neil young Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I scream! You scream! We all scream for even more announced SXSW premieres!

That's right, the film festival that knows how much it spoils us (see, they admit it right here) are adding screenings of Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell and Jonathan Demme's Neil Young Trunk Show to their already crowded line-up. (And that's figuring that neither takes up the 'TBA' or 'Super Special Screening' slots -- my best guess is that Austin's own Richard Linklater might bring his Me and Orson Welles home after running festivals last fall. I've been wrong before...)

Despite being formally billed as a work-in-progress, talking with one or two of the lucky bastards who saw Raimi's gypsy terror flick back in January led me to believe that it looked pretty close to finished then, so who knows what it'll look like now. Either way, I'm pretty pumped; I mean, that last Neil Young concert film just rubbed me the wrong way -- nothing against one's filmography or the other's discography, but maybe it was something I ate that day that made me never want to give it a second thought, or this one a first look. It really made for a strangely irritating experience of a film held highly by most.

But I'm sure plenty of the other Film (and Music) attendees are psyched, and who can blame 'em? Neil Young is like the terror gypsy of folk music.

In May of 1970, Neil Young quickly wrote a song called "Ohio," hotly responding to the Kent State shootings, during which the National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others. He recorded it with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, who had just come off a hit record from the previous year, and the song peaked at #14 on the pop charts. Over the years, Young has recorded several such protest and/or political songs, including 1967's "For What It's Worth," 1970's "Southern Man" and 1989's "Rockin' in the Free World," which slyly took a stab at then President George H. W. Bush by mentioning his campaign speech staple "a thousand points of light." Young is now in his 60s and once again something pissed him off to the point that he has gone back to the recording studio. This time though, there's no beating around the bush (so to speak). No more messages hidden inside innocuous song titles. This time we get "Let's Impeach the President."

The wheeling and dealing machinery in Park City is slowly cranking up. indieWIRE says that Fortissimo Films has acquired worldwide sales rights to CSNY Deja Vu, the closing night presentation of the Sundance Film Festival.

The more astute among you (i.e., the "old folks") may recognize immediately that "CSNY" is not, in fact, the acronym for a crime-solving police unit -- it's the name of 60s supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In his program note, Sundance honcho Geoff Gilmore touches on preconceptions someone who grew up with the group might have about the film, which documents CSNY's Freedom of Speech Tour. He feels, though, that the "real value [of the film] lies in its rejection of simple nostalgia and its ability to focus on the present day."

Of course, festival program notes always highlight the positive, so we'll have to wait for the reviews to hear how everybody else reacts. As the closing night presentation, it's at a disadvantage since many visitors will have already left by that time. Bernard Shakey is credited as the director, though that's actually a name that Neil Young has used for his film projects as far back as 1974. Young's most recent stint in the director's chair was the oddball experiment Greendale, so it should be interesting to see what he's cooked up.

We'll let you know when we hear any word about a US distribution deal, though it seems the theatrical market would be a tough nut to crack unless the film's "call for activism," as Gilmore put it, is incredibly compelling.

If there's something Martin Scorsese knows about almost as much as movies, it's music from the '60s. Apparently. Why else would he be on such a roll these days with music documentaries on iconic acts from that time? First there was the wonderful Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home; now he's about to release a Rolling Stones doc titled Shine a Light; and he's just announced another doc he's going to make about George Harrison. According to Variety, the film will be more of a comprehensive biography, covering Harrison's time in The Beatles, as a solo artist, his Eastern religious/philosophical interests and even his stint a movie producer (his Handmade Films gave us Monty Python's Life of Brian and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits). Scorsese is producing with Olivia Harrison (George's widow) and his No Direction Home producer Nigel Sinclair, and filming will begin with some interviews later this year. It will take awhile to finish, of course. The untitled pic will again be edited by David Tedeschi, who also cut the other two Scorsese music docs.

Maybe if time permits, Scorsese can do more '60s icons after he's done with Harrison. Neil Young may not be worth another film, and The Doors doc would probably be better suited to Oliver Stone, but surely we could use a Scorsese-directed film about Eric Clapton or any of the girl groups (The Shirelles, The Ronettes, The Marvellettes, The Crystals, The Shangri-Las) he likes to use for his soundtracks. Hey, he could just do a doc on girl groups. It's so good to see Scorsese getting back to music docs so long after working as an assistant director on Woodstock, and later as director of The Last Waltz, and I can't wait to see what else he's got planned. Anyway, there's no use thinking so far ahead. I'm still simply waiting for Shine a Light, which doesn't come out until April, and I'm definitely looking forward to the Harrison film, which will feature a ton of archival footage provided by his family and is expected to feature surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

While Cinematical does its best to cover every square-inch of the Sundance Film Festival for its devoted readers (that's you!), I understand it's hard to connect with the excitement of the event when stuck on your living room couch, forced to only imagine what it would be like to ski down the slopes hand in hand with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Since it could be frustrating to read about films you've never heard of or may never see show up at your local theater anytime soon, I figured I'd dig up a peek at a few of the films playing the festival this year. Even with 120 features, it was damn hard to find five that actually had a trailer...on the internet. If anything, hopefully (for those unable to attend), this gives you a small taste of what's going down out in Park City. Oh, it's all about Sundance on this week's Trailer Park: