Word: film
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...decision to save money on security detail by giving a cadre of Hell's Angels free beer to protect the stage-a move that ultimately resulted in vicious beatings, Jefferson Airplane's lead singer Marty Balin getting knocked unconscious and one ferocious stabbing death. Some of the film's best and most chilling moments display the palpable tension as drunken bikers thuggishly stomp around the stage while vacuous tripping hippies wave their hands and the performers look particularly ill at ease. In one instance, Marianne Faithful of Jefferson Airplane dogmatically muses about "loving your brothers and sisters" while four Angels...
...film does not pretend to be a judge, nor a neutral viewer. Gimme Shelter's true brilliance lies in its depth and ambiguity. The Angels are not necessarily the villains intruding on the peace-n-love vibes of the hippies. The entire dark side of '60s is on display: chaos and mindless anarchy have rushed into the void cleared by the vague promise of freedom. The audiences seen here are the dark doppelgangers of Woodstock. Every face looks programmed and every movement emotionless, like a Stepford Wives vision of the hippiedom. Along with the Charles Manson bloodbath four months earlier...
Gimme Shelter has a lot to offer the viewer: in addition to the incredible footage of Altamont and the infamous-almost unbearably brutal-stabbing caught on film, there's great concert footage from the tour: the Stones are at their raw and gritty peak and Mick Jagger gives a clinic in stage dominance. There's even prophetic footage of Tina Turner singing a duet with Ike Turner, their voices spasmodically oscillating between pure sexuality and brutal violence. We see great backstage footage and intimate shots of the Stones in the studio recording Sticky Fingers. We see the machinations...
...what Gimme Shelter ultimately attempts to provide: a vision of us looking at ourselves, a meta-meditation on what it means to be present and what it means to watch. At once it tries to provide footage of a defining historical moment and question what that footage means. The film begins with Jagger sneering to a New York crowd, "We're gonna have a look at you. We're gonna see how beautiful you are." It's the film's mission statement, the launching pad into an ambitious documentary that draws viewers into the complex intersection of culture, music...
...Spike and Mike's Animation Festival is back at Coolidge Theater, and the features above are some of its more wholesome. Boasting Claymation, computer graphics, flipbook-like pencil drawings and a kind of "Lego-mation," S&M's festival certainly covers all grounds of animation. Each short film, ranging from one minute to nine-and-a-half minutes, features stories either too short to be made into its own movie or program or too offensive or to be in any form other than animation...