Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

Flowers in Your Hair Are No Substitute for Shampooing

[Remember to take your shots at Newt in this post!]

Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Lots of music this week, with a few seminal documentaries that established the behind-the-scenes- and concert-film in the 1960s.

1. The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (Criterion #167, d. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967): This is a nice little snapshot of a hugely important concert staged by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas in the summer of 1967 in the Bay Area. There's nothing especially revolutionary about the documentary footage; the observations by many of the early-period hippies and hippie-wannabes are pretty banal; and at least half of the performances are wack. However, with the entire boxed set, which includes one disc that has the original film, one disc with additional Hendrix and Otis Redding footage, and one disc with all of the other outtakes, you can get a more complete picture of the musical importance of this three-day event. In essence, it was a coming-out party for three musicians who would be dead within five years: Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. Two of them (Janis and Otis) electrify the crowd, while Jimi merely stupefies them. There isn't much politics, even in the outtakes.. the only time it really came out in a non-Country Joe setting was when David Crosby announced that the Warren Report on the JFK assassination was a lie. In addition, there are decent performances by Buffalo Springfield, The Who, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and lesser known acts like Canned Heat, The Electric Flag, and a very young Laura Nyro. The main film ends with an extended raga by relatively new phenomenon Ravi Shankar; it's here that the marriage of sound to crowd reaction really captures something special going on. Despite the excess face of paint and old army uniforms, I would have liked to have been there (the extended entry contains the full line-up).

1a. Don't Look Back (d. D.A. Pennebaker, 1966): The documentarian's previous film had been an interesting little chronicle of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez's 1965 tour of Britain, which culminated with a performance at the Royal Albert Hall (it may have been the last time he was solo and strictly acoustic). There's not all that much enlightening in it; it primarily consists of a few excellent performances and tense hotel-room encounters, including one with the latest British folk sensation (Donovan). Apart from that, he doesn't travel like a rock star; there's only one member of the British invasion (Alan Price from the Animals) that comes and hangs out with him. In the press interviews, Dylan is very opaque and standoffish, consistently denying that he's political or that he should perceived as anything more than an entertainer. The deluxe edition I saw has additional outtakes from his concerts, complete with commentary by his then-manager and the filmmaker.

2. Kontroll (d. Nimród Antal, 2004): This is an interesting Hungarian film.. the director has since been brought stateside and has directed the current release Vacancy.. where the action takes place exclusively within the Budapest subway system. The main character and his cohorts are Kontroll agents, checking tickets and generally receiving abuse from a variety of passengers. The director has a real skill at sketching a number of interesting, subterranean characters in just a few bits of conversation or unusual traits. However, the film takes a weird turn in the middle, as it focuses on one mysterious character as he tries to solve a mystery concerning a murderer who is pushing passengers on to the tracks. There's much conversation about whether the film's action is to be literally construed or whether it represents some sort of grand allegory about Hell or Purgatory; however, it can be enjoyed either way. Plus, the main character (Sándor Csányi, left) looks like a young, Romanian Stephen Fry.

3. The Burmese Harp (Criterion #379, d. Kon Ichikawa, 1956): Although there are extremely dark moments hidden in this film, this is a much lighter and more spiritual affair than Ichikawa's relentlessly depressing and violent Fires on the Plain (reviewed a few weeks ago). Basically, a group of tightly-knit Japanese soldiers is informed in Burma that the war is over, and they all come to grips with the shame of their country's surrender and the work ahead of them in rebuilding Japan. One soldier, a harp player, is sent to convince another brigade, holed up in a mountain, to surrender. When he fails, the British soldiers shell the complex. The remainder of the story follows the solitary soldier, whose reaction to the horrors of war was to become a monk, as he travels the country and eventually reunites with his old squadron. It's a bit hokey in places, but the pacing, action, and film are just terrific... a well-deserved Golden Lion-winner at the 1956 Venice Film Festival (in a contemporary interview, the now-90-year-old director claims to not even know that it had been entered).

4. Thieves Like Us (d. Robert Altman, 1973): This is a nice, lethargic little tale about three small-time bank robbers in Mississippi in the 1930s: it's not really an action picture (only one bank robbery is filmed and much of the violence is off screen). It's really more of an extremely lo-fi Natural Born Killers, as much of the mood is set by old-time radio broadcasts and much of the social commentary comes from the robbers wondering if their exploits made the papers. It's even lo-fi by Altman standards: no camera tricks, no overlapping dialogue, and (by his admission) a screenplay that stayed faithful to the source material. Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall (playing.. what else.. an awkward, delicate flower) are really magical together as young lovers, and the rest of the cast, including Tom Skerritt, John Schuck and Louise Fletcher, performs just great. The only problem is about 30 minutes of over-length, as if the film fell under the spell of the Mississippi locations. That takes care of most of the classic Altman; I guess I'll have to delve into that weird late 70s/early 80s period next. H.E.A.L.T.H.? Sheesh.

BONUS VINYL 'N HAMSTER PICS (click the thumbnails):

Friday, June 16
* The Association
* The Paupers
* Lou Rawls
* Beverly
* Johnny Rivers
* The Animals
* Simon and Garfunkel

Saturday, June 17
* Canned Heat
* Big Brother & The Holding Company
* Country Joe and The Fish
* Al Kooper
* The Butterfield Blues Band
* Quicksilver Messenger Service
* Steve Miller Band
* The Electric Flag
* Moby Grape
* Hugh Masekela
* The Byrds
* Laura Nyro
* Jefferson Airplane
* Booker T and The MG's
* Otis Redding

Sunday, June 18
* Ravi Shankar
* The Blues Project
* Big Brother & The Holding Company
* The Group With No Name
* Buffalo Springfield
* The Who
* Grateful Dead
* The Jimi Hendrix Experience
* Scott McKenzie
* The Mamas & The Papas

Posted by Norbizness at April 23, 2007 12:15 AM