New Photos Added: Dolly Parton, Cary Grant, Mae West, John Ford, WRITTEN ON THE WIND, Sexy Smokers, Pope John XXXIII, Travis Bickle, etc.
June 21st, 2008 by Scott Marks
Drew Barrymore - 2 Photos from Cat’s Eye (1985)
Howard Hawk’s Bringing Up Baby (1938) - 5 New Photos Added
Celebrity Endorsements
Travis Bickle for Underhill Records
Dolly Parton Wigs
Cary Grant - 10 New Photos Added
Howard Hawks’ Land of the Pharaohs (1955) - 1 New Photo Added
Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin & Harpo Marx
All-Star Myra Breckinridge Lobby Card (1970) - John Huston, Raquel Welch, Mae West, Rex Reed and “director” Michael Sarne
Shine a Light (2008) Berlin Film Festival premiere
Smokey the Bear - “Don’t Play With Matches” bookmark
“Which one of you criminali has a match?”
Asia Argento, Lauren Bacall, Ana Beatriz Barros, Linda Blair, Cher, Bette Davis, Francoise Dorleac & Catherine Deneuve, Sasha Grey, Rita Hayworth, Grace Jones, Carole Lombard, Virginia Madsen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Pare, Sarah Jessica Parker, Robin Wright Penn, Michelle Phillips, Nikki Reed, Anna Nicole Smith, Liv Tyler, Evan Rachel Wood, Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed,
John Ford’s The Sun Shines Bright (1953) - 7 Lobby Cards
Taxi Driver Insert Poster
Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (1956) - 8 Lobby Cards
Tags: Ads, Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant, Celebrity, Dean Martin, Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton wigs, Douglas Sirk, Drew Barrymore, Harpo Marx, Howard Hawks, Jerry Lewis, John Ford, Land of the Pharaohs, Lobby Cards, Mae West, Martin Scorsese, Myra Breckinridge, New Photos, Photo, Raquel Welch, Shaw Scope, SHINE A LIGHT, Smokey the Bear, TAXI DRIVER, The Rolling Stones, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, Travis Bickle, Vintage, Written on the WindFiled Under Image Blog
New Photos Added: Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff, THE BIG SLEEP, BLOW-UP, GENTLE BEN, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell, Frank Sinatra, Smokey the Bear, etc.
May 17th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Bogie & Bacall in Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946) - 18 Photo
Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff in THE BLACK CAT (1934) - 4 Photos
Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966) - 15 Photos
BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (1969) - 6 Photos
CARTOON ALL-STARS
Yogi Bear - 3 Photos
Jamie Lee Curtis - 29 Photos
Clint Howard and GENTLE BEN (1967) - 3 Photos
Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell in Howard Hawks’ GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953) - 59 Photos
Martin Scorsese’s SHINE A LIGHT (2008) - 15 Photos
Frank Sinatra - 51 Photos
Smokey the Bear - 3 Photos
Smoking Is Sexy
Asia Argento - 1 Photo
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Bored Mick Jagger criticizes Martin Scorsese’s direction
April 16th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Mick Jagger was bored watching Shine a Light and he blames Marty for an excessive use of close-ups.
With an ego the size of Jaggers’ it’s surprising that he didn’t demand that the entire film be shot in close-up.
“I didn’t care for it too much. Boring. It didn’t look very good.”
This coming from the guy who, according to the movie, put in almost zero pre-production time and didn’t present Marty with a song list until moments prior to showtime. Listen you fish-lipped ingrate, maybe if you gave Him something more to work with than a fossilized rocker going through the motions it would have kept you awake. Talk about bored, Jagger spent his entire time on screen looking as though he were stifling a yawn.
The backpeddling dishrag added that he is largely delighted with the new movie, but can’t help thinking Scorsese overdid things with certain lingering footage. He felt, “It was a little bit too much…But directors always like to use slow numbers (songs) to have these lingering shots.”
That’s what Marty gets for working with slow performers. I guess Scorsese lacked the visual acumen Jagger grew accustomed to working on such visually complex masterworks as Ned Kelly and Freejack.
Links:
Shine a Light review
Filed Under News
SHINE A LIGHT / Martin Scorsese (2008)
April 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks
Mick Jagger, Robert Richardson and Martin Scorsese
Shine a Light (2008)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera, Jack White, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and The President of Poland
Running Time: 122 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 and IMAX 2D
Rating: 
The main title is ushered in with a swift stroke of Keith Richards’ pool cue. This time the color of money is much greener as Marty plays groupie for hire on this standard issue concert film.
According to MySpace BFF Marty, “In many ways, whatever I do with movies and in movies began with listening to the Rolling Stones and the way that their music interacted with the world around me…That’s why I wound up putting so many of their songs in my pictures over the years. In fact my films would be unthinkable, really, without them.”
It’s impossible to speak of Mean Streets without singling out the traveling shot of a drunken Charlie gliding effortlessly around his bar to the tune of Tell Me or the opening licks of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking as the camera pans right (Leone style) across the goons imported from back East that help Nicky take control in Casino.
Nothing in Shine a Light is as illuminating as either example. The opening ten minute patch of pre-production footage held promise. A 1.85:1 image parked just below center of the enormous IMAX frame reveals a very troubled Marty doing his best to pull things together at the last minute.
Before Marty signed on, Mick came up with the idea to document the Bigger Bang tour. (Mick and the boys also act as the film’s producers.) Jagger wanted Marty to direct because as he puts it, “It’s good to start at the top.” Mick wasn’t the only Scorsese-head on the tour bus. During his rare moments of lucidity, Keith Richards claims to have studied “every one of (Scorsese’s) movies.”
After going on tour with the band Scorsese said, “Every time I saw them perform - sometimes further back, sometimes they’d actually bring me on stage - I became more and more obsessed with getting it on film. We did talk about making an official tour film but at a certain point, I thought making something more intimate would be more suited to me as a filmmaker and would facilitate a more personal connection between the audience and the band.” Eager to stuff high-paying asses in as many seats as possible, no intimate venues were included in the Stones fully booked tour schedule. While on the road, Mick is kind enough to occasionally check in via telephone with an increasingly agitated Scorsese. (On one end Jagger listens to Chopin while Marty tunes in to, what else, the Rolling Stones.)
According to the press notes Marty happily acquiesced, but an item on Starpulse (brought to my attention by Emulsion Compulsion lifer and fellow Scorsese savant Matt Wilson) says the IMAX blow up was done “much to the annoyance of Scorsese.” With IMAX tickets priced slightly higher and the potential of opening in a record 93 big screen theatres, Jagger the auteur stood firm: “It’ll be very large. After looking at all the options, Marty decided he wanted to make this small intimate movie. And I said the laugh is on Marty in the end, because we’d blown it up on this huge IMAX thing.”
Jagger’s meddling didn’t stop at format selection. During a dress rehearsal at New York’s Beacon Theatre, Mick questions the necessity of placing moving cameras on the stage for band mates or roadies to stumble over. (As if to underscore Marty’s lack of authorship, the last voice we hear after the closing credits is Jagger’s repeating “So how’s the audience gonna’ be with all these cameras?”) Removing tracking shots from Marty’s vocabulary is similar to asking Keith Richards to play with one hand. How dare Jagger attempt to pluck the brush from Picasso’s mitt! The look on the director’s face when neophyte Mick breaches the subject earns the film’s biggest laugh.
On the night of the show one can sense the agida eating away at the lining of Marty’s intestines as Bill and Hillary Clinton’s considerable entourage rob Him of valuable prep time with their endless requests for pre-show photos with the band. Who in their right mind wants a snapshot standing next to an eyeliner-wearing monitor lizard when they can pose with Marty?
All Marty wants is a playlist. Is that too much for a director to ask? He took days storyboarding each number in The Last Waltz and now he isn’t handed the evening’s selections until moments before the concert begins.
Once the band takes to the stage the image enlarges (ala Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) to fit the floor-to-ceiling expanse. With Marty safely tucked away from view, a bank of cameras dutifully records the band’s every move and the film becomes a shoot-now-figure-it-out-later affair. Hey, it worked for Cassavettes.
In Mary Pat Kelly’s Martin Scorsese: A Journey, musician Robbie Robertson recalls an argument that erupted during a discussion of how to film The Band’s song The Weight in The Last Waltz. Cameraman Michael Chapman argued that the number told “a very Protestant story, it’s Baptist.” After learning that Robertson’s impetus for writing the song was Luis Bunuel’s Nazarin, Marty insisted that it was a Catholic vision and as such should be lit in purple and yellow hues.
Apparently no heated polemics ensued while canning Shine A Light. When the band strikes up Sympathy for the Devil, everything goes red.
Attempts to make the film a career-spanning documentary by inserting archival footage add more irony than resonance. In an early television interview Mick speculates that the band should have at least one more year at the top. And audiences are sure to howl at a 1972 clip in which Dick Cavett asks Jagger, “Can you do at 60 what you do now?”
Given a PG-13 rating, the film manages to defy the MPAA mandate of two f**ks and you’re R. I counted three, including one added to the band’s cover version of The Temptations’ standard Just My Imagination. Technically, there should have been four f’s, but for some inexplicable reason their performance of Some Girls no longer includes the lyrical footnote, “Black girls just want to get f**ked all night.”
Three special guest stars are asked to join the Stones on stage. Let’s draw for straws to see who tells Christina Aguilera and Jack White they can’t sing. Buddy Guy’s towering presence during Champagne and Reefer makes the Stones look puny and absurd by comparison and there is one intense close-up of his percolating face that will be studied in depth when the DVD come out.
This is His first theatrical release since Raging Bull not to be aided and abetted by editor Thelma Schoonmaker. (David Tedeschi, who cut No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and received a “special thanks” on Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows took Thelma’s place.) The by-the-numbers approach to documentary filmmaking probably would have left her comatose in the editing suite.
It’s not a bad performance film by any means, it’s just not in the same league as The Last Waltz. Not even close. (And why didn’t Marty just go all the way and make it a 3D tribute to Hitchcock and Andre de Toth?)
Fans of the Stones are bound to walk away happy. This is a much sharper piece of documentary filmmaking than Ladies and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones, but a safe distance from Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil or The Maysles Brothers’ Gimme’ Shelter. (It’s interesting to note that Albert Maysles receives a “Camera in Hand” credit on Shine A Light.)
It’s not that I dislike the band (admittedly the last Rolling Stones album I purchased was Some Girls) it’s just that Scorsese is my personal Christ. (Frankly, with the exception of a playful exchange between Mick and a busty backup singer, the singer looks bored stiff.) After seeing the trailer, which prominently features the director, I half expected a film that was as much about its creator as its subject. (If they can give Keith Richards a solo number, Marty should have been allowed to sing Stupid Girl.) I resent some aging rocker with terminal trout-pout calling the shots no matter how much He claims to have been influenced by him.
Once Marty vanishes to make way for the music, Scorsese acolytes will have to cool their heels for almost two hours before finding a signature moment. After the encores, the camera assumes an exiting Jaggers’ point-of-view. The back door swings wide to reveal Marty clearing a path to the band’s waiting limo. Directly addressing the DP Marty commands, “Up! Up!” Suddenly, the camera takes flight as we soar over a CG mockup of the New York skyline and fade out just after the moon is replaced by the band’s trademark tongue. As magical as it it, the end can’t possibly justify the means, but for sixty seconds I got satisfaction.
Separated at Birth: Ronnie Wood & Charlie Callas
“Shine a Light” Exclusive Footage and Interviews!
Shine a Light: Original Soundtrack
Tags: Charlie Callas, CHARLIE WATTS, Concert Film, Documentary, Film Review, IMAX, KEITH RICHARDS, Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Mick_Jagger, Ronnie Wood, SHINE A LIGHT, The Rolling Stones, Video
Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical
Complete final press notes for Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones documentary SHINE A LIGHT
March 8th, 2008 by Scott Marks
PARAMOUNT CLASSICS in Association with
CONCERT PRODUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL
and
SHANGRI-LA ENTERTAINMENT
Presents
A Martin Scorsese Picture
Starring Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood.
The film is directed by Martin Scorsese. The producers are Victoria Pearman, Michael Cohl, Zane Weiner and Steve Bing. The executive producers are Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood. The co-executive producer is Jane Rose. The director of photography is Robert Richardson, ASC. The film is edited by David Tedeschi. The concert sets are designed by Mark Fisher. The concert lighting is designed by Patrick Woodroffe.
The film is being distributed in the U.S. by Paramount Classics and sold internationally by Fortissimo Films. This film has been rated PG-13 for brief strong language, drug references and smoking.
Synopsis
On April 4th, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker and the world’s greatest rock n’ roll band will unite to bring audiences the year’s most extraordinary musical film event, “Shine A Light,” to theaters everywhere.
Martin Scorsese’s concert documentary “Shine A Light” will show the world the Rolling Stones as they’ve never been seen before. Filmed at the famed Beacon Theatre in New York City in Fall 2006, Scorsese assembled a legendary team of cinematographers to capture the raw energy of the legendary band.
Oscar®-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (“The Aviator,” “JFK”) supervised the camera team comprised of several highly acclaimed directors of photography, including Oscar® winner John Toll (“The Last Samurai,” “Braveheart”), Oscar® winner Andrew Lesnie (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “King Kong”), Oscar® nominee Stuart Dryburgh (“The Piano,” “The Painted Veil”), Oscar® winner Robert Elswit (“There Will Be Blood,” “Magnolia,” “Good Night and Good Luck.”), Oscar® nominee Emmanuel Lubezki (“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Sleepy Hollow”) and Ellen Kuras (“Summer of Sam,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”). The film was edited by David Tedeschi, who most recently worked with Scorsese on the acclaimed Bob Dylan documentary “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.”
Produced and financed by Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Entertainment and longtime Rolling Stones tour promoter Michael Cohl’s Concert Promotions International, the film was produced by Victoria Pearman, Michael Cohl, Zane Weiner and Steve Bing. The executive producers are Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, with Jane Rose serving as co-executive producer.
(This goes on for days…)
Continue reading Complete final press notes for Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones documentary SHINE A LIGHT
Filed Under News
Vintage photo of Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones poised to conquer “Teensville” (1964)
March 6th, 2008 by Scott Marks
In anticipation of Marty’s Shine a Light, I dug out this extremely rare photo of The Rolling Stones arriving in London in 1964. The dyslexic caption writer obviously didn’t know his “Watts” from his “Richard.”
“FOLLOW THE LEADERS
LONDON: SOMETHING HAD TO FOLLOW THE BEATLES, BUT NOBODY EXPECTED THEIR SUCCESSORS TO BE SHAGGIER THAN THE LIVERPOOL ROCK N’ ROLL STARS. HERE ARE ‘THE ROLLING STONES,’ THE NEWEST RAGE IN BRITISH TEENSVILLE. WHEN THE BEATLES BECAME ‘RESPECTABLE,’ THE FANS HAD TO FIND ANOTHER WILD GROUP TO ADORE. LED BY MICK JAGGER (CENTER), THE MEMBERS OF THE NEW POP SINGING GROUP ARE SCHEDULED TO VISIT THE U. S. BEGINNING JUNE 2ND (AREN’T WE LUCKY?). THE ROLLING STONES ARE SHOWN HERE AT LONDON AIRPORT AFTER THEIR RETURN FROM A RECENT EDINBURGH ENGAGEMENT. THE ROLLING STONES ARE: (LEFT TO RIGHT) BILL WYMAN; CHARLIE WATTS; JAGGER; BRIAN JONES; AND KEITH RICHARD.”
5/29/64
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