No art form as old, new, spiritual, commercial, serious and absurd as music is has any business in the title of a "best-of” list. Even less so films about music, which impose another medium’s fog of aesthetic criteria, and even less so documentaries, whose very definition is in such flux. A handy rubric like “Rock Doc” is still open to hagiographies, kooky character studies, group psychodramas, epochal-concert reportage, subculture surveys and true-life mysteries of (often appropriately) forgotten legends. And all of it under the shadow cast by This Is Spinal Tap, as a both satire of and finest entry in the rock-doc genre. Some of the finest music-related documentaries have next to nothing to do with music, while some cheaply-shot artist promos provide a more palpable sense of music in place, time and culture than a high-minded ethnomusicological survey. So let’s retask the word essential here and, with a nod to 1980s France,...
- 9/30/2014
- Keyframe
No art form as old, new, spiritual, commercial, serious and absurd as music is has any business in the title of a "best-of” list. Even less so films about music, which impose another medium’s fog of aesthetic criteria, and even less so documentaries, whose very definition is in such flux. A handy rubric like “Rock Doc” is still open to hagiographies, kooky character studies, group psychodramas, epochal-concert reportage, subculture surveys and true-life mysteries of (often appropriately) forgotten legends. And all of it under the shadow cast by This Is Spinal Tap, as a both satire of and finest entry in the rock-doc genre. Some of the finest music-related documentaries have next to nothing to do with music, while some cheaply-shot artist promos provide a more palpable sense of music in place, time and culture than a high-minded ethnomusicological survey. So let’s retask the word essential here and, with a nod to 1980s France,...
- 9/30/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Welcome to the semifinals of Vulture's ultimate Drama Derby to determine the greatest TV drama of the past 25 years. Each day a different notable writer will be charged with determining the winner of a round of the bracket, until New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz judges the finals on March 23. Today's battle: Writer Chris Norris judges Mad Men versus The Wire. Make sure to head over to Facebook to vote in our Readers Bracket, where Vulture fans' votes have already diverged from our judges'. We also invite tweeted opinions with the #dramaderby hashtag. This bout’s heavyweights couldn’t seem more different. Mad Men is clearly the boxer of the two: full of style and flash, gorgeous sets and sweeping camerawork, its script throwing epochal-ironic race/sex/alcohol combinations every minute. That makes The Wire our brawler of the old-school: stalking the corners, playing procedural rope-a-dope for several episodes,...
- 3/22/2012
- by Chris Norris
- Vulture
"Previously unseen private letters, home movie footage and intimate personal recollections of George Harrison are set to radically correct public perceptions of 'the quiet Beatle' in a new documentary by Martin Scorsese," report Vanessa Thorpe and Ben Dowell in the Guardian. "Revelations include the fact that Harrison's widow, Olivia, struggled to keep the relationship with her wayward husband on track. In the film Eric Clapton also talks about how he felt consumed with envy as he fell in love with Pattie Boyd, Harrison's first wife. Scorsese, who has focused his camera in recent years on musical subjects, from his history of the blues to a concert film of the Rolling Stones and an acclaimed study of Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, now sheds light on the self-confessed 'dark horse' Harrison. Living in the Material World shows a man who — as well as being the stylish hippy of popular perception — had...
- 9/8/2011
- MUBI
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