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Daily Archives: June 7, 2024

Amazing Grace (2018)

Posted on June 7, 2024 | 2 comments

Amazing Grace
Directed by Alan Elliott and Sydney Pollock
2018/US
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

Rev. Franklin: I went in the cleaners one day in Detroit to pick up some clothes, and Aretha had appeared on a recent television show. And she told me, “I saw your daughter Aretha last night.” I said, “Yes? How did you like it?” She said, “It was all right. But I’ll be glad when she comes back to the church.” I said, “Listen baby, let me tell you something. If you want to know the truth, she has never left the church.”

This concert film captures a two-day session that produced the tracks for Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” album (1972), which remains the best-selling gospel album of all time as well as the best-selling album of Franklin’s career. It was filmed at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles on Jan. 13 and 14, 1972, with a crew of film and sound engineers and five 16mm cameras, all directed by Sidney Pollack. She was backed by Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir.

Unfortunately, Pollack had never made a concert film and the editing process was beset with technical difficulties. Pollack turned it over to Alan Everett in 2007 when he was dying of cancer.

If you love Aretha Franklin, as I do, you will not want to miss this. She really pulls out all the stops. Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPcrD-wD_LYy

2 Comments

Posted in Movie Reviews

Quest for Fire (1981)

Posted on June 7, 2024 | 7 comments

Quest for Fire (La guerre du feu)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Written by Gerard Brach from a book by J.H. Rosny Sr./Anthony Burgess creator of special languages/Desmond Morris creator of body language and gestures
1981/Canada/France
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube (free)

[first lines] Title Card: 80,000 years ago, man’s survival in a vast uncharted land depended on the possession of fire. / For those early humans, fire was an object of great mystery, since no one had mastered its creation. Fire had to be stolen from nature, it had to be kept alive – sheltered from wind and rain, guarded from rival tribes. / Fire was a symbol of power and a means of survival. The tribe who possessed fire, possessed life.

I was mesmerized by this very strange movie.

The film is set in the time of pre-history when Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis co-existed. The population has migrated to a climate with cold winters. Fire is essential to humans for heat, cooking, and to scare away wild animals. We are introduced to a group who disastrously loses its carefully tended fire supply to marauding Neanderthals. Three of its young men are sent out in search of more. They have many harrowing adventures.

The group battles another that has captured women from yet another tribe. One (Rae Dawn Chong) escapes and attaches her self to the men, who eventually accept her. She has a more sophisticated language and leads them back to her little village. In the course of more wandering, fire and romantic love are discovered.

I was a bit nervous going in but I totally loved this. There is no dialogue that we can understand and no subtitles. And way too many things are discovered in a very short period. I’m sure the accuracy could be picked apart in many other ways. But the filmmakers have created a world here and, once one surrenders to it, it is totally engrossing and thought-provoking. Rae Dawn Chong does an amazing job and so do her male counterparts. Recommended.

Quest for Fire won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.