S/D: James Brown on film

[img]http://www.5minutesonline.com/6acover/5futureshock.gif[/img]

http://www.5minutesonline.com/2D/jamesfutureshock.htm

There was a piece in Grand Royal about this yearsago and it's as good/crazy as that piece led me to believe. The only negative thing i can say about it is that it was filmed around the time of 'body heat' when he was starting to go disco. Which is cool but had it been filmed a couple of years earlier during, say, 'get on the good foot' it would be untouchable.

Geroppa!

I hope you're not including 'For Goodness Sakes Just Look at Those Cakes' in that assessment!

a number of excellent Soul Train performances.

An INCREDIBLE appearance on the David Steinberg show.

and hours more floating around.

xpost omg where I can get the LPP show?!

videotape of him and his band playing at Boston Garden on April 5, 1968 on TV to keep all of Boston from rioting (UNBELIEVABLY compelling & thrilling)

I just found a copy of this over the weekend and am blown away by his performance. He and the band are tight throughout, but his moves are just superhuman (ie. during the second part of "Kansas City", til when he flips his jacket off and crowd goes bonkers). I keep watching that section over and over.

What else is out there to buy legally, or what else can be found easily online?

there is a full-length film of the 'Love Power Peace' concert that will flip your wig.

mother FUCKER

Jeez, next thing you'll tell me is that there's a full-length color film of Live at the Apollo 1962...

Noticed in Entertainment Weekly that VH1 is showing a James Brown in Boston in 1968 documentary Saturday night April 5th. Lots of talking apparently but also lots of footage from that show raved about above

Although this blogger (Michael Lerman) was very dissapointed by it--

It’s hard not to think of *The Night James Brown Saved Boston* as failing on many levels. It’s trite, pandering and not terribly informative. What could be a fascinating account of a legendary concert turns into kind of a mess when Leaf tries to grasp too much extra James Brown history within the 1 hour plus running time. Can you really blame him? He can’t really seem to make one of the most electric stage performances of all time come alive with his bland cinematic rhetoric. The pieces of the concert itself that are in there are overrun by incredibly run of the mill interviews by important figures of the time (Rev. Al Sharpton comes to mind) explaining what’s happening in the footage instead of letting it speak for itself.

Leaf then both front and back loads the film with Brown’s career before and after the event itself, making for a wishy-washy viewing experience in which we are unsure what direction the doc is going in. What little sense it does make as the lead up to the event itself (though it’s hard not to just scream, “Just get on with it”) goes away afterwards with the portrayals of the supposed aftermath that really just wanders off with Brown down another path as that fateful night in Boston fades away in the distance.

The film’s one saving grace is the pseudo-insistence on portraying the reality of Brown’s greed. Many stories surface about how he didn’t specifically want to martyr himself for the sake of keeping riots out of Boston. Turns out, he demanded large amounts of money from the city (which, depending on who’s asked, may or may not have been paid) in compensation for the numbers he was going to lose because of the general public’s fear of traveling the streets at night. He also, apparently, demanded more money when he discovered it was going to be televised, but in retrospect plays it off as him doing a good thing.

All in all, in much the way Scorsese does in Shine a Light, this could have been summed up in a well-played intro and the real power of Brown’s performance could speak for itself. I don’t know Leaf’s distribution plans, but I suspect that this will become a DVD extra on a re-release of the concert, much as it should be. -

http://blog.spout.com/2008/03/17/sxsw-2008-the-night-james-brown-saved-boston/

Hmmm, I think this is on the same time as one of the college basketball final 4 games. I will have to tape it, and find the full concert from Boston without Al Sharpton talking over it.

The Washington Post likes the doc--on VH1 tonight at 9 East coast US time

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403539.html?hpid=features1&hpv=local

Soul Brother No. 1, pacing, lecturing a few thousand angry people now:

"You made me look very bad. 'Cause I asked the police to step back and you wouldn't go down. Nah, that's wrong."

We're past babybabybaby and goodgod and henh! and ifeelgoodiknewthatiwouldnow. With one question, Brown tosses his reputation up in the air:

"Now I asked the po-lice to step back because I figured I could get some respect from my own people. Now are we together or we ain't?"

David Gates of Newsweek, one of the few white fans in the house: "It could have gone up like a torch."

The answer comes back down, down, this noise filling the arena, falling across Brown's shoulders, falling down across the suit drenched with sweat, falling down across the city on television sets flickering in Roxbury

I taped it but have not watched it yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgaEoOj-DeY

that VH1 turned it into a talking head fest shouldn't have been surprising, but they could've at least frontloaded it with MLK rhetoric and Gates, Cornell West, et al. and then put the TELEVISED concert on at the end, so that we could've experienced it for ourselves. call me a pragmatist who wants to experience it for himself rather than be told that it was the most important evah blah blah...
there was a Miles DVD release from a few years back that made you wiggle through interviews but then delivered the goods with a half-hour Isle of Wight show.

^^^ some of those interviews were really funny tho. and at least they were with the musicians. (or maybe I'm remembering a different Miles electric DVD)

has anyone else seen 'soul power,' about the '74 concert brown and some other ppl did for the ali/foreman fight? it's pretty great!

It ran in DC for just a week and I was out of town and missed it. grrrr.

saw the Ali film which has some of that footage, but not the concert film

Soul Power playing in my town on September 18 (hopefully it will run for a week) and I can not wait.

If anyone stumbles across a torrent DVD of all of the James Brown 70s Soul Train performances you MUST dl.

soul power is amazing

he also had his own soul train ripoff called "future shock" which was totally bonkers and coked up and awesome. see here for details ; )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keq7LzYoC0c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgaEoOj-DeY

not seen soul power yet but the night james brown saved boston i thought was more interesting just for what the boston officials had to say than anyone else. some cool footage there but it was mostly pretty run of the mill and generic.

biopic coming, w/ director of The Help and the star of 42

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/42-chadwick-boseman-jim-brown-imagine-uni-1200585911/

(URL author seems to be thinking of the running back)

This is the link I hoped to find when I came to the thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oLmZRyUbgFI#t=4629

is there any way a james brown biopic won't be terrible?

biopics are always terrible

Ha, was about to post, "No, the __________ biopic was good!" Then I realized I couldn't think of a good biopic.

(though Ray was reasonably entertaining, at least)

biopics are terrible. but lawrence of arabia is one of my favorite movies. is david lean available to direct this james brown biopic.

a james brown biopic made in 1971 starring JB as himself might've been good

there are a number of good biopics but we've done this before

i thought ray was pretty good.

also: W

I watched Alex Gibney's Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown and thought it was pretty good. Lots of great concert footage and interviews with former bandmates. Streaming on HBO Now at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyJofMdkQi8

A lot of great stories in that doc

Get on Up was not as bad as I was expecting but of course by no means good. Darryl from the Office was terrible as Maceo and Bootsy had no lines. Boseman clearly put a ton into the role though - I thought he was credible in the lead.

oh yeah, that's one of the best musician documentaries i've seen. it cuts through a lot of b.s. and actually has some information and ideas i hadn't heard before. and it actually features some incisive observations from human garbage al sharpton.

xpost, i mean mr. dynamite, obv.

no kidding - Mr Dynamite rendered the biopic ridiculously superfluous.

i liked mr dynamite. i wish it was a series. felt like there was so much more to look at. but its prob one of the best biopics ive seen, as far as biopics tend to go.

*music docs, not biopic! still want to see get on up.

the only thing I didn't like about Mr. Dynamite was how it basically stopped at like 1972

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09qbhwcpA6A

killing it from the start. that sideways slide across the stage, it's like he is moonwalking at a 90 degree angle

i wish all the live footage in that doc was available. so incredible.

i don't think it's rare anymore...? There was a US DVD a few years ago.

(i'm talking abt TAMI)

he's referring to Mr. Dynamite, which has a bunch of live footage I've never seen anywhere