Re: Never Mind The Biopics?

No discussion here of "Pistol"? Maybe because it's on some channel, er sorry "streaming platform," that we don't get? Cuz I don't really know how to watch tv anymore. But here's the stuff:

[www.imdb.com]

How does it compare to "Sid n Nancy"? Or the CBGB movie?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2022 12:56PM by MrFab.

Sid & Nancy was made by a director with a point of view who made a movie featuring characters who behaved consistently with how those characters would in the context of the movie.

CBGB and Pistol were made by people who seem to believe in "tell, don't show" and thus put speeches underlining how historical all this is in the mouths of people who damn sure weren't saying any of those things at the time (except probably Malcolm McLaren, as he did seem to speak in manifestos). It's pretty doubtful anyone was telling Hilly Kristal in the very early days of CBGB how very, very important what he was doing was. More likely they were telling him to make those no-talent bums knock it off because people come to hole in the wall local bars to hang out with their friends, not to hear some doofuses making a racket.

> It's pretty doubtful anyone was telling Hilly Kristal
> in the very early days of CBGB how very, very important
> what he was doing was. More likely they were telling him
> to make those no-talent bums knock it off because people
> come to hole in the wall local bars to hang out with their
> friends, not to hear some doofuses making a racket.

Either that or haranguing him for the rent, the utility bill, the insurance bill, and on and on ... which, I suppose, is what happens to the owners of most hole-in-the-wall local bars.

The balkanization of streaming entertainment means that I will have to miss lots of things. But we did just watch "Like A Rolling Stone: The Ben Fong-Torres Story" last night. Very enjoyable for a documentary, though Fong-Torres was portrayed by an actor in "Almost Famous." The one Cameron Crowe movie I have lots of time for.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2022 09:03AM by Post-Punk Monk.

The music biopic is one of the most cliche-ridden and dreary forms of cinema, unless you do something as experimental as I'M NOT THERE. (Documentaries are increasingly subject to the BEHIND THE MUSIC format and editorial control from artists and labels, but they generally come closer to doing justice to musicians.) I'd rather watch THE FILTH AND THE FURY four times than spend the same amount of time on PISTOL.

Agree with Steevee. I have access to ‘Pistol’ but can’t for the life of me get myself to watch it. Much rather see the real thing.

Do I really want to see a kid less than half my age try to show me how he thinks one of my musical heroes might respond in a given situation? Bullocks!

Bip Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Agree with Steevee. I have access to ‘Pistol’ but
> can’t for the life of me get myself to watch it.
> Much rather see the real thing.
>
> Do I really want to see a kid less than half my
> age try to show me how he thinks one of my musical
> heroes might respond in a given situation?
> Bullocks!


Or how they invented grunge and appropriated LGBTQ styles. Or however they want to spin it these days.

… by the way, that was ‘lousy curmudgeon’ Bip.

‘Nice guy’ Bip says that regardless of how good or bad ‘pistol’ is (I’ll likely never know), if it points a young kid to the charms of one of my fave debut albums ever, that would be a wonderful triumph!

Did anyone see the Bowie film Moonage Daydream? I was watching for it in local IMAX listings, but it came & went before I could see it.

Delvin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did anyone see the Bowie film Moonage
> Daydream? I was watching for it in local IMAX
> listings, but it came & went before I could see
> it.

One of the best movies of 2022. (For point of reference, I thought the Sparks docu was best movie of 2021.)

Having seen "Clerks III" this past weekend made me appreciate "Moonage Daydream" even more because a LOT of it is about mortality and the proverbial search for meaning. Though it is undeniably an experimental film, it nonetheless still follows Bowie's career trajectory fairly closesly. (I don't know how coincidental is it that parts of "Moonage Daydream" resembled the Bourdain docu a couple years ago.)

We actually went to Winston-Salem to see it on the last day of IMAX. There was one ticket sold before we bought ours. Then our pals who lived near the Carrboro joined us and one more couple for a total of seven human beings in the theater for the 1:30 1st matinee of the movie. Masked and vaccinated with the new bivalent dose, it was much more socially distant than shopping or going to work is. It was the first film we'd seen in a theater in about three years.

We've never seen an IMAX presentation before since they tend to be popular things outside of out purview. Damn, it was TOO LOUD. [And don't get me started on the soul-crushing trailers shown before the film. I actually closed my eyes and plugged my ears in response to them. ] I found it to be an audiovisual tone poem on the subject of Bowie’s creative life and process. It was a vast cinematic collage created in response to the art of David Bowie, using images from the artists’ creative life in addition to thematic imagery taken from almost anywhere and repurposed here as free form metaphor and commentary.

Footage spanning the breadth of Bowie’s professional life was repurposed here to a soundtrack of disparate elements remixed and juxtaposed along a fractured, clashing timeline of the artists’ life. There were no talking heads; the scourge of music biofilms. Just footage of Bowie performing, being interviewed, clips from music videos, clips from earlier documentaries, and an overriding narrative on the artists’ creative process and theories drawn from hours and hours of Bowie interviews where he spoke personally on the issues on hand. Making his the primary voice here.

The film could aptly be experienced like a colorful burst of Gulal powder flowing over the viewer. The frequent bursts of intense, psychedelic colors as seen in the trailer, certainly lend credence to this metaphor. Attempts to impose a linear rationality to the unfolding of the film would be dashed by the juxtapositions of elements from disparate ends of Bowie’s timeline layered over one another with little regard to coherence; but together, these artistic decisions emphasized the gestalt of Bowie’s artistic approach. Which in and of itself, was similarly cobbled together from a wide ranging spectrum of artistic and philosophical thought as represented here by many of the non-Bowie-specific visuals.

A gripe I heard from my loved one when it was all over was “where’s Iggy?!” Indeed. there was no mention of him at all and not even a frame of him to be seen in the whole shebang. He was one of the most vital catalysts to Bowie’s art but his artistic processes were far removed from Bowie’s. Besides, he already had his own film. Where I did see eye-to-eye with my wife’s gripe was in the fact that with a film dedicated to Bowie’s artistic journey, there was almost little evidence here of his masterclass in final acts! Bowie confronted his own mortality by spending his last days making “Lazarus” and the ★ album which arguably consolidated all of his themes in a potent and moving finale. But apart from scenes form the ★ video juxtaposed along with music from decades earlier, the culmination of his artistic search was excised from the event.

Other than that lapse, I enjoyed the novel technique and free form creativity of the approach taken here. It represented something new in a film about a musician that may be perhaps viewed as onerous as others attempt to plow a similar furrow; becoming cinematic cliché. We’ll have to wait and see.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2022 09:39AM by Post-Punk Monk.