Tagged: dvdreview

I went into Cave of Forgotten Dreams without knowing anything about it and enjoyed it so much I hesitate to say anything here aside from it's one of the most extraordinary and beautiful films I've ever seen. Werner Herzog's documentary literally explores the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, which holds the most ancient cave paintings [...]

I was excited by this release as Lou Reed – Live Performances 1972 & 1974 is the first live recording from Lou's Sally Can't Dance tour to be commercially released. The first video segment shows Lou and his band recorded live at the Paris Olympia on 5/25/74. This segment, which was originally broadcast on French TV, captures the first six songs of Lou's thirteen song set. The second segment contains four tracks that were recorded in Brussels in May 1974 and the final track is from Lou's reunion with John Cale and [...]

The Mike Keneally Band cooks up a storm at the Baked Potato night club in L.A.

With the release of the New York Dolls' DVD Looking Fine on Television , I went back to check out some of the Dolls/Thunders releases that I've missed over the years. These first of the discs that I dropped on was Johnny Thunders Who's Been Talking which is a live DVD of one of Johnny's last concerts. This show was filmed at Club Citta in Osaka, Japan on April 3, 1991 and this is the last known recorded show that Johnny played as he was found dead in New Orleans on April 23rd. The [...]

" The legendary and infamous New York Dolls at their best! Amazing rare live clips and interviews filmed by Bob Gruen and Nadya Beck in the heady days of the band's ascension in the 70s. Footage from early shows in NYC all the way to the TV studios, clubs and swimming pools of Los Angeles. Black and white film was never so colorful! Includes ripping versions of "Personality Crisis," "Who Are the Mystery Girls?" "Babylon" and more. See the incredible early days of the band that influenced generations of punks and rockers. " -- Press Release I'm the [...]

Ray Charles live in 1961 at the height of his powers 1961 was a banner year for Ray Charles. The crossover seeds he'd sewn with Atlantic on 1959's The Genius of Ray Charles had led him to bigger bands and orchestras and a contract with ABC. In 1960 he'd notched his first #1 on the pop chart with a cover of Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind," and by 1961 the demand for his concert appearances finally brought him to Europe, where he headlined the second-annual Antibes Jazz [...]

Remarkable! Extraordinary! What an astonishing piece of work Twin Spirits is, I've never seen anything like it. A stage tribute to the love and music of Robert Schumann and his wife, Clara Wieck, Twin Spirits stars Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, as the classical composing couple. Derek Jacobi narrates the event as Sting and [...]

Andy Warhol's last theatrical release Bad (1977) was recently re-released on DVD by the label Cheezy Flicks. The movie is classic, black-humored film noir that is set in the urban war zone of late 70's New York and this film may have set the stage for later films like Natural Born Killers and Serial Mom . The film centers around Queens housewife Hazel Aiken who runs an electrolysis service out of her house but makes extra money by providing ruthless women to do hit jobs. The role is played with an [...]

At 63, the "world's forgotten boy" hasn't slowed down. On Tuesday, MVD Entertainment will release Iggy and the Stooges' "Raw Power Live: In The Hands Of The Fans" on DVD and Blu-Ray. The video captures Iggy & the Stooges performing their classic album Raw Power along with tracks from the first two Stooges' albums and Kill City at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival on Friday, September 3, 2010. I saw The Stooges at Roseland Ballroom on their first reunion tour. When Iggy jumped into the crowd and seemed to be heading [...]

Prior to watching Foreigner's forthcoming live DVD "Live On Stage", I had completely forgotten about Japan's Super Rock Festival. After doing some on-line searches, my best guess is that the festival ran two years - 1984 and 1985. This live set is from Foreigner's appearance on August 10, 1985 and the band was touring behind their fifth disc, Agent Provocateur , at the time. The festival lineup appears to have been pretty eclectic as Foreigner played alongside Dio, Rough Cut, Mama's Boys and Sting. Foreigner's performance runs sixty minutes and, while the set [...]

The Music Never Stopped is a wonderful indie film starring J.K. Simmons and Lou Taylor Pucci as a father and son who are brought together by music. A brain tumor leaves Gabriel's (Lou Taylor Pucci) mind trapped in the 1960s. With the help of a music therapist (Julia Ormond), Gabriel's father (the amazing J.K. Simmons) [...]

When thinking about audience-baiting lead signers, David Yow ranks up there with likes of Tesco Vee and Lee Ving. The Jesus Lizard's new DVD, Club , captures the first night of the band's 2009 reunion tour and Yow started off the set with the 'joke': " What's the difference between Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson? About 5 hours " before the band launched into an explosive version of "Puss". Age hasn't slowed The Jesus Lizard and you wouldn't know by how tight they sounded that this was the band's first US show in [...]

There are a number of concert/music videos that I remember from the early days of VHS and Beta that never made it to DVD so the DVD release of The Jam's "Transglobal Unity Express" concert film comes as a welcome surprise. This disc captures nine tracks from The Jam's show at Bingley Hall in Birmingham on March 21, 1982 where the band was touring behind their final release, The Gift , which was released earlier that month. While this disc only captures thirty minutes of what was probably a ninety minute concert, the [...]

The 2007 independent film Arranged explores the unexpected friendship between two young, female teachers - Rochel (Zoe Lister-Jones) is an Orthodox Jew and Nasira (Francis Benhamou) is Muslim. The DVD's summary implied they bond over their common experience of having marriages arranged for them by their respective families. But in truth the two women are [...]

The Clock is a lesser known Judy Garland film about a couple of strangers caught up in a whirlwind romance in World War II-era New York. Strangers on a Train's Robert Walker stars as a WWII soldier named Joe on leave in NYC, who literally runs into secretary Alice (Garland) in Grand Central Station. Lonely [...]

The latest incarnation of the Cro-Mags (with John Joseph and Mackie Jayson) have been touring pretty regularly over the last few years and it seems hard to believe that it had now been twenty-five years since the release of Age of Quarrel . I've read some recent interviews where John has been talking about recording a new Cro-Mags disc which should prove to be interesting as the band's last recorded legacy was the "final quarrel" show that John, Harley and Doug played at CBGB back in May 2001 under the moniker Street Justice. [...]

I've heard about The Fest for years but never made the trek to Gainesville, Florida. For those who are similarly uninitiated, Fested: A Journey to Fest 7 provides a feet-on-the-street trip through Fest 7 (2008), a weekend-long " big, drunk, punk rock, bearded, tattooed family reunion ". The title of the movie is a reference to one of the film makers' friends who is completely drunk and they refer to him as being "fested". After watching this close to two hour documentary, I came away thinking that this is what [...]

Get Low is a gem of an indie movie starring the incomparable Robert Duvall. Duvall portrays Felix Bush, a grizzled old hermit intent on throwing his own "funeral party" while he's still alive to enjoy it. Set in a small rural town in 1920s and based on a true story, the film strikes a beautiful [...]

Believe or not, I had never seen The Natural before. The cinematic classic is often categorized as a sports movie, which isn't really my thing, so I never bothered. But the film is so much more than that and is now a new (old) favorite of mine. Set in the 1920s, Robert Redford stars as [...]

The Prodigy have recently released "World's On Fire" - the group's first ever Live album! This double disc release on DVD/CD and BluRayDVD/CD features live footage from their largest show ever - July 2010 the Warrior's Dance Festival at the Milton Keynes Bowl. a note from The Prodigy about the concert: "A lot of thought went into the place where we could throw the best party, we never wanted the typical stadium venue so Milton Keynes Bowl was perfect for our first ever UK Warrior's Dance Festival coz it felt like a mad party [...]