by ·Comments Off on The Klezmer Project (2023, Koch & Schachmann)

Listened to Cracow Klezmer Band at work, had a Czech lager, watched a klezmer movie – good day. Wedding videographer Leandro likes musician Paloma, fakes that he’s making a klezmer documentary to get her interest, then follows through, traveling from Argentina to Austria to Ukraine to Romania to Moldavia, chasing music that no longer exists in its origin lands (we hear plenty of performances but are told that technically they’re not klezmer, ha). It’s a true-falsey travelogue through folk tales and tunes, adding up to nothing much narratively but quite a lot cinematically.

Victor Covaci, Romania:

Morris Yang:

The Klezmer Project also incorporates a third, folkloric narrative in Yiddish voiceover, centered around Yankel, a gravedigger’s assistant, and Taibele, a rabbi’s daughter, as they face excommunication from their community over support for the heretical philosophy of Baruch Spinoza … The Klezmer Project meticulously subverts its structural expectations in service of a hybridized docu-fiction register, working best both as ethnomusicology and as meditation on its intrinsically whimsical and rewarding process.

by ·Comments Off on Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988, Charlotte Zwerin)

Really good rock doc, because the talking heads feel like punctuations to the flow of music instead of vice-versa. Like most movies, it is 90 minutes long when it could be LP-length, but say la vee. A musician’s musician, impenetrable as a person, at least in the movies I’ve seen. I first heard him in another doc, his mouth wide open, playing technically-imperfect tunes, immediately striking, a true jazz weirdo. That movie’s archive footage was shot in 1969, this one’s in 1967, both released decades later.

Paul Grimstad for Criterion:

From the [1967] Blackwood footage, interspersed with other archival film, photographs, new interviews, and narration, Zwerin distilled an hour-and-a-half-long structure not all that different from a Monk composition: jumpy, elliptical, catchy, moving … As a counterpoint to the archival material, Zwerin shot new footage of pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris (both Detroit natives, like Zwerin) playing through Monk tunes as four-hand duets. We see how much fun they’re having, how generous and congenial their sharing of the music is, and how a Monk song like “Well, You Needn’t” allows for endless elaboration without its melodic outline ever becoming blurred.

by ·Comments Off on Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII (1972/74, Adrian Maben)

Live for no audience, the original pandemic livestream. The editing is out of control – there’s more picture-in-picture and rotoscoping than you would imagine, or desire. It’s lovely to see some pure uncut source material that inspired This Is Spinal Tap, the restoration is beautiful, and it all builds to the band’s improv blues song with a dog on guest vocals. Guess this was released as an hour-long concert film then they added 20 minutes of pre-Dark Side interview junk a year later, including a regrettable scene where Wright(?) gets defensive about the band running their technology and not vice-versa like some people say.

by ·Comments Off on Sly Lives! aka the Burden of Black Genius (2025, Questlove)

Mostly standard talking-heads rise-and-fall music doc. Sometimes the interviewees address the subtitle topic, sometimes they use a deep-1980s Sly interview, sometimes there’s concert footage, and all those things are very good. Surprisingly given all the past-tense involved, Sly really does live (update: RIP Sly).

by ·Comments Off on Ladies & Gentlemen… (2025, Oz Rodriguez & Questlove)

The opening mashup is as good as people said, then between each ad break they pick a particular focus: Lonely Island, hip hop, star-making performances, the dangers(?) of live television. They take pains to tell us what an honor it is to play such an important show, how vital is SNL to our culture, and if you don’t agree with this premise then it all starts to feel hollowly self-promotional, but there’s sure some good music along the way.

by ·Comments Off on Rock Docs: 20 Feet & Trances

20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)

Expertly put together, a great show. Attempts a late swerve into pathos because all of their solo stardom didn’t take off, which clashes with the early sentiments about being all about the music. In the discussion of who treated the singers better or worse, Jonathan Demme and Joe Cocker and Sting and Luther Vandross come out well, Ike Turner and Phil Spector less so. I thought about Kelly Hogan at least every couple minutes.

“Rock and roll… saved our lives.”
“You get hooked on music, you’re fucked.”

–
Trances (1981, Ahmed El Maanouni)

An ambient rock doc – if it’s not self-evident that the music is good, if you don’t know why these guys are big, nobody’s gonna tell you. The band is called Nass El Ghiwane, and we get a mix of performance, rehearsal, and, not exactly interview, but pointing the camera at a band member until he starts talking.

I dunno about “a free-form audiovisual experiment” or “pure cinematic poetry” per the Criterion press, but it’s got nicely edited archive film and some really good closeups. The group (with two original members) was still playing as recently as last year.

by ·Comments Off on Gimme Danger (2016, Jim Jarmusch)

Intriguing structure for a rock doc, skipping the band’s rise and opening with their downfall and breakup. When the opening titles hit, the band is over and all its members are living with their parents, then we restart the story from the beginning, leading to the triumphant reunion. Mostly just the band members talking, then when they get dropped from their label we get a nice montage of more popular groups covering their songs. So, no innovative film but it’s a pleasure to spend so much time with Iggy Pop (“In the Ashetons I found primitive man”).

–
Strummer (1993)

SD handicam mini-doc covering Joe and team mixing the soundtrack for Sara Driver’s When Pigs Fly. “Computers have ruined the kind of music I like. Ultimate control, that’s what people want.” One scene is just Jarmusch recounting his favorite jokes from This is Spinal Tap.

–
French Water (2021)

Fashion ad starring Julianne Moore and Chloe Sevigny, lost at a party after hours, and a randomly materializing Charlotte Gainsbourg. The music was good, at least.

–
Jim Jarmusch & Jozef Van Wissem: The Sun of the Natural World is Pure Fire (2012)

People in frilly pajamas float in the river, while one guitarist plucks gentle melodies and the other plays feedback. The music was good, at least.