Category Archive: Documentary
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
(Directed by Baz Luhrmann) (2025) Luhrmann’s biopic, Elvis – The Movie came out in 2022 (reviewed here), and whilst it was in preparation, Baz learned of the existence of over 60 boxes of 35mm and 8mm film footage of Presley in concert, in rehearsals and interviews. They were stuck in a Warner Bros vault in a salt mine in Kansas, of all places, negatives near to perishing, with no accompanying sound. Luhrmann had to spend a lot of his own money, and two or three years technical time, to have selections of the film retrieved and synced to existing audio….
Continue Reading →Raw
A film by Lumin Sports, produced by Henry Jones, shot by Henry Jones and Jack Shephard (November 2023) The Great and the Good (plus your correspondent) gathered at Glenelg Football Club on 8 November to view an advance screening of this short, brilliantly produced, and exhilarating view of the 2023 finals campaign, viewed from within the inner sanctum. Lumin ( https://luminsports.com/ ) is an expert qualitative data company, specialising in enhancing sporting analysis and performance. It’s flagship visualisation platform, “Arc, was launched in early 2019 as a way for technical and non-technical decision-makers in professional sporting teams to interpret complex athlete…
Continue Reading →Moonage Daydream
(Written and directed by Brett Morgen) (2022) The great David Bowie died in 2016. He’d have liked this ‘documentary,’ we suspect, because like him, it is sui generis, an assault on the eyes, ears, and (pace his philosophical meanderings) the mind, that satisfies for almost all of its 2 hours and 15 minutes. With a mountain of footage and full estate authorisation, Morgen has lovingly assembled a vibrant, moving monument to the peripatetic searcher and androgynous transformer who was Starman, Ziggy Stardust, Cracked Actor, DJ, the Man Who Sold the World, the Space Oddity, a Young American, a Hero, and…
Continue Reading →This Is Spinal Tap
(Directed by Rob Reiner, 1984) (Special Screening at the Mercury Theatre featuring a Q & A with Harry Shearer, Adelaide Guitar Festival, 22 July 2022). Spinal Tap are the blond rock god David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean, who you already know well from Better Call Saul and other offerings), the bass player Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), who longs for St. Hubbins with big wet spaniel eyes. When Nigel learns that David’s girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone (June Chadwick aping Yoko Ono) is flying over from England to join the tour, his heart sinks. His crush on David…
Continue Reading →Roadrunner
A film about Anthony Bourdain (Directed by Morgan Neville) (2021) Famously rockstar-level restaurateur, best-selling author (Kitchen Confidential), martial arts expert and prolific television host, the subject of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was no doubt a wildly successful man. As we have come to expect from biographical documentaries, this level of achievement means that he must also have been deeply unhappy. And often unkind. One of his friends is reduced to tears recalling Bourdain telling him, “You’ll never be a good dad”. Bourdain’s two marriages, to a childhood sweetheart and a restaurant executive, failed, in part because he was…
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