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Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns
:Description:The story, sound, and soul of a nation come together in the most American of art forms: Jazz. Ken Burns, who riveted the nation with The Civil War and Baseball, celebrates the music's soaring achievements, from its origins in blues and ragtime through swing, bebop, and fusion. Six years in the making, this 'soundbreaking' series blends 75 interviews, more than 500 pieces of music, 2,400 still photographs, and over 2,000 rare and archival film clips. The 10-part musical journey spotlights many of America's most original, creative--and ...
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Listen Up: Lives of Quincy Jones
:Description:Audio-visual collage of the life and times of musician-composer-arranger-producer Quincy Jones.
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Can't You Hear the Wind Howl?
: :This ambitious mixture of dramatic reconstruction with traditional documentary affords excellent insight into legendary bluesman Robert Johnson's life, the enduring power of his music, and the myth which surrounds him. Can't You Hear The Wind Howl transcends its genre of 'docudrama,' providing the well-researched information we'd expect from a conventional documentary with the dramatic impact we could hope for from a Hollywood film. Contemporary bluesman Keb' Mo' (Kevin Moore) plays Johnson, and Danny Glover narrates, but the real star is Robert Johnson's music. The film's strength ...
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Madonna - Truth or Dare
: :Norman Mailer may have come up with the title Advertisements for Myself, but in this case, Madonna is the one who really wrote the book. Truth or Dare, an engaging behind-the-scenes look at the pop star's Blonde Ambition tour, is a feature-film advertisement for herself that Roger Ebert cleverly dubbed 'an authorized invasion of privacy.' How much of it is calculated and how much of it is genuine, what Madonna chooses to reveal about herself and what she actually reveals in the process, are up to ...
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Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note
: :Originally aired on PBS's American Masters series, this evocative biography of the American composer, conductor, and de facto musical evangelist Leonard Bernstein offers a compelling balance of musical scholarship and personal insight. It's a fitting approach to the brilliant--and emotional--life and art of Bernstein, who elevated Broadway musical theater, demystified and democratized classical music for two generations of American children, and brought a true New Yorker's vigor and directness to his conducting. Writer-director Susan Lacy establishes the film's sympathetic tone in its opening shots of Bernstein's ...
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John Lennon: Imagine
:Description:A startling and powerful new film derived from 200 hours of footage, stills & heretofore unpublished music from John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's personal collection. A moving and revealing look at a man who was a musician, artist, writer, poet, and whose fame lives on. 104 minutes. :It can hardly be a coincidence that this 'deluxe edition' of John Lennon – Imagine should be issued in late 2005, a couple of months after what would have been the former Beatle's 65th birthday and mere days before ...
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Classic Albums - Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life
:Description:Taking more than two years from conception to release, Stevie Wonder's classic 1976 double album, Songs in the Key of Life, is now generally considered his finest creative hour in an enduring, influential career of nearly four decades. Songs in the Key of Life is also regarded by many music fans as one of the outstanding albums to appear in that entire timespan. Released in October 1976, Songs in the Key of Life entered the U.S. Billboard album chart at No. 1 and remained there for ...
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Hype
: :This hip look at the Seattle music scene of the past decade treats the hype with bemused humor but treats the music with respect. Packed with witty interviews with band members, record execs, and Seattle music aficionados, much of the film places a welcome spotlight on the bands that didn't become part of the national 'grunge' phenomenon and scores of live clips and rare recordings show that 'the Seattle Sound' didn't begin with Nirvana or end with Soundgarden. You don't have to be a fan to ...
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Voices of Sarafina
: :Cast interviews have rarely been so compelling as these of teenage performers describing their memories of the 1976 Soweto riots. The South African adolescents are the cast of Voices of Sarafina!, the Broadway musical that told how black students protesting the replacement of English with the Dutch language Afrikaans led to police brutality and student deaths. This apartheid-era documentary combines the personal stories of these actor-singers with scenes from the Broadway show. While the music by Hugh Masekela and Mbongeni Ngema is often celebratory, the play's ...
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Ella Fitzgerald - Something to Live For
: :The neo-pop divas of the late 20th century may have turned up the glamour, and a few even introduced formidable technical prowess, epitomized by Mariah Carey's seemingly helium-induced falsetto (the bane of canine fans everywhere) or Celine Dion's breast-beating, stentorian climaxes. Yet only a few verses from an earlier, charter member of the first-name-only club provides instant perspective: when Ella opened her mouth, that perfectly pitched, luminous voice could leap octaves without breaking a sweat, its tonal purity and immaculate phrasing creating that illusion of 'effortlessness' ...
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