Back up (or move on)! Morgan Neville's 20 FEET FROM STARDOM shows the life of backup singers

If you were lucky enough to catch the little-seen documen-tary titled THIS TIME, either on DVD (it made its debut in 2011) or the following year when it had a very limited theatrical re-lease, you're already one-up on this year's popular docu-mentary 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, which arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this coming week. While the former film de-tails the lives & near-careers of a group of hopefuls trying to reach the pinnacle of their respective music professions (rock, gospel, cabaret, and variations) or in some cases make a comeback from their earlier success/subsequent disappearance, 20 Feet... deals with mostly the career/plight of some back-up singers who've worked with the very best (The Rolling Stones, Elvis, etc) and who in some cases are hoping to light out on their own, though in another -- the whop-pingly talented Darlene Love -- are just trying for a kind of comeback.

Directed by Morgan Neville, shown at right, the movie is full of music and rhythm, heartache and semi-triumph, as it recounts the past and present and allows us a glimpse of the maybe future of some of these amazing singers. Ms Love's career, in particular, is given a large swath of time and exposure -- from her misuse by the crazy and talented Phil Spector to her near-rise, obscurity (cleaning houses in Los Angeles!) and resurgence. One of the ultimate cabaret experiences of TrustMovies' life came some years back when he saw a show (at the now defunct Fein-stein's at the Regency) of Ms Love paired with Freda Payne (yes, love & pain!). Both women were terrific, but Love was off-the-charts amazing. That voice, the energy, the absolute focus and freedom of voice, feeling, movement this woman possesses!

Neville's movie -- via interviews with stars, from Springsteen to Jagger to Midler and back, as well as work-a-day musicians and these young (or not so) women themselves -- shows us both how talented these performers are and how difficult it is to go from being a terrific backup singer to breaking out into one's own sphere of stardom.

As the movie moves along, you become aware that one young woman -- Judith Hill, below -- is going to keep attempting this, while another -- the equally,

perhaps even more talented  Lisa Fischer, shown above, may just stay put, in back of the "stars." And yet it is also clear that this position -- the titular 20 feet from stardom -- ain't so bad in many regards. The singers are hugely prized by some of the stars (Jagger is effusive in his praise) and audiences knows and love them, too.

The movie also lets us hear from performers like the great Claudia Lennear (below) and Merry Clayton, along with Táta Vega and The Waters family -- all of whom have had fine careers. Even if some of them didn't, perhaps, maximize their potential, all of them have a lot to show for their time in (or at least near) the sun.

It's Ms Love, however (shown below), who seems to hold things together here, whether she's reminiscing or belting out her signature Christmas number. As the credits roll, you'll probably stay in your seat, tapping your toe to the rhythm and maybe even singing along. If the movie doesn't quite jell in the way that This Time manages, or probe as deeply as it might (it's mostly a feel-good fest), it succeeds in giving us a good, musical time.

20 Feet from Stardom -- running 91 minutes, from RADiUS/TWC, and appearing on DVD and Blue-ray via Anchor Bay Entertainment, hits the streets this Tuesday, January 14.

The Wainwrights honor mom with Lunson's SING ME the SONGS THAT SAY I LOVE YOU

It's an odd but interesting experience to first become acquainted with a songwriter/
performer via the memorial concert that honors her life and death. Yet that's how it was for TrustMovies, as he watched the new musical documentary SING ME THE SONGS THAT SAY I LOVE YOU: A CONCERT FOR KATE McGARRIGLE. He'd heard McGarrigle's name over time but did not know she was the mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, but he had also not heard any of her songs that he was aware of. So the movie proved to be a kind of simultaneous introduction and good-bye.

Speaking quite honestly, it took me some time during this 108-minute film -- co-written (with the Wainwright siblings), directed and edited by Lian Lunson (shown at left) -- to warm up to the subject and her music. I finally did, more and more as the documentary moved on, and I am very glad I saw it. I believe that Sing/Love/Kate (as I'll call it for the sake of space) will prove something major for McGarrigle's many fans and might bring in some new ones like me, if they can be persuaded to see it. Ms Lunson has shot her film and the concert from which it is mostly taken in both color and black-and-white. Initially, it seems that color is used for the concert footage and black-and-white for the interviews and archival footage. But this division eventually crumbles, as black-and-white is used more and more often throughout.

Archival footage -- moving pictures and stills, even a letter from Daddy -- are shown and sometimes spoken, often against the music and song that McGarrigle created, and between the performance of the many musical numbers, we hear the assembled parties talk about Kate and her life and her music. (I realize that fans and friends will undoubtedly know who all these people are, but I wish that Ms Lunson has identified them more often as her movie unfurled.)

Evidently, this is one big musical family, where everyone was expected to join in, and some of the remembrances, especially by Rufus, are odd, charming and funny. Despite all this, the movie, so far as regards Kate McGarrigle, comes across as surprisingly impersonal. At the end of it, I had little more knowledge of the woman than I had at the beginning, though I at least have begun to know her music. This may be because the filmmakers already knew all this information, as do probably her many friends and fans. But movie audiences with less history could have used a boost.

Still, as this is basically a concert film, it's the music that counts most, and here, the movie hits it in spades. There are songs not only written by Kate McGarrigle but by others in the family (Heart Like a Wheel), and the performers who sing them include not only family members such as Rufus, Martha and Kate's sisters Anna and Jane but friends like Emmylou Harris and Norah Jones (above) -- not to mention a surprise visit and song from Jimmy Fallon and another wonderful performer who had me asking, "Is that a man or a woman?" When the end credits rolled I realized who this was: Justin Vivian Bond.

Some of the songs, to my taste were were a little tiresome and repetitive (you can often complete Kate's lyrics upon hearing the song for the first time), but others seemed quite wonderful -- Mendocino, Proserpina (the final song that Kate wrote, a lovely rendition of the Persephone myth), and that terrific song by Ms/Mr. Bond. Some of the harmonies we hear are simply gorgeous, and each performer -- family member or friend -- has his/her own distinctive style, with Rufus' coming through perhaps the strongest.

This fellow (shown above with Martha and further above, solo) has always struck me as something of a drama queen, but seeing as how this is all about his late mother, why not? Tears flow rather copiously from many of the performers throughout the film, until the concert doubles as a kind of musical "wake." And the story told here of Kate's final time is undeniably moving -- as is the final photo we see of the artist as a young woman, below.

Sing/Love/Kate -- a Canadian film via Horse Pictures that runs 108 minutes -- opens today for a two-week stint at New York City's Film Forum. Elsewhere? I would hope so -- certainly around Canada, if not the USA. I can't find the web site for Horse Pictures to check further, so if any of you know where that can be found, inform me.

Daddy Dearest and his all-American musical kids--FAMILY BAND: THE COWSILLS STORY

You never really know, do you? The family of musical wonders from the 1960s known as The Cowsills --  upon whom the hit TV show The Partridge Family was more-or-less based and who many members of my gener-ation imagined to be a goody-two-shoes band that would maybe take up the mantle of Lawrence Welk -- were actually leading, except for the music that probably saved them, a life of hell-on-earth. This was due, as we quickly discover from the new documentary FAMILY BAND: THE COWSILLS STORY, to their wretched father, Bud Cowsill, a man who should never have had children or, in fact, have married, or, let's just say it, have been born.

If it sounds like I may be exaggerating a bit, wait. As this sad and surprising docu-mentary unfolds, you, too, will come to loathe the actions and behavior of this "Daddy Dearest." While the film seems to have been mostly made at the behest of one of Bud's sons, Bob Cowsill, who, like many of the family members, is still singing and playing his heart out, it appears, according to the press kit on the film, that it was instead the director, Louise Palanker (above), who was a childhood fan of the group, who sought out Bob and then the rest of the family with the request to make a documentary about them. We're glad she did.

TrustMovies doesn't think that the much-used term schadenfreude (pleasure derived from the misfortune of others), though it often does apply to how we look at and feel about celebrities, works very well with this particular family. After watching Family Band, you can only want the best for this crew. Listening to their music now, in their adulthood, may make you, as it did me, feel that we misjudged the group, and that they were a hell of a lot better at what they did than many of us were willing to admit at the time. That's they, above (in the early days, with mother Barbara just right of center) and below, more currently.

The Cowsills' mom and dad, one of their progeny explains early on, "were kids having kids." They married young, and whenever Bud, who was in the military and away much of the year, would return, mom would get pregnant and drop another baby until there were seven children in all. They evidently got their musical talent from mom's side; dad was the driving force behind their success -- and unfortunately also behind their too-early destruction as a group.

The story of how a quartet of the kids hoped to maybe become the new Beatles -- and then were joined by another brother and (much to their horror) by their mom, then finally by their little sister -- is quite a tale. How and why one brother was kept from joining the band and forced into the military is another such -- one that haunts the movie and the family members throughout.

There is plenty of wonderful footage of the early days (appearances on Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson and the like), a few talking heads (such as mom Partridge -- Shirley Jones, above -- and music folk who helped the kids along, until Dad always got in the way), and reminiscences by the band members (and other family members, some of them quite funny). There are also a number of surprises (you might even call them shocks) along the way; the less said about them, the better, so as not to ruin your movie experience.

Finally -- and despite the experience of growing up with a dreadful dad (at far right, below) and a mom who constantly looked the other way, and even though, as they tell us now, after all that early success, these kids nonetheless began their adult life in debt -- the movie is a hopeful one. This group did love music. And, damn, but they were (and still are) good at it!

Family Band: The Cowsills Story, running just under 90 minutes, has been picked up by Showtime and will make its premiere on the cable network this Wednesday, March 6.

Kitsch transformed (maybe transcended): Roberta Grossman's docu, HAVA NAGILA

Not being Jewish (although he married a Jew, and hence has a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandkids, and has now also lived with his male Jewish companion for nearly a quarter century), TrustMovies has long considered that old standard (as we used to call 'em) Hava Nagila as one of the things that utterly defines kitsch. Played at every Jewish wedding and Bar or Bat Mitzvah that he's attended over the years, the song immediately calls to mind every Jewish cliché ever seen, spoken or thought. (Fiddler on the Roof, for me, produces the same kitschy feeling. Rags, I believe, is by far the better musical.) Well, some people simply revel in cliché (and call it tradition). Yet it may not only be those people who cotton to the new documentary -- HAVA NAGILA (THE MOVIE) -- which is all about the history and provenance of this fabled song.

The director, Roberta Grossman (shown at right) and writer, Sophie Sartain, have their tongues in cheek from the start. They understand what they're dealing with (they even includes a section involving folk who hate the song, and there plenty of these -- Jews and non-Jews alike). After getting an interesting opinion from one of their talking heads that they feel a need to counter, they explains that "We'll have to ask someone else." The next interviewee is identified simply as Someone Else. (This sort of thing could get kitschy, too, but the filmmakers don't overdo it.)

Our little song, it turns out, began a couple of centuries ago in the Ukraine, and has -- as the writer & director put it -- now made the journey from Ukraine to YouTube. The music preceded the lyrics by quite some time; in fact, exactly who wrote those lyrics is in dispute. (Grossman/Sartain give us both sides of the dispute -- it's fascinating, all right -- and they seem to feel we should maybe allow room for both in our final judgment.)

In a section called Hava Meets Hora, we see how and why dance is inextricably connected to the song. We also learn how and when Hava emigrated from Eastern Europe to Palestine, as well as its important usage during the creation of the state of Israel.

When the celebs start appearing -- Leonard Nimoy, Harry Belafonte, Danny Kaye, Glen Campbell, Connie Francis, the Klezmatics, Regina Spektor -- if you weren't hooked already, you soon will be.  Listening to Belafonte (below), in particular, talk about what the song means to him (then seeing him sing it with Kaye) goes a long way toward kitsch-reduction.

This is a lightweight movie, for sure, but in its scope and reach (albeit on a much less intellectual level), it does for Hava Nagila, something on the order of what Joseph Dorman's recent and wonderful documentary did for Sholem Aleichem. It gives us history served up as genuine entertainment, as well as yet another enjoyable walk down memory lane.

I'll probably never again attend a Jewish event at which the song is played that this little movie -- and what I learned from it -- doesn't immediately pop up in my mind and put a smile on my face. Thank you, Ms Grossman and Ms Sartain.

Hava Nagila (The Movie), running just 73 minutes, opens today, Friday, March 1, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and on March 15, will hit the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Royal, Noho 7, Town Center 5, Playhouse 7 -- and Orange Country, too.

PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE: Stephen Kessler's celebrity doc works on all levels

How rare is it to watch a documentary about a celebrity that manages to avoid just about every pitfall in the book? The beauty of Stephen Kessler's documentary about the diminutive song-writer/singer/enter-tainer/celebrity Paul Williams, out now on DVD and elsewhere, rests in its willingness to tackle its subject every which way -- including the manner in which the filmmaker wants to tell it and the way Williams himself insists on it -- resul-ting in a documentary that adheres to the rules (this is no hybrid narrative/docu mash-up) and ends up seeming extraordinarily honest about, well, everything it touches.

The filmmaker (shown at right) doesn't touch everything, mind you -- Mr. Williams won't go into certain subjects, which is his call, and he flat out argues with the director about certain other ones -- but what the documentary does encompass, it makes genuine and in-the-moment. And it gives us a remarkably rich look at a very talented celebrity, then and now, and lets the man (and us) muse on the rewards, drawbacks and meaning of this kind of in-the-spotlight life.

The surprise here, and it is quite a surprise, is how Mr. Williams looks at his past career, his present one (yes, he's still going fairly strong), and what has happened in between. He turns out to be not just a talented guy but a smart one, too, and some of the things he has to tell us are more than a little thoughtful and rewarding. My favorite is his off-the-cuff remark about his current (and, I believe, third wife): "She got the man that the former two wives imagined that they had gotten." Only with a lot of growth and change, however, has the younger man becomes his older and more responsible counterpart.

What about those terrific songs Williams wrote, and all the famous celebrities with whom he was constantly rubbing shoulders? Ah, they're here, and we get to revel in those 70s TV shows and hair styles, and the smart, often touching lyrics and memorable tunes the composer came up with. The movie is impressionistic, as it jumps from this to that and the next big thing, and although Kessler is a huge fan of Williams, the latter never allows the former to gush. Hence the tone, which is admiring (hell, there's a lot to like about this guy and his work) is kept nicely in check by the subject of that admiration.

As documentaries about celebrities (particularly living celebs) go, PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE, may be the one to beat. It just about perfectly balances nostalgia with now, and at 86 eminently watchable minutes, it's a model of intelligent concision and inclusion. It also demonstrates how a filmmaker can approach and work with a celebrity to produce something of which both can be proud -- and viewers can bask in and learn from.

The documentary is available now on DVD, VOD and various digital sources. Or you can download it here.

ORNETTE: Made in America--Shirley Clarke's experimental look at an experimental jazz musician

To watch Shirley Clarke's ORNETTE: Made in America today, some 27 years after its debut at the 1985 TIFF, is to realize just how experimental a filmmaker Clarke really was. Much of what we see on screen is what many new documentaries are now doing -- over a quarter of a century later. Using no narration as such (the press material tells us that the filmmaker used Coleman's symphony Skies of America as her underlying script, but this does not really compute: narrative can be verbal, even visual, but symphonic is a bit of a stretch), Clarke simply drops us into things and we begin to learn about this musician, his life and his music -- on the fly, as it were.

Ms Clarke, shown at left, was quite a woman, and this is now the second of her films, after The Connection, to be restored and released via Milestone Films and the ongoing Project Shirley. Its subject, the American jazz great Ornette Coleman, is still with us, even though Clarke died, a victim of Alzheimer's, in 1997. Her movie melds, among other things, present and past, dream and reality, fathers and sons, full orchestra and jazz band into a portrait that turns out to be not really one of the man or of his music but a kind of kaleidoscope vision of creativity and life as it emanates from the very odd personage of Coleman himself.

I wish we could have heard, really heard, more of Ornette's music here. Even though we're given quite a bit of it during the film, Clark's visuals, in several scenes, at least -- insistent, preening, all over the place -- prevent us from concentrating on the music in any serious way. The filmmaker was probably trying to find a visual equivalent to Coleman's work, but if anything some of these visuals obfuscate more than they render clear.

As for Coleman himself, you certainly don't come away from the movie saying, "Whoa -- now I really know this guy (or his music)!" But rather, "What a strange and interesting fellow he seems to be, what a life he probably led, and how I'd like to hear more of his music." In its way, it's kind of an appropriate, if weird, introduction to the musician because it allows you to experience how very strange he and his music are. (Other jazz musicians are said to have simply walked off the stage whenever Coleman would appear on it.) Simply listening to the fellow's little riff on castration/circumcision and man/male will probably rattle your brain bizarrely for some time to come.

Clarke concentrates on the movie's singular "event": a performance of Coleman's symphony to open the new cultural center in Fort Worth (the musician's home town), Caravan of Dreams. Clarke uses the orchestral part of the score more heavily, I think, that she does the Jazz Band's contribution, and she uses this as underscoring for the tale she tells. (The orchestra and the band, at least as shown here, though sharing the same stage seem oddly un-integrated both in terms of the music we hear and what we see: the band is black, the orchestra white.) All this makes for interesting, non-linear storytelling that, back when the film was first released, might have proven a little difficult for audiences to follow. Today, after all the changes we've seen to the documentary form, her film looks surpri-singly contemporary but perhaps now not so hard to keep up with.

Some of the famous people who enter the film and Coleman's life include William Burroughs (above, center), Buckminster Fuller, and George Russell, a composer and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. The last has this to say a propos Coleman's work: "The West has always thought of music as entertainment. It doesn't understand how it also can contribute ideas & philosophy."

What proves most difficult about the movie are some of Clarke's would-be snazzy visuals and editing techniques (occurring particularly heavily in the Buckminster Fuller section). These are jumpy, repetitive and tiresome and do nothing for one's enjoyment or understanding. They don't even properly reflect Coleman's music, syncopated as it is. They simply call attention to themselves, so we wait until the filmmaker has gotten this out of her system. Fortunately, it doesn't take too long.

What the movie might do is send viewers out to look for and listen to this musician's work. Unlike most of the Clarke oeuvre, this documentary is also more modern in that it lasts only 78 minutes, just about a half-hour shorter than much of her full-length work. Given the style in which she has chosen to present the film, this shorter running time seems appropriate. Ornette: Made in America opens tomorrow, Friday August 31, here in New York City at the IFC Center.

MUNDO ALAS--performing arts & the handicapped--opens in hope of Oscar bid

Prepare to be greatly moved, probably in spite of your-self. Here's a documentary involving a large group of handicapped performing artists joining together to tour their country -- Argentina -- and perhaps open their countrymen's minds to... change, among other things.  MUNDO ALAS, which I believe translates Winged World, is the name of their tour -- and of the documentary about it and them.  Filmed over time by three directors, chief among them León Gieco (shown, center, below), Argentina's most important folk-rock singer/songwriter, whose idea the tour was, the movie was also directed by Fernando Molnar (below, left) and Sebastián Schindel (below, right), both of whom have more film-making experience than Gieco (though the latter, with his performing artists, provides the heart of the movie).

Distributed by the appropriately named Outsider Pictures, the film pulls us into the lives of these "others" by introducing them, their situation and their skills individually, before uniting them for their tour, via that big pink bus (shown on the poster, top), through the Argentine provinces. These are -- to use that Biblical phrase -- the blind, the halt, the withered and more: Alejandro, a young man with motor problems who plays the guitar, and Carina a blind young woman who sings. Another young man, Demián (below), wheel-

chair-bound, shows us how he negotiates stairs, drives his car, and finally partners a gorgeous ballet dancer while still in his chair.

A group of Down Syndrome men and women dance the tango, while Francisco, a paraplegic who is surely, in ways simply physical, the most needy of them all, plays his harmonica extraordinarily well.  "The only thing I need is for you not to treat me as a handicapped person but as a musician," comes the statement that hovers over the entire film. This will seems difficult initially but becomes easier as the documentary progresses.

The filmmakers give us first the idea of the film, allowing us to get used to it slowly via each individual that we meet. We see his or her home and/or workplace (yes, some of these people hold down good jobs), then we see a portion of their music or dance, and finally their tour begins -- during which we come to know them and their situations much better -- all in tiny slices offering up choice moments.  For instance? The joy of discovering their first hotel, having breakfast, planning and rehearsing, or Francisco -- as he seems to be trying to play soccer (yes: that's a jolting moment).

If you're anything like me, you'l find your eyes welling up often and at odd times.  Yet the filmmakers don't push anything and, god knows, these performers/subjects wouldn't be caught dead asking for your sympathy. Emotional overflow is inevitable, I suppose, when you watch fellow human beings -- up against lives that would send most of us into permanent, depressive tailspins -- struggling hard and using everything they possess. 

As the film movies along, doors seem to open in your mind: Demián will have you looking a wheelchairs rather differently, and Francisco's ode to Beto, his manager, is a love song, the likes of which you've never heard. Love comes up now and again, and one of the more interesting portions has Mr. Gieco explaining to Demián how that whole concept might work.

"Once the movie is released, we will get many job offers," suggests one of our performers, and sure enough, later on in the film, the group meets with management at EMI.  What transpires is fascinating but not unexpected. It's not so much that these people can sing or dance or play instruments (which they do, and well) but what this means to them.  And finally to us.  The film closes with a concert in Buenos Aires' enormous Luna Park, and, as the credits roll, we learn what some of the members of the group are currently doing. (One of them is involved in a wedding.)  

It's difficult to imagine that our Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences won't shortlist Mundo Alas, which opens in New York City on Friday, August 6, at AMC's Empire 25 and the following week, August 13, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Sunset 5.  

Important note: Co-director and musician León Gieco will perform songs from “Mundo Alas” in-person at NYC’s AMC Empire 42nd St Theater August 6, 7 & 8th.  His live concert begins at 7:45 PM, with the screening following at 8:15 PM. Advance tickets can be purchased at the theater.