Like so many of my generation, I have some milestone memories of the Who.
Like so many of my generation, I have some milestone memories of the Who.
Posted at 01:14 AM in Music/musicals | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: keith moon, kilburn, pete townshend, rock movies, roger daltrey, the who
"Woodstock" the DVD: Four hours of peace and music, along with a promising stash of extra features.
Warner Home Video has announced Blu-ray and DVD editions of "Woodstock: Ultimate Collector’s Edition," for release next summer, in honor of the mudfest's 40th anniversary.
(Update: Warner moved up the "Woodstock" release date to June 9 and confirmed its bonus performance lineup. View the "Woodstock" DVD news at the psychedelic music site PsychedelicSight.com )
"Newly discovered" performances included in the set come from the Who, Joe Cocker, Canned Heat, Joan Baez and Country Joe and the Fish, adding up to about an hour. The new numbers are being culled from eight hours of raw footage that was dug out of a Kansas City, Mo., storage facility.
Warner says the mother of all concert films was restored and "remastered from original elements and scanned at 2K with audio 5.1 mix supervised by director Michael Wadleigh. The concert original chief engineer Eddie Kramer, who was on-site for the festival, is overseeing the audio mix of all of the recently found added footage."
"Monterey Pop" has seen a great deal of effort put into its DVD box set (Criterion) and CDs in recent years, but Woodstock pretty much just sat there in the DVD era. It'll continue to sit, as the film has some kind of moratorium going until the new set's release on July 28June 9, 2009.
Woodstock has its share of dog performances, but these are among the highlights in the movie: Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner," Santana's "Soul Sacrifice," Ten Years After's blistering "I'm Going Home," Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music/Music Lover/I Want to Take You Higher" and Richie Havens' "Freedom."
Fans of the man with the guitar should check out the excellent Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock.
There were many more performers than seen in the film, of course, notably Mountain, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Perhaps we'll get a look at some of those perfs. (Janis Joplin was added to the film when it first morphed into a "director's cut.") Criterion's "The Complete Monterey Pop Festival" packed in a generous collection of previously ignored performers in its extras, setting the standard for this sort of thing.
Warner's 1997 release of "Woodstock" was largely viewed as a bummer, so this release comes to us overdue and quite welcome. An interesting
release from that neck of the woods is "Woodstock 1999," well worth a rental to see some of today's top rockers in their early years.
Extras include a commentary from director Michael Wadleigh, Robert Klein's docu "The '60s and the Woodstock Generation" and "reflections and perspectives from musicians, celebrities, influencers and other giants in the entertainment industry." No doubt we'll be hearing from Martin Scorsese, who worked a camera for "Woodstock."
For the record: I was headed to Woodstock with my two pals, until my parents got super-pissed about something and grounded me for the rest of the summer. Everyone from the '60s has a Woodstock story, it seems.
Posted at 04:46 PM in Music/musicals, Upcoming DVDs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Jimi Hendrix, Martin Scorsese, Michael Wadleigh, the Who, Woodstock
Carmen Miranda and Busby Berkeley, the noted surrealists, wasted no time in serving notice that their collaboration would be equally strange and special.
A dot struggling against a black screen expands a bit, encircling a disembodied singer's face. Out of the dark, he sings the haunting "Aquarela do Brasil." From the left, a set of geometric lines invades the screen, morphing into the bow of a ship. The camera retreats, a Technicolor day breaks, and we splash onto a bustling Manhattan dock.
The ship's cargo, lowered by net, includes what appears to be a gigantic fruit basket. Berkeley's camera pulls back and the produce is revealed as the mother of all Carmen Miranda hats, with the tiny Brazilian powerhouse herself underneath, grinning. The camera advances to the rear again, and we discover we're in a New York nightclub, watching this colossal floor show. Seven minutes in, the first line of dialogue is spoken.
So begins "The Gang's All Here," a gloriously restored movie that anchors Fox's new "The Carmen Miranda Collection" of five movies. Throughout the 1943 musical, Miranda runs amuck across Berkeley's military-like dance productions, disrupting and humanizing the spectacles like a psychedelicized Engergizer Bunny. Glorious and gaudy.
The movie actually stars Alice Faye, in the way that all of Miranda's films star someone else. Someone who speaks perfect English. Miranda wanders in and out of the action, a broken-English Greek chorus of one chattering away about the hackneyed plot's turns.
Fox chieftain Darryl Zanuck's instructions regarding the handling of Miranda were clear: "Give her words to mispronounce" and never cut away when she's singing and dancing. Audiences loved her and made her rich. Miranda was a house pet, always leashed by the stage and screen systems. A professional foreigner.
The story is told here in the engrossing and moving documentary "Carmen Miranda: The Girl From Rio," which unspools on the DVD of the less-impressive "Something for the Boys." (A brief Berkeley docu comes with "Girls.")
"It was never possible for Carmen Miranda to be the central character of a film," says Miles Kreuger of the Institute of the American Musical. "She is billed as a star, but she could never carry the picture. She was like the spice in the stew. She was everybody's best friend or a confidant.
"She was there so that she could do a musical number and erupt into movement and color." The 5-footer's charms retain their potency today. You don't have to be gay to fall for Carmen Miranda (but maybe it helps).
Miranda's English improved over the years, but her situation didn't. She was unable to escape the accent and the fruit hat. In the U.S., "She was in some ways a creature from outer space." She yearned to make a "real" movie about Brazil, where she was highly respected as a samba artist. Miranda eventually came under fire in Brazil for her cartoon-like image and responded by staying away for more than a decade.
At times, the documentary's interviewees seem curiously mournful over the lot of the girl from the Rio slums who found fame and adoration in the States, but remained confined to the headdress. Viewers seeking real tragedy find it in the docu's final minutes, though, as we learn how Miranda popped pills day and night to keep her frail franchise going.
A sad and bizarre clip shows the tiny Brazilian, older now, suffering a heart attack on Jimmy Durante's TV show. She puts her hand over her heart, looks confused for a beat, and then dances her way offstage, waving goodbye to the audience. Twelve hours later she was dead.
But we're here for the fun, and Miranda delighted in providing it a-plenty. Midway through "The Gang's All Here" comes the second remarkable Miranda-Berkeley collaboration, "The Woman in the Tutti-Fruitti Hat."
Miranda's the centerpiece as an army of beauties frolics with giant bananas, raising and lowering the Freudian fruit with drill-team precision. The spectacular Technicolors and the disorienting suite of movements combine to blow our minds. And of course Carmen Miranda has just the catchy song for the occasion.
Fox Home Entertainment's five-disc set retails for $49.98 with individual titles going for $14.98 each. (They are "The Gang's All Here," "Doll Face," "Greenwich Village," "If I'm Lucky" and "Something For the Boys.") Thirty bucks gets you "Gang" and the "Boys" disc with that feature-length documentary, a reasonable way to go. Be careful with "The Gang's All Here" -- ensure it's the 2008 release, not the botched 2007 version.
Also circling the DVD blog's players this week is "Joy Division," a highly regarded documentary about the Manchester band of the 1970s fronted by Ian Curtis. If that's of interest, check out my earlier review of the feature film "Control" on DVD.
"Be Kind, Rewind," another new title, was a pleasant surprise for me at the movies. Check out the DVD blog's mini-review of the Jack Black-Mos Def film.
New and notable:
Be Kind Rewind (Warner)
Blood +: Vol. 2 (Sony)
Burn Notice season 1 (Fox)
Californication (Paramount)
Carmen Miranda Collection (Fox)
Classe Tous Risques (The Criterion Collection)
Joy Division (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
The Jungle Book 2: Special Edition (Disney)
The Sword in the Stone (Disney)
Meerkat Manor season 3 (Animal Planet/Genius Products)
Popeye the Sailor 1938-1940 (Warner)
So I Married an Axe Murderer (Sony)
Under The Same Moon (La Misma Luna, Fox)
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Universal)
Complete list of this week's DVD releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org
Posted at 02:19 AM in Music/musicals, New DVD releases | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Busby Berkeley, Carmen Miranda, Fox musicals, Technicolor

Looks like last call to catch Todd Haynes' fine film "I'm Not There," about the many imagined lives of Bob Dylan.
I had no desire to see this movie, really, especially since we'd all rolled out for the Bob a couple of years back with Martin Scorsese's documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" -- broadcast on PBS about the same time as the autobiography "Chronicles, Volume One" came out (let's hope there's a "Two"). A few too many intriguing reviews for Haynes' film had me down at the new Arclight cinema, enjoying almost every minute of the 2-hour-plus show.
"I'm Not There" doesn't inspire easy description, nor will it do you much good to read one. Cate Blanchett's performance makes her character by far the most compelling of the six sort-of Dylans. Forget that she's a she, it's not a factor -- all of these Dylans wandered in from Highway 61 anyway. (Now there's another Dylan docu in theaters.)
Nothing out there is likely to top Scorsese's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan," available on a Paramount double-disc DVD. The docu should be subtitled something like "Bob Dylan, 1960-65."
The film starts off in Ken Burns territory, using a rich and exquisite mix of vintage sounds and images to track Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minn., as he moves to New York and becomes folk singer Bob Dylan.
The documentary ends a half-decade later, with a speed-jacked-hollow-eyed Dylan rocking back and forth on a couch repetitively, as if he'd been dusted with autism. "Traitor!" they had yelled at him one too many nights. "I just want to go home," the shellshocked rock star moans.
"I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be," Dylan says as the 3 1/2-hour docu opens. "So maybe I'm on my way home."
Dylan acts as his own witness throughout -- at ease, clear, sometimes funny and seemingly pleased to take control of his legend.
"I don't feel like I had a past," Dylan says, but the assembled evidence proves otherwise. Part 1 unspools much like a video companion to Dylan's book, which covers his years on the Greenwich Village folk scene, the epicenter of American hip in the early 1960s.
"No Direction Home" becomes A Film by Martin Scorsese in its dark concluding act. Like the director's "Mean Streets" and "GoodFellas," it captures the paranoia and disintegration as the central character's life implodes.
Read the complete "No Direction Home" DVD review.
Posted at 03:43 AM in Music/musicals | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Bob Dylan, Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There, Martin Scorsese, No Direction Home DVD
Pick of the week: Saturday Night Fever
Dog of the week: We Are Marshall
A lot of action out there this week. My DVD players are spinning Quentin Tarantino's racy "Death Proof: Extended and Unrated," the well-heeled "Troy: Director's Cut"
and the deliciously gory history lesson "The Washingtonians."
A trio of terrific high-profile movies from a few decades back also make comebacks: "Saturday Night Fever," "Wall Street"
and "Deliverance
." All three get first-class studio treatments and "Deliverance" comes in HD DVD
and Blu-ray
.
In TV-on-DVD, my highly rated shows of the week are "Brothers and Sisters" and "Family Guy, Vol. 5
."
New and notable:
Alexander: Revisited: The Final Cut (Warner)
Beyond the Gates (Fox)
Blade: House of Chthon (New Line)
BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (Vivendi Visual
The Boss of It All (Genius Products)
Brothers and Sisters: Season 1 (Buena Vista)
Cinema 16: European Short Films (Cinema 16)
Commando Director's Cut (Fox)
Crazylove (MTI Home Video)
Cruising (Warner)
Death Proof: Unrated and Extended (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
Deliverance: 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner)
Dragon Heat (Dragon Dynasty)
Family Guy, Vol. 5 (Fox)
Flashdance Special Collector's Edition (Paramount)
Masters of Horror: Brad Anderson's "Sounds Like" and Peter Medak's "The Washingtonians" (Starz Home Entertainment)
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (MVD Visual)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (The Criterion Collection)
The Roger Corman Collection (MGM)
Saturday Night Fever Special Collector's Edition (Paramount)
The Threepenny Opera (Criterion)
Troy Director's Cut (Warner)
Two Weeks (MGM)
The Up Series Box Set (First Run Features)
Upright Citizens Brigade (Paramount)
The Valet (La Doublure) (Sony)
Wall Street 20th Anniversary Edition (Fox)
Zoo (ThinkFilm)
Complete list of today's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org
Posted at 09:30 AM in Music/musicals, New DVD releases, Upcoming DVDs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Death Proof DVD, DVD releases, new DVDs, new videos, Troy directors cut
Disney just sent out invitations for its DVD holiday feast: "Ratatouille" is set for Nov. 6 and the cable sensation "High School Musical 2" comes out Dec. 11. Both titles are going day and date with Blu-ray editions.
"Ratatouille," which charmed pretty much everyone who saw it, comes with deleted scenes; an animated short starring Remy and Emile; a conversation with creator Brad Bird and uber chef Thomas Keller; and the Pixar short "Lifted."
The "Ratatouille" Blu-ray puts the video format's Java capabilities to work, with Gusteau’s Gourmet Game (get the courses to the tables) and Cine-Explore ("in-movie Java feature allows viewers to customize their own behind the scenes experience").
"High School Musical 2: Extended Edition" extras include a sing-along and a karaoke feature; a "rehearsal cam"; bloopers and music videos. The extended footage is the musical number Troy and Sharpay that rehearse in the film but never perform.
The Blu-ray audio on both titles is uncompressed high-def surround (48k HZ/24-bit). Both titles retail for $30 DVD/$35 BR)
Posted at 03:09 PM in Animation, Music/musicals, TV-on-DVD, Upcoming DVDs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Disney Blu-ray, DVD blog, High School Musical 2, Ratatouille DVD, Remy
With a last-minute surge of patriotism as July Fourth ebbs away, I feel the need to salute the American Film Institute's updated list of the greatest 100 films.
OK, I cannot tell a lie: I'm not a big fan of this list, nor of any of these best-ever movie roundups -- outside of maybe the Library of Congress' wildly eclectic national film registry. Or the Criterion Collection catalog. But then I think the Oscars are rubbish, so take it from there.
Maybe I'm just bitter because the AFI's list has my all-time No. 1 movie at No. 15 ("2001"). Yours most likely is buried in there somewhere. Roger Ebert is endangering his health by fuming over the exclusion of "Fargo." Of the handful of new films added from the past decade, we have "Titanic" and "The Sixth Sense," decent enough popcorn pics, but the word "great" doesn't quite come to mind.
Here are the AFI's top 5 films, along with a quick take on the best available DVDs. Buy with confidence.
1. Citizen Kane. DVD released in 2001 by Warner/Turner as a double-disc set. The 60th anniversary restoration using "best available" elements. Includes the acclaimed 1995 docu "The Battle Over Citizen Kane." Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich do separate commentaries. Go with Ebert.
2. The Godfather. DVD released in 2004 by Paramount, although it seems identical to the disc released in "The Godfather DVD Collection" (2001). Dark, grainy, soft but still quite handsome. Time for a new set of "Godfathers." (The greatest sequel ever by acclaim, "The Godfather II" ranks 32nd. Huh?) Great commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola.
3. Casablanca. DVD released by Warner in 2003 as a double-disc set. Who better to provide commentary on the populist masterpiece than Roger Ebert, the people's film reviewer? Four-plus hours of extas. The movie looks amazing, digitally scrubbed of almost all wear while retaining a fair amount of contrast and original grain.
4. Raging Bull. DVD released by MGM in 2005 as a double-disc set. All of the key participants give blow-by-blow accounts of making the movie. Extras dig deep into Martin Scorsese's methods and motivations, drawing heavily on the observations of Thelma Schoonmaker, his longtime editor. The widescreen anamorphic images (1.85:1) look sensational, with concussion blacks and silky grays across a distinct scale.
5. Singin' in the Rain. DVD released by Warner in 2002 as a double-disc set. Dazzling transfer has the Technicolor images leaping off the screen. A dancing-on-the-ceiling 5.1 soundtrack. Plenty of extras, including a new documentary about the musical's making; a BBC piece on Arthur Freed; and a curious collection of Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown songs used in earlier films.
Check out the AFI list and various reactions.
Want more? A lot more? How about the Guardian's top 1,000 (thanks, Howard). Update: Wait a sec, my pal Ray Bennett has just posted a goof on The Guardian's list.
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Posted at 02:34 AM in Music/musicals, Top 20 films | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: AFI greatest films, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, the Godfather
This is a bit afield, but I'd be delighted to buy these videos on DVD. Instead, they're free on YouTube.
Meet Ysabella Brave, karaoke singer. She's posted a swarm of videos on YouTube, mostly of her singing and dancing and flirting into a digital camera in her apartment. Let's go to the tape:
Wow. Yes, she appears to be for real, no bogus Lonelygirl. Her name is MaryAnne and she works for Yahoo. As a result of her vid postings, she now has a modest record deal with an e-label at Warner Music.
She's a sweetheart about communicating with her many YouTube fans and enjoys goofing on the unlikely fame she's accrued in the past year. (One day, she'll be up there with the Star Wars Kid.) My favorites of the 85 or so video performances she's posted are the standards. She doesn't nail the number every time -- sometimes when the phrasing is odd you wonder if she knows the tune all that well -- but it's always a good show. Too good to be true? Judge for yourself. Here are more of her greatest hits:
Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)
My Heart Belongs to Daddy
Let's Misbehave
Night and Day
Anything Goes
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning
Mambo Italiano
Love Me Two Times(!)
Posted at 06:20 PM in Music, Music/musicals, Old Hollywood | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Cole Porter, karaoke singer, MaryAnne, YouTube, Ysabella Brave
A swarm of DVD release dates just landed in my email box. Here are the most interesting titles:
The Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection: Ultimate Collector's Edition, Sept. 25 from Warner Home Video. "Babes in Arms," "Babes on Broadway," "Strike Up the Band" and "Girl Crazy." A fifth disc includes "The Judy Garland Songbook," with 21 complete movie musical numbers, and an interview with Mickey Rooney by my pal Robert Osborne.
Deliverance: 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, Sept. 18 from Warner Home Video. With commentary by director John Boorman and five featurettes.
God Grew Tired of Us, Aug. 14 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Documentary about three "lost boys" from Sudan. Award winner at Sundance, narrated by Nicole Kidman. Includes an update.
Commando: Director's Cut, Sept. 18 from Fox Home Entertainment. "Arnold action classic" produced by Joel Silver. The theatrical version of the Schwarzenegger film with Mark Lester's extended version branched in.
Update! Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Aug. 7 from MGM. Outstanding remake with Donald Sutherland. Tied to release of "The Invasion" with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Director's commentary by Philip Kaufman.
Also: "Are We Done Yet," Aug. 7 from Sony ... "Vacancy," Aug. 14 from Sony ... "Brando," double-disc TCM docu, Oct. 9 from Warner ... "Perfect Stranger," Aug. 21 from Sony ... "The Unit: Season 2," Sept. 25 from Fox.
Posted at 01:30 AM in Music/musicals, Old Hollywood | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, DVD blog, DVD musicals, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney
Elvis died 30 years ago this summer, and to mark that round number Warner and Paramount are rolling out 24 of the King's films on DVD. (I prefer to think about Elvis' birthday, which happens to be mine as well. Every time they play "Love Me Tender," I hunger for frosting.)
The stars of the show from the Warner side are deluxe editions of "Viva Las Vegas" and "Jailhouse Rock," and double-disc versions of the 1970 concert movie "Elvis: That’s the Way It Is" and "This is Elvis," an "authorized bio" making its DVD debut. Paramount's tribute is the "Lights! Camera! Elvis! Collection," which comes in a blue suede case.
WHV also will debut "Elvis: The Hollywood Collection," containing six Elvis films never before on DVD -- "Charro," "Girl Happy," "Kissin’ Cousins," "Stay Away, Joe," "Tickle Me" and "Live A Little, Love A Little." The films will be available as a set, as well as individually.
"We’re particularly thrilled to be meeting consumer demand by releasing seven Elvis features to DVD for the very first time," said George Feltenstein, WHV's senior vp of Theatrical Catalog Marketing.
Paramount's box set repackages "King Creole," "G.I. Blues," "Blue Hawaii," "Roustabout," "Girls! Girls! Girls!," "Fun In Acapulco," "Paradise, Hawaiian Style" and "Easy Come, Easy Go."
Posted at 05:36 PM in Music, Music/musicals, Upcoming DVDs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: DVD blog, Elvis DVDs, Elvis Presley, Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas

