Couldn’t You Wait (2013, Seth Pomeroy)

I finally got over my terror of watching this, thinking it would be too sad. Contains some of the stories I’ve long wanted to hear – Albini recording them at no cost, why/how they changed labels. Pomeroy does a great job editing the live and studio material together, and includes a feature-length “Live Worm” compilation of concert songs. I’m only halfway through the other extras – it’s a treasure trove. “If you cant get into Silkworm then God hates you and you’re an asshole.”


The Concert for Bangladesh (1972, Saul Swimmer)

Continuing my post-Get Back solo Beatle explorations (albums played so far: Ringo x1, John x2, Paul x3 and All Things Must Pass). My 2003 AVI file often looks better than the HD Peter Jackson movie, hmmm. George introduces Ravi Shanker, pleading with the crowd to follow along (it’s “a little more serious than our music”), then tears through some “All Things” hits. Billy Preston and Ringo and Leon Russell get vocal turns. “While My Guitar” and “Here Comes the Sun,” a four-song Bob Dylan feature, then a couple closing numbers. Happy to discover it’s another one of the great concert films.

George, Bob, Leon:

Ravi and company:


This Much I Know to Be True (2022, Andrew Dominik)

Dominik repeats his One More Time With Feeling feat of having each song be visually distinct, maybe more impressive here since he’s got a limited toolkit in a single location and keeps showing us the tools (lights, dolly tracks) yet somehow surprising us within the moment. Another difference is that I already loved “Skeleton Tree” before watching the previous movie, while this one revealed the beauty of “Ghosteen” and “Carnage.”

Right after I read about his trilogy, a Glawogger film opens in my neighborhood, so the wife and I went on a date to see his whore movie. There are interviews with the participants, but mostly it’s an immersive thing, you figure out how the whoring works in each region by fly-on-the-walling it. But M.G.’s great innovation is to produce a verite/interview doc with killer camerawork and sound design. You sometimes get curious framing or a decent music score in a doc, but usually the serious documentarian’s stylistic presence is felt through editing. Not anymore, as the weird vibes of CocoRosie swirl through a surprisingly elegant movie about prostitutes in increasingly desperate conditions.

First Thailand: the girls have home lives and ideas about what they’d like to do post-prostitution. Their brothel advertises, accepts credit cards and employs a woman who acts like a den mother. Then Bangladesh, a sharp step down in living conditions, as kids are sold to live and work in a complex they’ll never afford to leave. Finally Mexico, where it’s every girl for herself, with no supervision, a desperate, dangerous-seeming atmosphere, and enough of a who-gives-a-fuck attitude that the filmmaker is allowed inside to watch some whoring in action: sadness for everyone involved.

Katy and I discussed the movie for like ninety minutes, but that was a month ago, so I cannot provide a summary.

C. Huber in Cinema Scope:

Thriving on contradiction and observational curiosity as usual, Glawogger still resolutely rejects social cause-pandering, but scratches for something deeper by contrasting the rituals of love (for sale) in three different cultures, religions and economies: a look not just at prostitution, but the relationships between men and women in contemporary society that yields telling and ambivalent insights.