TV / Film News

BIRD Captures Charlie Parker

Source: All About Jazz
March 28, 2009

I've seen two documentaries about Charlie Parker recently, but I haven't seen a lot of Parker. In an age when archives are filled with newsreel footage and videotape on even the most obscure of public figures, Parker seems always to have been somewhere else when the cameras were on.

There is a shot of him accepting a Downbeat Award at a banquet, where the master of ceremonies solemnly informs him that jazz is color blind (if so, then why the ...

Continue Reading...

The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon

Source: Michael Ricci
March 27, 2009

The unheralded trumpeter makes a compelling centerpiece for the documentary. Music elite and bebop fans widely consider him the greatest living jazz trumpeter.

Though commonly recognized by many from his longtime stint as Merv Griffin's comedic sidekick on The Merv Griffin Show, trumpeter and vocalist Jack Sheldon qualifies, hands-down, as a force of jazz and one of the most unique talents in his chosen genre.

Fewer still may realize, however, that off-camera Sheldon battled his way through one of the ...

Continue Reading...

'Let's Get Lost' West Coast Cool Jazz of Chet Baker

Source: All About Jazz
March 26, 2009

In the center of the frame, very close to the camera, hangs a studio microphone that could be mistaken for a vintage Soviet communications satellite.

Chet Baker, 58, is recording Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke's “Imagination." His voice isn't quite as soft and papery as it used to be, but the image -- like every shot of Baker in Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost -- is about the face, not so much the music.

That face -- gnarled and ...

Continue Reading...

Behind the 'Looney Tunes': A Look at Chuck Jones' Life

Source: Michael Ricci
March 25, 2009

Most people can recall sitting in front of a television watching Bugs Bunny slyly outwit his would-be captors. Or perhaps, as a child, you were a fan of the trials and tribulations of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote as they chased each other endlessly. (And maybe you still are.)

Whoever your favorite Looney Tunes is, without the direction of the late Charles Martin Chuck Jones, the characters as we know them would never have made it into our living ...

Continue Reading...

For Warner Bros. Time is Changing

Source: Michael Ricci
March 25, 2009

Clock ticking on Warner Bros. succession drama

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes must decide how to replace Barry Meyer and Alan Horn, who have jointly presided over the studio and are to step down in 2011.

With the heads of Warner Bros. signing only two-year contract extensions, Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes will focus on succession and how the movie and television studio should be managed in the face of tectonic shifts in the entertainment industry and a ...

Continue Reading...

Round Midnight Dexter Gordon Plays a Classic

Source: All About Jazz
March 25, 2009

In Dexter Gordon's voice in Round Midnight, there is a quality that at first sounds like a great weariness. As I listened more carefully, however, I realized that there were other notes present.

Here is a man (I speak of the character, not the actor) who has gone too far and seen too much, and who knows that in one way or another his death is near. Yet he is not impatient with those who still have long to live; ...

Continue Reading...

Jonathan Demme Debuts “Neil Young Trunk Show” at SXSW

Source: All About Jazz
March 22, 2009

Director Jonathan Demme was on hand at SXSW for the world premiere of his concert film, Neil Young Trunk Show.

The film is an intimate look at Young’s stage show, recorded in a small theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, on mostly hand-held cameras. “We did a home movie in a way,” said Demme to a Saturday afternoon crowd in Austin’s Paramount Theatre. “We did it all ourselves.”

The Oscar-award winning director (Silence Of The Lambs, Philadelphia) said the film was ...

Continue Reading...

David Carradine: Still Punchy After All These Years

Source: All About Jazz
March 21, 2009

It's still early, but it's pretty safe to say that the award for the “Craziest Post- Screening Panel Discussion of the Year".

It has to go to David Carradine and Haskell Wexler, who got to show everyone who stayed after an American Cinematheque screening of Hal Ashby's “Bound for Glory" just what it must've been like to have lived through the '60s.

It's not exactly a news flash that Carradine, best known for his many small and big screen roles ...

Continue Reading...