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Inside The Smiths (DVD)
by Jake Speed Inside the Smiths is a documentary film all about Fred Dibnah and the amazing world of steam. Only joking. This is a 52 minute (bit mean with the running time) trawl through the short lived life of eighties Manchester pop icons The Smiths and was directed in 2007 by Stephen Petricco. A great documentary film about The Smiths always feels ... like it is there for the taking but sadly this one joins the ever expanding must try harder pile jostling for space in the corner. The film is the story of The Smiths told strictly from the perspective of their drummer Mike Joyce and bass player Andy Rourke. So not a sausage from Morrissey or Johnny Marr in this film, even in archive footage. They have no use of Smiths songs or footage either just to make the documentary feel even more like it has one hand tied behind its back. You get generic jingle jangle guitar music instead. Inside the Smiths doesn't look as cheap as the recent documentary film about The Queen Is Dead but it doesn't evoke memories of Stanley Kubrick either. They make a vague and not entirely successful attempt to mimic the willfully obscure style Derek Jarman used for that smattering of Smiths promo films he made in the eighties but it never really works terribly well. Mike Joyce famously won one million pounds in the High Court from Morrissey and Johnny Marr in 1997 after he sued them for an equal (retrospective) share of performance and recording royalties. Morrissey and Johnny Marr had taken the lion's share of the money because they wrote the songs and essentially were The Smiths as far as the contracts went. They felt that (rightly or wrongly) they were entitled as they had to work much longer hours in the studio and were the creative brains of the organisation. The Smiths could have got by without Rourke or Joyce but not without Morrissey or Marr. When Marr did leave The Smiths they auditioned guitarists for a few weeks and tried to carry on without him and then realised it was completely preposterous to even contemplate such a course of action. Johnny Marrs do not just amble in off the street. As Joyce and Rourke are now persona non grata with Morrissey and Marr after the legal feuding you might expect Inside the Smiths to be a somewhat bitter affair with Joyce in particular settling a few old scores but you don't get any of that here. If anything, Joyce is benign and nostalgic talking about The Smiths. It's as if he can't believe it all really happened and would drop everything in a second to do it all again. He is respectful to Morrissey and openly wishes that he could meet up with Jonny Marr and become friends again like they were for so many years before the relationship soured in the midst of legal wrangles over money (it is slightly ironic now that one of Marr's patented Smiths instrumentals was titled Money Changes Everything). The most salient other weakness of this film is that there is nothing new here that you don't already know. Neither Rourke or Joyce ever reveal anything that you feel like you haven't heard before. For example, at one point, Joyce recalls auditioning for The Smiths and goes on and on about how he was "tripping" at the time because he had consumed a large portion of magic mushrooms. He saw Saturn 5 rockets flying around the room as he played the drums. If you've read Johnny Rogan's book Morrissey & Marr (and anyone who buys this film most likely has) then you will have already heard this story. Joyce is a better talker than Rourke although both come across as slightly sad haunted people who don't have much to do now apart from talk about The Smiths. One of the most interesting parts of the film is when Rourke talks about his heroin addiction in the eighties. It's quite a moving segment. Rourke was kicked out of The Smiths but then they sort of had a change of heart and brought him back into the fold so they could look after him. The interesting thing about The Smiths is that all of them remain strangely vague and difficult to get any sort of picture of. Morrissey was by far the most famous but no one has ever really worked out who Morrissey is (he probably doesn't know himself) and Johnny Marr has remained relatively ephemeral too by not doing a huge amount of interviews. Of course Marr was far less famous than Morrissey because he was the guitarist and not the lead singer so Joyce and Rourke as the drummer and bass player were even more off the radar. Even after watching this film they remain tabula rasas. Just a couple of people who were in The Smiths for a few years a very long time ago. I really wanted Joyce to be more illuminating on the dynamic between the group and the personal relationships. He says they were like a gang at first but that Morrissey was very distant and strange. They respected this because he was a "genius" and a "delicate flower" who needed space. You sort of want him to at least say one catty thing just to liven up the film. Both Joyce and Rourke seem to yearn for the friendship they once had with Johnny Marr. Rourke says that he would sometimes spend 20 hours a day with Marr going from party to music studio to party when they were friends and had just joined The Smiths. One thing I was disappointed about here too was that neither Joyce or Rourke have anything especially profound or insightful to say about the music of The Smiths. They were just there and that's about it. They obviously never gave it much thought. Rourke says that it was all about making the Johnny Marr riff stand taller but never really elaborates on what they would do in the studio to accomplish this or what his own particular method was. There are a few "celebrity" talking heads thrown into the documentary with varying degrees of success to give their two pence on The Smiths. The Kaiser Chiefs (no one cares what the Kaiser Chiefs have to say about anything), Mark E Smith (sounding like an old boxer who took too many punches), and (ahem) Preston from Big Brother. Preston was in a really really really terrible group called The Ordinary Boys (or something) who took their name from a Morrissey song. How this qualifies him to talk about The Smiths in a documentary film is something of a mystery. If I was making a documentary film about Ingmar Bergman I wouldn't ask Paul W Anderson to take part. By far the most perceptive and interesting of the talking heads is Matt Osman, the bass player with Suede. He says that one of the interesting things about The Smiths was that - despite their flowery image - they actually had a punk drummer. The film could have done with more of Osman although it's somewhat symbolic of the documentary that they only managed to get him and not Brett Anderson. Strangely though, there is no mention of the fact that Mike Joyce auditioned to be in Suede when they first formed in the late eighties/early nineties. You'd think they might have at least mentioned this or asked him about it. There are a few bonus features with the film that don't amount to an awful lot. The irritating director Stephen Petricco interviewing Rourke and Joyce, Rourke and Joyce visiting the United States to meet Smiths fans, and an appearance by the "fifth Smith" Craig Gannon (I wondered when he was going to show up). Inside the Smiths is a strange and unsatisfying documentary that provides nothing new for fans and would most likely bewilder those that are new to The Smiths with its absence of music or archive. At the time of writing this is available for the ludicrous price of £12. Read the complete review |
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Take That Present The Circus Live (DVD)
by shoe_gal_84 I have been a massive Take That fan since they were famous the first time around! So I was always going to ensure I got tickets to see the Circus. I went to one of the Wembley shows and can honestly say that it is, without question, the best concert I have ever been to. I wasn't sure that the DVD would do the show justice, ... but it's just great. I watched it again the other day and the suspense at the beginning still builds and builds and I feel like I'm there all over again. As with all Take That concerts, you just know there is going to be one hell of a performance, and the Circus delivers with bells on! The costumes and dancers are just out of this world and the elephant that appears during 'The Garden' is completely mindblowing. I just remember standing there in tears at the concert because you couldn't believe that it was actually happening. There are lots of tracks from The Circus album, but there are plenty of old favourites in there too - I was thrilled when they did 'Take That & Party' and 'Do What You Like'! Overall, I would say that the DVD fully captures the amazing atmosphere of the concert and I would recommend it, even if you're not an avid Take That fan. The amazing costumes and incredible special effects are enough to draw even the biggest critic in and no-one could fail to be impressed with the show they put on. Watching it just makes me want to go and see it all over again. It's just a shame as I don't think any concert I go to in future will ever compare! Read the complete review |
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The Monkees: Head (DVD)
by Jake Speed Head is a surreal psychedelic 1968 musical film featuring The Monkees (Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith). It was a critical and commercial bomb when it was first released but is now regarded to be something of a cult film, maybe even a minor classic. Head was conceived by director Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson (who ... got the writing credit) and The Monkees and unfolds as a series of increasingly bonkers and unrelated vignettes and sometimes fantastic trippy musical sequences. Only a few years later Rafelson directed Five Easy Pieces and became a notable filmmaker and this alone had people scuttling back to Head to see what they might have missed the first time around. My favourite sequence in the film has Davy Jones in frock coat delivering an irresistibly enthusiastic rendition of Harry Nilsson's Daddy's Song in a room that looks like a huge empty art gallery. He dances with Tony Basil and the colour scheme (including clothes) keeps changing to dazzling effect through an extraordinary piece of editing. When Davy Jones finishes the song (quite poignant now of course when he sings the line "...and now the years have passed and so have I...") and wanders outside he meets Frank Zappa and a talking horse. Head is that sort of film. Bewildering, strange, sometimes a struggle, sometimes brilliant. There is no real plot besides the fact that The Monkees are trying to establish free will but keep realising they are puppets on a string, a mere commodity with no freedom. So they try to run riot and catapult through this surreal outlandish landscape, old sets from their television show, but always seem to end up as actors making a film. There is no point looking for a coherent story or any connection with reality (this is intentionally very, very, very far out) but they do riff on the manufactured nature of The Monkees and this aspect to the film is something I've always found interesting. The film seems aware that the height of their fame has passed and wonders if they are ever going to escape from being The Monkees. A sixties museum piece. Head is much darker, more risque and much stranger than anything in the Monkees television series and was interpreted as an up yours to their fanbase and middle of the road commercial America. The fanbase from the television series was too young to get the film (and with some disturbing anti-war Vietnam imagery and the druggy counter culture atmosphere it really wasn't made for them) and the baffling spirit of the picture was hardly likely to win them too many new fans beyond those who already had a psychedelic bent or just a love of strange cinema. Despite the reading of Head as wanton career suicide, The Monkees knew it was already just about over for them anyway and didn't really care anymore. They just liked the idea of doing something more subversive, adult and self-aware. "Hey, hey, we are The Monkees, You know we love to please, A manufactured image, With no philosophies, You say we're manufactured, To that we all agree, So make your choice and we'll rejoice, In never being free! Hey, hey, we are The Monkees, We've said it all before, The money's in, we're made of tin, We're here to give you more!" The film starts superbly with The Monkees running riot on a bridge before they fall into the water in slow motion to the wonderful strains of Porpoise Song (a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and the main theme of the film). The Monkees didn't write much of their own music but it never really mattered because the songs they were given or borrowed were often great. This is definitely a film to watch late at night and has that compellingly weird late night early hours Koyaanisqatsi atmosphere. There are some dull patches and the film is an acquired taste but at 85 minutes you are never too far away from something diverting or wonderful - or even just strange. Micky Dolenz blowing up a coca cola machine in the desert with a tank or Sonny Liston making a cameo as a prospective boxing opponent for the diminutive Davy Jones. "Great, I'll have a go at him. You won't hurt my face, will ya? Million dollar head, this." I love the fact that Liston was in the film. Not only is he is a fascinating brooding presence but it somehow seemed fitting. Liston was overshadowed by Ali and The Monkees by The Beatles but they were both a part of the sixties too. The other musical sequence that stands out for me is Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again? where Mike Nesmith is given a surprise birthday party that is so hippy sixties it makes Austin Powers look like an Ingmar Bergman film. He isn't too happy either after blankly taking in this psychedelic vista in bewildered fashion. "I don't like it, that's how it feels! I don't like surprises, I don't like all these people jumping around and shouting, wha - I don't even wanna HEAR what you're saying! Because you know what you're saying to me? You're saying "Happy Birthday" and you're jumping out of the walls and it's scaring me to death, and I'm supposed to be HAPPY about that." The Monkees were conceived as an American Beatles with a Marx Brothers surrealist nonsensical attitude for the television series and they pointedly play on the roles the series defined for them. Dolenz is the whacky one, Davy Jones is the young one the girls like, Nesmith is the laconic deadpan leader, and Peter Tork is the stupid one. "You're right, Pete. You're always the dummy. I forgot. I'm sorry. Sorry. You're always the dummy, Pete. I'm sorry..." There is a frequent device where The Monkees find themselves inside a black box - a reference to the constrictive nature of their career where their personality and (especially) music was tightly controlled by the people that owned them as a property. This is also an in-joke as a space like this was actually constructed during the television series to give The Monkees somewhere to go to take a break. The alternative was them wandering off-set or annoying other actors in the environments of the studio. The film within a film structure was hardly new even then but it is interesting. We see them in jocular surreal scenes that could with one or two changes have come out of their television series and suddenly the veil is removed and we see the director and even Jack Nicholson talking to them as if it has all been a set. There are some obtuse existential divertions that get a bit tiresome ("Psychologically speaking, the human mind, or brain or whatever, is almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the vividly imagined experience. Sound and film and music and radio. Even these manipulative experiences are received more or less directly and uninterpretive by the mind. They are cataloged and recorded and either acted upon directly, or stored in the memory, or both. Now this process, unless we pay it tremendous attention, begins to separate us from the reality of the now. Am I being clear? For we must allow the reality of the now to just happen, as it happens. Observe and act with clarity. For where there is clarity, there is no choice. And were there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?") but Head remains a likeable piece of sixties psychedelic that is worth watching at least once. Some knowledge of the history of The Monkees is probably required to get the most out of this and it won't be for all tastes but Head gets top marks for strangeness if nothing else. At the time of writing you can buy this for about £11 with some trailers thrown in as extras. Read the complete review |
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Genre: Music DVDs / To Be Announced / DVD released 2012-09-10 at Xtra Mile Recordings / Features of the DVD: PAL |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / DVD released 2012-10-15 at Sour Mash / Features of the DVD: Limited Edition, PAL |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / DVD released 2012-09-17 at Sony Legacy / Features of the DVD: Colour, DVD-Video, PAL |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / DVD released 2012-08-27 at Eagle Rock / Features of the DVD: NTSC |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / Blu-ray released 2012-10-15 at Sour Mash |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / Blu-ray released 2012-08-27 at Eagle Rock / Features of the Blu-ray: Widescreen, Colour |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Release Date: 26 Nov 2001 |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / Director: Göran Olsson / Actors: Billy Paul ... / DVD released 2009-09-21 at Drakes Avenue / Features of the DVD: Colour, DVD-Video, PAL |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / Director: Emmett Malloy / Actors: Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show ... / Blu-ray released 2012-07-23 at Alliance |
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Genre: Music DVDs / Exempt / DVD released 2012-07-02 at Eagle Rock / Features of the DVD: NTSC |
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