKentFlash....good read



ROCKMAN

Quote
Rockman
Thanks JumpingKentFlash....good read

You're welcome. Everybody is.
Hail Google Alerts.

JumpingKentFlash