Top Notch Profile Of Power Pop Band Big Star Returns To N.C.

In what sounds like it could’ve been a sequence, or at least a deleted scene, from Cameron Crowe’s 2000 semi-autobiographical rock comedy drama ALMOST FAMOUS, teenage Rolling Stone scribe Crowe, along with rock critic legend Lester Bangs joined over a hundred other rock music journalists who have traveled from all over the country to attend the first and last National Association of Rock Writers Convention in Memphis, Tennessee on Memorial Day weekend in May 1973.


A 16-year old Crowe walked barefoot around the Holiday Inn convention center and Lafayette's Music Room in downtown Memphis during the event that included panel discussions, the midnight premiere of Sam Peckipah’s now classic Western PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (featuring Bob Dylan in a supporting role), and performances by the little-known musical acts Larry Raspberry and the Highsteppers, Skin Alley, and a little local band named Big Star.

The gig was one of the few live appearances of the band who only recorded a few albums (three if you count 1978's Sister Lovers and Big Star leader Alex Chilton sure didn’t), and, despite strong reviews, didn’t catch on with the public at large during their brief existence from the early to mid ‘70s.

But as the legend goes, Big Star (then a trio made up of Chilton, bassist Andy Hummel, and drummer Jody Stephens) rocked the house and, in the words of rock writer Pete Tomlinson, “turned a crowd of drunken freeloaders into drooling disciples.”



Anecdotes about the convention are among my favorite stories about how the Memphis power pop combo, originally fronted by the late greats Chilton and fellow guitarist/songwriter Chris Bell, attracted critical acclaim, but not hit record status in Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori’s excellent new documentary BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME, currently in limited release at indie art houses across the country.

I saw and loved the film when it screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, North Carolina last April, so I'm glad it's returning to the Carolina starting on August 19th-August 28th as as part of Magnolia Pictures’ Summer Documentary Series (check the Carolina's website for show-times). 



BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME (the title comes from a lyric in their haunting song “Big Black Car” from the before mentioned Sister Lovers album) is a film that rock lovers, documentary lovers, and especially rockumentary lovers shouldn’t miss.

The trailer:

My review for the Raleigh News & Observer:



“Documentary about pop band Big Star plays in Durham” (August 16, 2013)

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/15/3107540/documentary-about-pop-band-big.html#storylink=cpy

My interview with film’s co-director Drew DeNicola at the Artery Blog at indyweek.com:



“Filmmaker Drew DeNicola discusses his documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me” (August 14, 2013)

Alongside the Carolina Theatre in Durham, BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME will also have these other N.C. screenings:

Wednesday, August 21st: a one-night showing at Aperture Cinema in Winston Salem at 7:30 p.m. Pop artist/producer Mitch Easter, who’s interviewed in the film, will be on hand for a Q & A after the film. After the screening there will be “An Evening of Big Star” at The Garage (111 West Seventh St.), with local musicians, including Michael Slawter, Doug Davis, Henry Heidtmann, Ken Mohan and Corky McClellan, playing choice Big Star covers. The show starts at 9 p.m. $7 ($1 discount with your ticket from the Aperture's BIG STAR doc screening).


The next night, Thurday, August 22nd, there will be another one-night screening at the Fine Arts Theatre in Asheville. Check their website for show-times.

Lastly, there’s a soundtrack album out for the film, a double LP or single CD that has a great mix of Big Star’s best songs, but in demo, alternate take, and “movie mix” versions. Like the film itself, it's a great primer, but one that has a lot of cool discernible differences to the tracks fans know by ear. The Big Star #1 Record Glow-In-The-Dark Slip Mat (seen above) that you can get with it is pretty cool too. Order the soundtrack here.


So to sum it all up: watch the trailer, read my review and interview with co-director DeNicola, see the movie, fall in love with Big Star, buy the soundtrack and their other albums - then, live a happier life.

Got it?

More later…

New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 5/28/13

This week's releases are cluttered with season sets of TV shows I haven't seen, and movies I've never heard of, but, hey, you can’t always have A-list titles to cover, right? 

On the shows I haven’t watched front, there’s the 2 disc DVD-only edition of Longmire: The Complete First Season, the A & E crime drama starring Robert Taylor, Katee Sackhoff, and Lou Diamond Phillips. The show, the second season of which premieres this week, comes packaged with only one Special Feature: a featurette entitled “The Slow Burn: Shooting Longmire.” From the good reviews I’ve read, and the fact that it was A & E’s highest rated scripted drama last summer, it looks like something possibly worth checking out.

Another show I’ve been considering checking out is Doctor Who, but I’m overwhelmed by 50 years of episodes, and all the layers of mythology. Those who are all caught up in it most likely will already know about today’s release of Doctor Who: Series Seven - Part Two, available in both Blu ray and DVD 2-disc sets. The eight episodes of the second half of the season are only joined by two episode prequels: “The Bells of Saint John” and “Clarence and the Whisper Men,” both only running a few minutes. Hmm, seems like that they could’ve fit all that on one disc.

What they did put out today on one disc, aptly as it’s only an hour long, is the Christmas Special Doctor Who: The Snowmen, available on both Blu ray and DVD.

Other shows that I’m not familiar with that drop today: Covert Affairs: Season Three (4-discs, DVD only), Suits: Season Two (4-discs, Blu ray + UltraViolet, and DVD), George Gently: Series Five (2-discs on Blu ray, 4-discs on DVD), and Red Widow: The Complete First Season (2-discs DVD only).

New movies releasing today on Blu ray and DVD that I’d not heard of before: Kasper Barfoed’s THE NUMBERS STATION, a thriller starring John Cusack and Malin Akerman, which is rated at 30% at Rotten Tomatoes so it looks like I haven’t been missing much, and Scott Stewart’s sci-fi horror flick DARK SKIES, starring Keri Russell, rated at 35% at Rotten Tomatoes - also pretty unappealing looking.

What does look appealing is Cate Shortland’s LORE (93% RT rating), an Australian-German production about five German children of an SS Officer who journey through their devastated country in the days after the end of World War II to get to their Grandmother. Saskia Rosendahl, in the title role, got some Australian award action as the strong teenager who leads her sister and three brothers. Special Features include a few brief featurettes, an alternate ending and deleted scenes. Incidentally, despite this home video release, LORE will be opening exclusively in the Triangle area at the Chelsea Theater in Chapel Hill, N.C. (my hometown) on Friday.

Horror fans may be interested in Patrick Rea’s NAILBITER  (2013), starring Joicie Appell, Emily Boresow, and Jason Coffman, out today only on DVD. The indie release, about a family forced to take refuge in a seemingly abandoned storm cellar from a deadly tornado, (IMDb description), comes with such Special Features as two commentaries (one with cast, one with crew) and a “Storyboard to Screen Comparison” featurette.

On the older film front, Mike Leigh’s 1990 comic drama LIFE IS SWEET, starring Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman, and Claire Skinner, gets the Criterion Collection treatment, in a package (available on both Blu ray and DVD) that features a new high-definition digital restoration, a recently recorded audio commentary featuring director Mike Leigh, an audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic David Sterritt.

Some other older titles releasing today: Three John Wayne movies (1940's DARK COMMAND, 1941's LADY FROM LOUISIANA, and 1942's IN OLD CALIFORNIA), Joseph McGrath’s THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (a beautifully bizarre 1969 British comedy starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr making its Blu ray debut), and Nancy Buirski’s excellent documentary THE LOVING STORY, which I saw at its North Carolina premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival back in 2011.

As usual, check out Amazon’s extensive list of titles (i.e. much more than I could even hope to cover) for more of today’s releases.

More later…

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013: Day Four

Whew! I'm exhausted but very satisfied from four days of non-fiction film fun at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013. Please check out my coverage of Days One, Two, and Three.

Here's what I saw on the fourth and final day, Sunday, April 7th:

RUNNING FROM CRAZY

(Dir. Barbara Kopple, 2012)

After the Kennedys, the Hemingways were the “other
American family with a horrible curse” as Mariel Hemingway describes them early on in Barbara
Kopple’s very affecting and aptly named doc RUNNING FROM CRAZY.



In the film, Hemingway speaks
at length about her family’s troubled history in which seven members have
committed suicide. Her super model sister Margaux killed herself 35 years to the
day that her grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, likewise took his life.



Footage Margaux shot
in the ‘80s for a never completed doc about the legendary writer in which she
visits and interviews family members is some of the most fascinating of the
clips here. Margaux was, like her grandfather, what Mariel called a “heavy liver,”
so she emulated his partying lifestyle, a lifestyle that Mariel was repulsed by
as we see when she is saddened by the empty bottles of booze that litter her
grandfather’s grave.

Except for some brief excerpts, Mariel Hemingway’s
film career is not given much screen-time because the focus is on her personal
struggle to distance herself from her family’s demons. She has two daughters (one a
supermodel) from a previous marriage who she worries about, and a boyfriend,
Bobby Williams, that she rock climbs with (a bit with them bickering in their car
out in the desert is priceless) so we get to know her concerns in absorbing
detail. 



Kopple’s doc is a heartfelt and entertaining examination that doesn’t
get too sentimental or fluffy piecey. Mariel never met her famous grandfather (he cut his life short 3 months before she was born), but his personal influence is obviously enormous over her and the rest of the family, as much as his writing is over the literary world. This fine film makes a good case for that I must say.

THE EDITOR AND THE DRAGON: HORACE CARTER FIGHTS THE KLAN (Dirs. Walter E. Campbell & Martin M. Clark, 2012)

“I never
wrote an anti-Klan editorial that I enjoyed writing, I write those editorials because
in my mind that was a duty.” Says former newspaper man Horace Carter (pictured on the right with the film makers) in this
short doc that every North Carolinian should see. Carter was the editor and
publisher of the Tabor City Tribune here in N.C. and in 1950 he wrote in his
paper that the Klan was “the personification of Fascism and Nazism.”
This got a lot of negative feedback in the community and earned Carter a visit
from Thomas Hamilton, Grand Dragon of the Association of Carolina Klans.

Luckily,
film makers and UNC graduates Campbell and Clark got Carter on camera before
his 2009 death to tell his tension-filled tale that led to him getting a
Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Photos, archival footage, new interviews, and Morgan
Freeman narration make up the doc may be in too much of a History Channel-style,
but that may be the most appropriate angle for this material. Full Frame was
world premiere of the must see doc, so no word about a theatrical release or
television broadcast yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY

(Dir. R.J. Cutler, 2012)

This solid polished biodoc, which premiered on Showtime last month, tries to get into the mind of the former President, sorry Vice President, and finds that it's a dark defensive place. Director Cutler (the docs THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE, A PERFECT CANDIDATE) gets Cheney to sit down and discuss the highs and lows of his political career, so we get to go through Watergate, the Iran Contra hearings, the 2000 election recount, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, and the war in Iraq all over again. Yep, mostly lows; all the stuff many of us have been trying to forget for years.



Cutler's one on one chats with the Dark Lord (sorry), are augmented by interview snip-lets by the likes of Bob Woodward, Bob Suskind, and Cheney biographer Barton Gellman along with file photos, and news footage with narration provided by Dennis Haysbert (best known for being the first black President in the world that the popular Fox show 24 took place in). The takeaway from this film is that Cheney doesn't concede to anything. It's apparent that the man, who at age 34 during the Ford Adminstration became the youngest White House Chief of Staff in history, has a ginormously self righteous ego especially when he repeatedly says that he regrets nothing.



Cheney says that he “doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults,” but for the almost two hour running time of this doc we sure do.



BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME
(Dirs. Drew DeNicola & Olivia Mori, 2012)

I have to admit I'm way biased about this doc as I'm a big Big Star fan who contributed to the production's Kickstarter campaign a few years back. The feature length debut by Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori assembles a passionate cast of fellow musicians, rock critics, to tell the story of the power pop band who should've been Beatle-sized superstars in the early '70s but alas the stars did not align.



Big Star, made up of Alex Chilton, who sadly passed in 2009, Chris Bell (died in a car accident in 1978), Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel, is the favorite of many music snobs so much of the material will be familiar to fans. Non-fans will probably appreciate it too because there's plenty of funny anecdotes and personal insights into the music that make it a worhwhile primer.


With their mix of heartbreaking vocals and shimmering guitars that made such incredibly catchy non-hits as “September Gurls,” “Thirteen,” “Ballad of El Goodo,” and “In the Street,” among many others (well, three albums worth anyway) Big Star is a band that deserves more recognition and this film, which gets released theatrically this summer should help that happen (at least a little, I'm not talking about a Rodriquez-style revival).As a fan I, of course, have criticisms of certain areas being glossed over (though they made the right decision in glossing over the band's 2005 reunion album In Space), but the doc works as a visual overview of Chilton and company's history, encapsulating the precious little original footage shot of the band (only 20 minutes or so exist), with the usual but necessary doc decorations (talking head interviews), photos, etc. in an extremely appealing package.

Before the film, N.C. native, and former Alex Chilton protégé, Chris Stamey and his band The Fellow Travelers played an all too brief set of Big Star classics. You can watch them play “September Gurls” here (other songs from the performance are accessible from that page). 

Well, so that's another Full Frame! Time for me to get some much needed sleep.

More later...

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013: Day Three

Here’s what I saw on Day 3 of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 on Saturday, April 6th (Oh, yeah – please visit my recaps of Day One, and Day Two):

A WILL FOR THE WOODS

(Dirs. Amy Browne, Tony Hale, Jeremy Kaplan, & Brian Wilson)

This film, one of several at the Festival that concerned North Carolinians, won the Audience Award for feature films and the Nicholas School for the Environment Award. It’s the touching tale of musician/psychiatrist Clark Wang’s dying wish to have a green burial. Wang had been battling lymphoma for 8 years, and was realistic about the disease ultimately defeating him: “I’d like to use whatever time I have left to help set a pattern in our community of going back to really traditional and natural ways of preserving our dead.” While taking us through Wang’s process involving Pine Forest Memorial Gardens in N.C., the doc examines the green burial movement and the ecological issues at hand. Well made and intentioned, A WILL FOR THE WOODS sure packs an emotional wallop and I’m glad those voting agreed.

A.K.A. DOC POMUS (Dirs. William Hecter & Peter Miller, 2013) 



Most folks don’t know the name Doc Pomus, but they for sure have heard some of the many songs he’s written including such major hits as “Viva Las Vegas,” “This Magic Moment,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Little Sister,” and “Suspicion.” I only knew the man through Lou Reed, who was a big friend of Pomus’s and dedicated his 1992 album Magic and Loss to him, so it’s great to have his story filled in with vintage interviews, footage, and photos, along with testimonials from friends and fans such as Reed, Dr. John, Ben E. King, Joan Osborne, Shawn Colvin and his biographer Alex Halberstadt. Unfortunately Hechter and Miller’s biodoc is uneven with many photographs being shown more than once, and some anecdotes being too vague to much impact. 

But the film overall captures the essence of how a polio-stricken kid from Brooklyn became a larger than life figure through his master song writing. Pomus’ brother, Raoul Felder, whose sound-bites may be the most insightful in the film puts it like this: “I suppose at some level, all greatness comes from pain. I think my brother had everything possible going against him in the history of the world from poverty, to illness, to incapacitation, you could not create a worse scenario for failure except that he wasn’t black. And he did as well as he could in that direction too.”

IF YOU BUILD IT 

(Dir. Patrick Creadon, 2013)



This doc, about an idealistic young couple (Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller) teaching a high school design-build class, has a good inspirational can-do spirit. It takes us with Pilloton and Miller, respectively a humanitarian designer and an architect, as they take their class through 3 phases of a project, first building cornhole boards, then chicken coops, and finally building something for the community: a Farmer's Market pavilion for Bertie county, N.C. That the couple do on grants without a salary says a lot about them and their sincerity to try to fix the “broken school system,” as Pilloton puts it. Even the overuse of sped-up time capture montages or the dropped story strands (a thick-accented teenager named Rodecoe is focused on in the first third then fades away), doesn't detract from the impressive accomplishments of these kids. More power to them.

WHICH IS THE WAY TO THE FRONT LINE FROM HERE? THE LIFE AND TIME OF TIM HETHERINGTON 

(Dir. Sebastian Junger, 2013)



Probably the best straight-up biodoc of the Festival. In her introduction, Full Frame Director of Programming Sadie Tillery sadly recollected that Hetherington, who was killed in an attack in Libya in 2011, was a guest at Full Frame in 2010 promoting his excellent doc RESTREPO. 



That film, which I reviewed the DVD of, was co-directed by the maker of this one, Sebastian Junger. A great friend of Hetherington, Junger appears along with members of Hetherington's family, and colleagues, and Hetherington himself from various interviews, to tell us the noted British photojournalist's story and it's stirring as hell. Despite having a new girlfriend and talking of settling down, Hetherington had a HURT LOCKER-like drive to keep going back to dangerous terrain to do his job. Emotionally gripping footage of the actual attack is included, presented in a manner that's not exploitative. It's one unforgettable piece of a profoundly powerful portrait of a man that everybody should know.



PUSSY RIOT - A PUNK PRAYER

(Dirs. Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin, 2012)

With a name like Pussy Riot, most folks have heard of this band, but don't know their story. Lerner and Pozdorovkin's thorough doc rectifies that by giving us the background of the Russian feminist punk rock collective and showing how and why two of their members are currently in prison. On February 21st of last year, five members of Pussy Riot ran into Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior and performed what they called “Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” before being stopped by church security. Three of them, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were arrested on charges of hooliganism.

While these women go through the twists and turns of legal nonsense, the other members go into hiding so there's no interviews with any of them. The doc is competently constructed and informative but it doesn't have the oomph this material deserves. In the court footage that dominates the film, we see the women, who when we get to hear speak are funny and articulate, sitting in a glass box in the middle of the court room looking indifferent and bored.

As much as I liked getting the story straight and what it says about the sad state of Russian democracy, too often when watching it I felt just like those detained members of Pussy Riot. If only the doc did what they so wanted to do: think outside of the box.

Check back for coverage of Day Four.

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Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013: Day Two

The sun came out for the second day of Full Frame 2013, and so did masses of movie fans as attested by the long lines to the Carolina Theatre in Durham throughout the day. It’s late and I got to get up early for Day Three, so let’s get right to the documentaries I saw that screened today:

TAXIDERMISTS

(Dir. Nicole Triche, 2012)

As I tweeted earlier, Taxidermy has always weirded me out but after seeing TAXIDERMISTS ...well, it still weirds me out. Still, it's a good breezy 20 minute film that told me something I didn't know, that World Taxidermy Championships (WTC) are held every year. Durham film maker Triche's neatly edited succinct short doc puts forth interesting insights into a few of the competition's participants. If you don't get spooked by some of their work, that is.

FIGHT LIKE SOLDIERS, DIE LIKE CHILDREN

(Dir. Patrick Reed, 2012)

A moving portrait of Roméo Dallaire, a Canadian Senator and retired general who has made it his life's work to end the employment of child soldiers mainly in Africa. 

Based on Dallaire's book, “They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers,” the film features striking animation (produced by Together: Words+Pictures for Art and Culture) narrated by a former child soldier, and such stirring moments as when Dallaire visits a transit camp for former LRA abductees and notes: “These soldiers were killing machines, and abused, and indoctrinated, and seen every possible horror, and then they were there, back as children. Because the raw material of youth and positiveness was still there.” Highly recommended.

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

(Dir. Scott Calonico, 2012)



This 8 minute hoot and a half concerns recently declassified White House telephone tapes of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, with photographic and official diary enhancement. It's hilarious to hear LBJ's folkys gusto when talking with a clueless operator, or discussing his diet with his assistant.

OUR NIXON

(Dir. Penny Lane, 2012)

LBJ’s successor, Richard Milhous Nixon, gets a lot more screen time in this full-length doc constructed from over 500 reels of Super 8 home movies filmed by his top staff members (Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Deputy Assistant Dwight Chapin) that had been confiscated during the Watergate investigation and went unseen for 40 years.

Vintage news clips of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and other late '60s to early '70s newscasters help the footage form a narrative, from the set-up of the Oval Office’s taping system to the dark downfall of the administration, and excerpts from those incendiary tapes give us some priceless Tricky Dick dialogue. I was into it, greatly enjoying all the glimpses behind the scenes (it felt like watching an evil version of The West Wing at times) however sloppy the filming, but other folks not as fascinated by the enigma that is Nixon might get bored.



MUSCLE SHOALS

(Dir. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier, 2012)

The legendary “Muscle Shoals Sound” gets its doc due in this rock, rhythm, and soul packed film that tells the story of two studios in the small Alabama town and the iconic artists who recorded there. First, there’s producer / songwriter / music publisher Rick Hall’s FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studios, where Hall took elements of his tragedy filled life and turned them into hit songs, and then there’s the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio which was started by three of the Swampers, former members of FAME’s Rhythm Section.

Hall’s once trusted crew being enticed away by Jerry Wexler and leaving him meant that a war was on (in Hall’s words), but the doc never takes sides or tries to determine who won, but it doesn't need to when it has so many great anecdotes told by folks like Keith Richards (often ending sentences with a mumbled SLING BLADE-ish “Mhmmr”), Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Mick Jagger, Clarence Carter, and U2’s Bono, who waxes philosophically about the river being the source of the soulful country sound: “it’s like the songs came from the mud.” Musical documentary gold.

DOWNLOADED

(Dir. Alex Winter, 2013)

The final film for Friday was Alex Winter’s DOWNLOADED, which examines the downloading revolution through the story of Napster, the ill-fated file-sharing Internet service that was all the rage in 1999 to 2000. Winter, is best known for playing Bill in the 1989 cult classic BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (and a sequel and animated series), but he came to the subject via decades of directing music videos. 

Winter’s cutting and swift establishing shot skills are immediately apparent, and he engagingly covers the twists and turns of both a personal (mostly seen in the passion of Napster co-founder and developer Shawn Fanning), and a far-reaching narrative that asks good questions about how growing technology threatens the long running business models of the recording industry. Indeed Napster, at one point 80 million registered users strong, was taken down by über-expensive lawsuits, one that had co-founder Sean Parker (later of Facebook and Spotify) in trouble for using the dreaded words “pirated music” in an email.

As a former user of Napster, a lot of the film was a trip down memory lane with television clips (a lot of MTV when they actually had somewhat substantial news reports), old interfaces I’d forgotten, and Senate hearing footage (involving Lars Ulrich of Metallica, one of Napster’s biggest adversaries, but what made Winter’s doc ultra compelling is how he filled in so much fascinating information that I, and I’m sure many, hadn’t heard before. A production of VH1 Docs, DOWNLOADED is one of the finest films of the Festival, and one of the best documentaries about the Internet age that I’ve ever seen.

Whew! Another solid day of docs, especially those last two. But tomorrow's roster, which includes films about war photographer Tim Hetherington, songwriting icon Doc Pomus, and the infamous Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot, doesn't look too shabby.

Check back for coverage of Full Frame days three and four, and check out Day One if you haven't already.

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Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013: Day One

It was a dark and rainy first day of the 16th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival at the Carolina Theatre (and a few accompanying venues) in Downtown Durham, one that felt darker and rainier when news spread that Roger Ebert died.

Since I have a lot of film loving friends on Facebook, it seemed like every one of them posted a link, fond memory, or sad acknowledgement of the man who was possibly the most famous movie critic ever. I’ll post my own tribute to Ebert very shortly, but in a “show must go on” spirit let me tell you about the non-fiction films I saw today at Full Frame:

FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

(Dir. Shola Lynch, 2012)

This was one I’ve been looking forward to the most and it didn’t disappoint. Shola Lynch (who made the equally awesome CHISHOLM ’72) tells a story that everybody should know, the story of radical activist Angela Davis, whose trial on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy riveted the nation in the Nixon-era.



Recent interviews, archival footage, newspaper headlines, tastefully done recreations (Eisa Davis stands in for her aunt Angela in brief flashbacks to link passages), and a lively score by Vernon Reid (formerly of the band Living Colour) all combine beautifully in this labor of love that Lynch told the audience after the screening in a Q & A was 8 years in the making. FREE ANGELA goes into limited release tomorrow, Friday the 5th, so be sure to look out for it.

THE RECORD BREAKER

(Dir. Brian McGinn, 2012) 

Ashrita Furman, a man who has spent his life setting hundreds of Guiness World Records, is the subject of this short biodoc that amounts to little more than a human interest story. At first it’s fun to see him walking with a full milk bottle on his head, chopping apples with a Samurai sword, skipping in a marathon, space hopping, hula hooping in the world’s largest hula hoop and so on, but it drags when a trip to train to climb a mountain on stilts is squashed by poor planning. As the film is less than a half hour long, this definitely hurts it. Still, it’s a passable human interest story with some funny moments.

BATTERY MAN (Dir. Dusan Cavic & Dusan Saponja, 2012)






A much better short (55 min) biodoc about a very different kind of World Record breaker: Serb Slavisa Pajkic, a man who can use his body as an electric conductor. No joke, he can fry sausages with his hands and withstand 20,000 volts (he aims to try for 1,000,000 volts for the Guiness record) all the while baffling scientists. Pajkic uses his powers for showbiz purposes and for a questionable healing practice, examples of both are a blast to watch in this pleasingly punchy film. A Popeye-ish little guy who complains about people not wanting to shake his hand (can you blame them?), Pajkic dreams of being a “wireless laser man” and his attempts to go about this make this one Hell of a memorable little movie.

SPINNING PLATES (Dir. Joseph Levy, 2012)



The stories of three unique restaurants are intertwined in the first full length feature by Californian producer, writer, director Joseph Levy in an engaging way that radiates a lot of warmth.



We learn about the ups and downs of the very cutting edge Alinea in Chicago, Balltown, Iowa’s 150-year old Breitbach’s Country Dining, and the Mexican eatery Cocina de Gabby in Tucson, Arizona. Chef Grant Achatz of Alinea speaks of his passion for artistic food presentation that never wavers even when battling cancer of the tongue, we see the community of Balltown come together to rebuild their beloved Breitbach’s after it burns down twice in a 10 month period, and the young couple who opened Cocina de Gabby pull the heartstrings when speaking of their love of family helping them through tough financial times. It’s a well constructed, and sharply shot doc that could be a real art house crowd-pleaser if given the proper promotion.

Okay! That's all the doc talk I got for now. Tomorrow I will cover docs about Nixon (who cameos in FREE ANGELA btw), Napster, Muscle Shoals, among other subjects. Please check back and read all about it.

More later...

5 Docs I'm Looking Forward To At This Year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Later this week, starting on Thursday, April 4th, thousands of film loving folks, me included, will be flocking to the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina.



This is the 16th year for the documentary film festival, and it looks to be a great one with a roster of titles covering such diverse subjects as Dick Cheney, an aspiring Iraqi filmmaker, Napster, Pussy Riot, the Muscle Shoals recording studio, Mariel Hemmingway’s sanity, activist Angela Davis, and the story of the power pop band Big Star, among many others.

There will also be several older acclaimed documentaries such as Orson Welles’ F FOR FAKE (a favorite of mine), Amir Bar-Lev’s MY KID COULD PAINT THAT (also a fine one), and, for some reason, Larry Charles’ mockumentary BORAT.

Here are 5 documentaries that I’m most looking forward to at Full Frame:

BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME 
(Dirs. Drew DeNicola & Olivia Mori, 2012)

Check out this trailer:

FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

(Dir. Shola Lynch, 2012)

And this one:

GIDEON’S ARMY 

(Dir. Dawn Porter, 2013)

MUSCLE SHOALS

(Dir. Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier, 2013)

Another cool trailer here:

FIGHT LIKE SOLDIERS, DIE LIKE CHILDREN

(Dir. Patrick Reed, 2012)

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Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012: Days Three & Four

I certainly got my fill of non-fiction films over the last several days. It was another fine Full Frame at the Carolina Theatre in Durham (in case you haven’t tuned in lately), and I saw as many documentaries as I could of the 102 being screened.



Here’s what I saw on Day 3: Saturday, April 14th (Oh, yeah – please visit my recaps of Day 1, and Day 2):



DIANA VREELAND: THE HAS TO TRAVEL (Dirs. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Bent Jorgen-Perlmutt, & Frédéric Tcheng, 2011)



“The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.”





The late Diana Vreeland was an influential fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar (1937-1962), Editor-in-Chief of Vogue (1963-1971), and a consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but its her blustery acerbic wit that makes her such a great subject for a doc. This one, which utilizes interviews that Vreeland did with esteemed author George Plimpton, exploits her hilarious quotes grandly, while colorfully flipping through the magazine pages of her life. As I tweeted, it's a “a savvy stylish film about a savvy stylish lady.”



JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE (Dir. Stanley Nelson, 2007) Full Frame is paying tribute to Stanley Nelson this year with re-screenings of 4 of his films, including this stirring breakdown of the events that led to the largest mass murder-suicide in history (909 poeple), at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. I remember hearing about the tragedy when I was a kid - Time Magazine images of the bodies on the ground around vats of Kool-aid are seared into my psyche forever - but I was unaware of how exactly it all went down.



The scene of the crime is laid bare by interviews with the survivors mixed with footage, and photos (thankfully no re-enactments). Nelson makes makes plain-spoken yet profound, deftly designed docs that pack a huge emotional punch. This is one of the best of them.

RADIO UNNAMEABLE (Dirs. Paul Lovelace & Jessica Wolfson, 2012) Another almost forgotten figure gets their well deserved bio-doc: Bob Fass, a free-form radio personality who broadcasted on WBAI, New York for half a century. Fass's show, also entitled “Radio Unnameable,” was a late night program in which Fass took calls, spun records, and interviewed a who's-who of '60s and '70s musicians (including Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Arlo Guthrie who premiered "Alice's Resturant" on the show).



Being an outspoken member of the counter-culture, Fass got involved in various controversies involving unions, free speech battles, and political rallying - all of which this doc defly covers with choice audio excerpts from Fass's archives.



BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* (Dir. Fredrik Gertten, 2012)



“When you go to a documentary screening at a film festival, it’s almost always about some kinda controversial story, who knows, war crimes or corporate abuse, family abuse - documentarians tend to traffic in misery and horror. And I’ve been to many films like that, but never to one that had this feeling that the room could kind of…blow up.” – Alex Rivera (Jury member of the LA Film Fest)



This is a film about a documentary filmmaker getting sued by a large corporation. You see, the Dole Food Company took issue with Fredrick Gertten's 2009 doc BANANAS!* and did everything they could to suppress its distribution. Gertten is amazed by Dole's scare tactics and how much money and effort they put into trying to stop his small film. Since Gertten's film was about Nicaraguan banana workers involved in a legal battle over Dole's use of a banned pesticide, one can see why they were nervous but it's ridiculous and self defeating that they would go to such lengths to discredit this man. A must-see for anyone who dreams of picking up a camera and sticking it to the man.



THE BUS (Dir. Damon Ristau, 2012) My last film of the day was thw World Premiere of this 63 minute tribute to the legacy of the VW Bus. Ristau draws together testimonies (mostly by hippy folks) to the German utility vehicle turned counter-culture icon with vintage advertisements and many clips of the camper's cameos in the movies including EASY RIDER, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, CARS (firringly George Carlin voiced the vehicle) and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (What? No Lost?).



There's also the Grateful Dead connection - the bus was so associated with the historic jam band's fans that the company took out a large ad depicting a VW bus with a tear in its left front headlight/eye in Rolling Stone when Jerry Garcia died. I didn't really learn anything new in THE BUS, but it was a fun trip, especially when he get a look at the world's largest VW Bus (13 feet high, weighing 19,500 pounds), that's named Walter incidentally.



Here’s what I saw on Day 4: Sunday, April 15th:



UNDER AFRICAN SKIES (Dir. Joe Berlinger, 2012) Paul Simon returns to Africa in this celebration and examination of his classic 1986 “Graceland” album. In the mid '80s, Simon recorded the bulk of the album in South Africa with South African musicians (including Ladysmith Black Mambazo) and courted controversy by breaking the cultural boycott against the apartheid regime. In an affecting one-on-one with Dali Tambo of Artists Against Apartheid, Simon makes his case for the collaboration, but Tambo states that the music, as much as he liked it, wasn't helpful at the time.



Berlinger (the PARADISE LOST films, SOME KIND OF MONSTER) keeps the very musical movie going with studio footage from the original sessions, film of live performances from then and now, and interviews with “Graceland” fans David Byrne, Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, and Peter Gabriel.



THE IMPOSTER (Dir. Bart Layton, 2012) This was one of the 'To Be Announced' Sunday selections, which are usually made up of the films that won awards at the Awards Barbeque at the Durham Armory earlier in the day.



“The Imposter” didn't win any awards, but Full Frame Director of Programming Sadie Tillery said in her intro for it that it was one of the most popular docs at the fest with a much talked about sold-out screening Saturday afternoon. I myself had heard folks raving about it, so I got in the last minute line.



I'm glad I did - Layton's film is a both chilling and funny true-crime story about a 23 year-old Frenchman who is able to convince a Texas family that he's their missing teenage son, despite his different appearance and, ahem, strong accent. Frédéric Bourdin, the serial imposter who pulled it off, appears to give his side of the story, while the deceived family members and authorities give theirs. It's as compelling as many thrillers (especially these days), with even the dark re-enactments hitting the right notes.



A couple of films I saw on screeners in the Press Lounge:



BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING (Dir. Neil Berkeley, 2012) I missed this when it screened on Friday afternoon, so I was glad to catch up with it via screener. It's a snazzy bio-doc of Wayne White, the guy who brought his awesome art skills to Pee Wee's Playhouse, Beakman's World, Shining Time Station, and the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” video. White tells us: “I’ve worn many hats: painter, sculptor, cartoonist, puppeteer, set-designer, art-director, illustrator…” as we see tons of examples of his work, in particular his word paintings which feature vast landscapes with giant letters spelling out phrases like the title of this film.

White might want to add comedian to his list of occupations, because his anecdotes told from the stage while he's showing slides are hilarious. “Art is a lifestyle,” White says more than once in this doc, and, man, that’s an appealing ideal when you see this guy’s life’s work.



CATCAM (Dir. Seth Keal, 2012) This very amusing 16 minute doc short concerns a German engineer (Jürgen Perthold) living in South Carolina who outfits his cat, Mr. Lee, with a tiny camera (on a collar on the front of the cat's neck) so he can see what his pet does and where he goes. The pictures that come back are quite interesting - the cat encountering other cats, a street sign in an area Perthold doesn't recognize, and some almost artistic shots of nature. Bet anything none of my cats would take pictures anywhere as good.



Well, that's another Full Frame. Stay tuned for more extensive reviews of the best of the documentaries this year, as many of them may be making their way to a theater (or streaming service) near you soon.

More later...