..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Shine A Light
Plus Young @ Heart,
Smart People,
and The Forbidden Kingdom

Anyone who loves movies or rock 'n roll, or both, and doesn't get excited at the prospect of Shine a Light -- the new concert film with the Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese -- may cheat themselves out of a tremendous experience and a knockout show. This is the incandescent record of a live 2006 concert at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre on the "Bigger Bang" tour -- thrilling and vibrant and knock-you-on-your ass brilliant.

No one plays rock and blues with more lustiness, gusto and power than the now-in-their-60s Stones: Mick Jagger, the tireless perpetual motion sex machine front man; Keith Richards, the wasted-looking, devil-fingered genius guitarist; Ronny Wood, his virtuoso reed-thin guitar buddy; and Charlie Watts, the stoic peerless calm-at-the-eye-of-the-storm drummer.

And no one records and captures rock with more sensitivity and visual panache than Scorsese -- the nervous fast-talking rock n' roll movie master. Marty edited part of the 1970 epic Woodstock at the start of his career, recently knocked off that stinging Bob Dylan rock doc No Direction Home and, in The Last Waltz, with the Band and their all-star friends (including Dylan), he crafted a real gem and one of Shine's few rivals as a rock concert film; both of them are movies that put you right on stage, hurl you into the heart and soul of the music, start you up, get your heart pumping, zap you, unzip you and send shivers down your spine.

Neither Marty nor the Stones disappoints us in Shine the Light -- and that's putting it mildly.

Scorsese's director of photography, as in The Aviator, is the white-haired, fiery-eyed Robert Richardson (who often works with another Stone). And backing up Richardson is a whole hall of fame of fellow cinematographers, including John Toll, Andrew Lesnie, Robert Elswit, Ellen Kuras, Stuart Dryburgh and Emmanuel Lubezki. With that team of pro's pros on call, Scorsese uses the intimate shooting techniques he mastered in The Last Waltz. He keeps the cameras roaming the stage like best friends or co-conspirators, while the editing (David Tedeschi) pulls you in further and deeper. The movie seemingly shows us everything we'd want to see (the music, the camaraderie, the little back-squeezes and wry smiles), and it punches across both the thrill of listening to the concert and of making and living that music on stage.

Is Shine a Light the best rock concert movie ever? It's damn close. Stop Making Sense, by Jonathan Demme out of Talking Heads, is a frequent and worthy candidate for all-time concert movie honors. But Sense doesn't move you and shake you like this one. Neither does U23D, a plausible and more recent candidate that also pales next to Shine a Light.

I'm really partial to the best of the Stones' other concert movie gigs -- especially the Maysles Brothers' searing 1970 cinema verite classic Gimme Shelter and Michael Cohl, Julien Temple and company's huge screen blowout The Rolling Stones Live the Max -- but they're a step or three behind Shine as well. Woodstock and The Last Waltz are its only real competitors.

The inevitable questions arise, since the Stones are all now in their 60s: Could this be The Last Time? (I hope not.) And is Shine a Light an old man's movie? Not really, though it definitively shatters the myth that rock is a young man's game. The guys here wear their wrinkles and lines like badges. They can still boogie and scream up a storm.
And God, they can still play and sing. Richards, the one we've been worrying about for four decades, rises from his Chuck Berry-Muddy Waters inferno once again and does another variation on his famous signature hey-I'm-still-alive greeting "Good to be here! Good to be anywhere!" by turning it into "Great to see you! Great to see anybody!" before proceeding to out-play and out-grin (and even for a moment, on "You Got the Silver" out-front) any half-dozen modern day pop tarts or guitar heroes.

As for indefatigable health nut Jagger, he once again lead-sings and sprints through a good part of rock music's all time best songwriters' catalogue, the Jagger-Richards file. (Sorry -- Lennon-McCartney, Harrison and Starr quit too early). From "Start Me Up" to "Satisfaction," he jumps and jack-flashes, out-sings and out-dances everyone in sight or memory -- even, in some ways, the younger Mick. Somehow, this no-fat-on-these-bones 63-year-old impresses you more in his latter years.

Midway through, when Jagger traverses a wall of blazing light on stage, as the drums roll and pound for "Sympathy for the Devil," he seems to be passing through both Heaven and Hell, to some place better than either. He's the Stone that, like Sisyphus' rock, never stops rolling.
Am I forgetting Charlie Watts, the great Stone face with the magic hands, Buster Keaton's drum-pounding heir, the architect of the beat? Or Ron Wood, the fiercely intent guitar man/painter spilling out rivers of melody? Not much chance of that. So much guts and energy and great roaring music pours off the Beacon stage from the Stones and their top-chop backup band and backup singers (including primo bassist, Miles Davis veteran and Bill Wyman replacement Darryl Jones), that it seems a sin and a stupidity to run across the old dumb chestnut that rock is the musical province of youth and rebellion and the current Stones are superannuated corporatized pop geezers, ripe for exposure and hype-deflation by rock-crit whippersnappers or sodden star writers. (Sure, sure.)

Jagger a fossil? Richards a fig? Charlie a fogey? Ronnie a relic? Crap and double crap. Rock is not intrinsically and exclusively the music of youth, community and rebellion. That's a dubious seminar notion meant to scare up a little grad school respectability. At its core, rock is more the music of getting laid and getting high -- sometimes, of course, in youthful, communal, rebellious ways.

Does that seem to trivialize the music? It shouldn't. What's more important in life -- and to life -- than getting laid? Who makes better accompanying records for lovemaking than the Stones? The rise of rock (and the Stones) paralleled and mirrored the Civil Rights and Vietnam eras. But the songs and their singers never had to be calls to revolution or social conscience to win us over, though "Salt of the Earth" and "Street Fighting Man" still seem pretty good ones. The Stones greatest songs -- including "Satisfaction," "Jumping Jack Flash," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Start Me Up," "Brown Sugar" and "Honky Tonk Women" (all on the set-list here) and others are mostly riveting, raunchy, primal turn-ons. That's why they're great.

Bill and Hillary Clinton -- Bill was the evening's birthday boy emcee -- were present at this concert. So was Ahmet Ertegun, the grand impresario of Atlantic, who died in an accident on concert night and has the film dedicated to him. Now, both the Clintons seem long-time Stones fans. (So is Barack Obama, who, when asked on TV to choose between the Beatles and the Stones, voted the Stones ticket.) And that shows something about the band's constituency, from Boomers on. No matter whom they share a stage with -- and the other guests here include famed youngsters Jack White and Christina Aguilera (grinding away with Mick) and magisterial bluesman Buddy Guy, (who gets Keith's guitar for a trophy) -- the once bad boy Stones always seem the real royalty.

And more. They can still get it on. They still make us happy. When they sing and play, they're the ones who, like Dylan in that transcendent scene in Scorsese's other rock concert masterpiece, seem forever young.

SHINE A LIGHT [Four stars]
Directed by Martin Scorsese; director of photography Robert Richardson; camera in hand Albert Maysles, additional photography b John Toll, Andrew Lesnie, Stuart Dryburgh, Emmanuel Lubezki, Ellen Kuras, Robert Elswit, Declan Quinn and others; edited by David Tedeschi, music by The Rolling Stones, Frederic Chopin, Muddy Waters and others; produced by Victorian Pearman, Michael Cohl, Zach Weiner. With Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts.



OTHER NEW MOVIES

Three stars
Young @ Heart (U.S.; Stephen Walker)
After you've seen Shine a Light, this is a nice companion piece about rock music and aging. It follows the sometimes heartening, sometimes crisis-ridden rehearsals and performances of a very congenial New England chorus of elderly singers whose members sing rock at its rawest and new wavi-est, from James Brown to Sonic Youth. It's amusing and, at times, moving, especially because -- be forewarned -- not all the members make it to the end.

Three stars
The Forbidden Kingdom (U.S. Rob Minkoff)
There's a long joke sequence in Kentucky Fried Movie which melds together Bruce Lee and The Wizard of Oz. So does this sumptuous adventure fantasy from the co-director of The Lion King (good) and the Stuart Little movies (Yecch). Michael Angarano, a kung fu movie lover with machismo problems, winds up in ancient China, on a Dorothy-like quest accompanied by Jackie Chan (very charming as a drunken master) and Jet Li (very stoic as a monk who's also a monkey). Bingbing Li is the white-haired wicked witch. The script could have been better, but Chan, Li and the battle scenes make this one fun.

Two stars
Smart People (U.S.; Noam Murro)
Dennis Quaid is a nasty college Engish professor, Sarah Jessica Parker is his somewhat smitten ex-student, Thomas Haden Church is his pot-loving adopted brother and Ellen Page is Quaid's snotty, arrogant Young Republican high school daughter. Here's the kind of well-cast intelligent film about smart people and real problems we're always asking for. Unfortunately we got it, but it's no Sideways; it's drab looking and not very funny. And it might be better if scene-stealers Church and Page were the main couple.

- Michael Wilmington
April 10, 2008

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