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Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns
: essential video:Accompanied by a menagerie of products, Ken Burns's expansive 10-episode paean, Jazz, completes his trilogy on American culture, following The Civil War and Baseball. Spanning more than 19 hours, Jazz is, of course, about a lot more than what many have called America's classical music--especially in episodes 1 through 7. It's here that Burns unearths precious visual images of jazz musicians and hangs historical narratives around the music with convincing authority. Time can stand still as images ...
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Ship Ahoy
:Description:Miss Winters is a dancer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and is asked to secretly transport a prototype magnetic mine to Puerto Rico. She thinks that she is working for the US Government, but fails to see why she would be involved. The enemy agents got the plan from a pulp novel written by Kibble, who is also on the ship and falls for her. But then she overhears his new novel and believes that he is talking about ...
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Sinatra - Classic Duets
:Description:Miss Winters is a dancer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and is asked to secretly transport a prototype magnetic mine to Puerto Rico. She thinks that she is working for the US Government, but fails to see why she would be involved. The enemy agents got the plan from a pulp novel written by Kibble, who is also on the ship and falls for her. But then she overhears his new novel and believes that he is talking about ...
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Alexander's Ragtime Band
: :The jaunty rhythms of Irving Berlin drive Alexander's Ragtime Band, an epic musical from 1938 that follows the up-and-down romance of a young bandleader (Tyrone Power, Witness for the Prosecution) and the singer he loves (Alice Faye, Tin Pan Alley) over decades. Their journey from a San Francisco honky-tonk to mass popularity is marked by classic songs like 'Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,' 'Blue Skies,' 'A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,' 'Easter Parade,' ...
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Bird
: essential video:Clint Eastwood's moody, evocative direction and Forest Whitaker's strong, sensitive performance are the chief proponents to recommend an otherwise muted biopic of '40s jazz legend Charlie Parker, who fell victim to his chemical excesses and convinced the doctor who pronounced him dead that he was a good four decades older than he actually was. The film doesn't try to assign clear blame for Parker's demons, though the era's racism is addressed unflinchingly. Clearly a labor of love, ...
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Legends of Jazz Drumming, Pt. 2
: essential video:Clint Eastwood's moody, evocative direction and Forest Whitaker's strong, sensitive performance are the chief proponents to recommend an otherwise muted biopic of '40s jazz legend Charlie Parker, who fell victim to his chemical excesses and convinced the doctor who pronounced him dead that he was a good four decades older than he actually was. The film doesn't try to assign clear blame for Parker's demons, though the era's racism is addressed unflinchingly. Clearly a labor of love, ...
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World According to John Coltrane
: :John Coltrane is easily one of the key innovators, visionaries, and virtuosos of American Jazz. Coltrane's spiritually influenced and challenging music not only turned the jazz world upside down in the 1960s, but directly impacted all modern music for decades to follow. It is this relationship between music and spirituality that is the core of John Coltrane: The World According to John Coltrane. Produced with his wife's cooperation, The World According to John Coltrane is truly a heartfelt documentary ...
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Wild Man Blues
: :In 1996, with his public image at a low ebb after a messy breakup with Mia Farrow, clarinetist and filmmaker Woody Allen set off on a tour of Europe with his New Orleans jazz band. Accompanying him were his sister, his soon-to-be wife Soon-Yi Previn, and Oscar-winning documentary maker Barbara Kopple. Like Allen says as the beginning of the tour, 'Theoretically, this should be fun for us.' Woody Allen has always been more widely appreciated in Europe than in ...
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Yanni - Tribute
: :Exotic locales and famous monuments! Adagios and waltzes! Spectacle and bombast! A didgeridoo and an orchestra too! Yanni's amazing hair!! All this and much more make Tribute a feast sure to be eagerly devoured by the Greek composer-keyboardist's legions of fans--and it's not hard to understand why, as it is an impressive achievement. The DVD chronicles Yanni's 1997 concerts at India's Taj Mahal (the first concert staged there) and Beijing's Forbidden City (the first-ever performance there by a Western ...
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Black Wax
: :The poet, vocalist, and songwriter Gil Scott-Heron is both the descendant of the African griots and the forefather of rap. In the early '70s, he boldly proclaimed that 'the revolution will not be televised,' and in the '80s he warned us of the 'New World Order' with his prophetic and satirical single, 'B Movie.' The gifted filmmaker Robert Mugge filmed the controversial artist in performance at the now-defunct Wax Museum in Washington, D.C., in 1982. Mugge alternates between the ...
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