#169 - Jimi Plays Monterey & Shake! Otis at Monterey

 
Well, and we got these two performances as a bonus - Otis seemed too short (19 minutes) but they added some stuff to Jimi's where John Phillips talked about him and how he was flown over to play and how he got in a fight with Townsend over who was opening for who.   

To this day I'm still amazed by Jimi - he played Wild thing with the guitar behind his back near the end - I don't mean holding it behind his head - he just had it slung behind him like a rifle on his shoulder and only his right hand on the fretboard just hitting that shit like it was nothing - it takes me full concentration and he just thinks it - LOL.

I think the Jimi Performance is legendary, and I wish in some way they could have done more of these for some of the artists - but you know..we take the good stuff we can get

I knew I would look forward to this and blow thru it - I may watch it on the side today with the commentary 

#168 - Monterey Pop

 

And so here we go - got to see the movie.   I think the thing that struck me was it was edited way out of sequence, and that some of these acts were playing earlier or later than others.   In any case, it's a nice little clip of the counter culture at that time of the summer of love.  I think I enjoy the audience views more than the concerts sometimes.   At the beginning there's a girl asking if they've ever been to a love in before and how cool it's going to be etc...
 

Anyways Hendrix is obviously my favorite and I'm looking forward to the whole concert - I liked the harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas.   I get that they let Ravi Shankar play for like 3 hrs on the last day but I wish they could have edited that last 20 minute performance and put a couple other artists like the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield on but it's all good.   One doesn't hear too many Ragas in movies short of maybe a Satyajit Ray film.  (wonder when i get another one of those)

Anyways, it's a great window into a festival where they mostly kept the shit together, and just a ton of great outtakes to enjoy - and up next of course, the full Otis and Jimi at Monterey

#167 - Monterey Pop - (Boxed Set spine)

 So we're at this place again where the OCD in me wants an entry for every number, but the way Criterion changed things was the box sets get their own number - which means I have an entry with no movie but in this case I can talk for a bit beforehand.

I can tell you that when I was a kid they showed this on PBS and I didn't get around to seeing it but I saw promos for it a lot.   I also watched the Woodstock documentary a lot.   As a kid in the 80's I was more or less enamored with the 60's and especially the music.   I loved Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and they played here - (croz in two bands) although I don't believe they're in the movie.   I loved Simon and Garfunkel, and I loved some of the Mama's and the Papa's.   I first heard of Jimi Hendrix here and the way he lit his guitar on fire near the end.   So as I sit down to watch this I expect a lot of things I'll enjoy.  

There are a ton of extra performances, and of course, the 2nd disk will go full Otis and Jimi which is gonna be fun.   I'm sure someone somewhere has made a massive cut of all the extra performances an just made a 3 hr film.   I always love music festival documentaries like Festival, Woodstock and this, because I never really got to go to one and I'm sure it would have been awesome.   

Anyways I could share my thoughts on this one because in some way the parts I did see, or the clips, DID have an influence on me.   It was a perfect festival really, which Woodstock would be the peak, and Altamont the decline.   I'm going to watch the movie now but wanted to spill a few thoughts on it first since I had the entry.

#166 - Down By Law

Hey...we're back with Down By Law, a fun little comedic film by Jim Jarmusch.   It's like one half prison film, one half Bayou road trip, and one half love letter to a New Orleans that I wonder if it still exists or ever did.

We got John Lurie (who we saw way back when from Fishing with John), Tom Waits, and Roberto Benigni playing some characters just close enough to themselves that they pull it all off really well.   I like Jim Jarmusch but haven't gotten to all his stuff yet.   Tom and John do a great job on the soundtrack here as well.

I won't get into it all a lot, because it is on one hand easy to explain, but very atmospheric and well shot.   There's a lot of extras on the Blu-Ray and although it took me a long time to get back on the wagon, once i did it went fast.   A fun movie and could totally make me a Tom Waits fan but man, I got too many other rabbit holes to dig first.

 

#165 - Man Bites Dog

 

Next we have this dark French movie from a trio of Film Students.  (Actually I think they're French Speaking Belgians.

When this started I freely admit I was kind of "what the hell is this and how did it end up in the collection" but as it went along I started to get it a little bit.   The film is about a "documentary" film crew who is following a serial killer, and documenting his exploits.   

Where the interest for many, and the lesson starts, is that they start out as onlookers but end up becoming basically accomplices.   It's one of those things we didn't think about in '92 when the film was made, but of course now, reality tv is everywhere, and you do wonder about how thin some of the lines for these guys.   

It's pretty graphic in a few spots and got an NC-17 rating so don't watch it with the kids, but it was more interesting than I gave it credit for in the long run.

#164 - Solaris

 

Wow....been almost a year - those 3 hr movies just sorta intimidate me and I need to accept and deal with it and break it up into two or three components.   As a result I got horribly derailed, but I probably watched 10 other movies in the collection that I'll end up rewatching at some point.

Ok, so we have Tarkovsky's Solaris, a pretty good if somewhat long sci-fi epic from Russia - we saw him back in Andrei Rublev, so it's been a while.   In fact, this was the move he did right after Andrei and it hadn't been released, so he needed money and this was a popular novel in Russia by a Polish author and so you have some very different genres at work here.   I saw the remake 20 years ago and honestly didn't remember really any of it, (I smoked a lot of weed back then - LOL) - so I was going into it a little cold.

I can see why many consider it one of the best sci-fi stories of all time.   The actress in particular who dominates the story (in the photo above) has an almost ethereal quality about her and Tarkovsky seems to think she outshined everyone else in the story but I would prefer to leave most plot points out of future reviews so I won't tell you yet who she is :)   I caught a bit of the commentary and I got the impression from it that the movie diverges a bit from the source book, but I was inspired enough to consider looking for the book in the future.

Anyways, I guess the question comes down for me to Did I enjoy it?   Yes.   Will I be able to get back on the wagon and knock more of these out?   I hope so.   We'll see