Shine A Light Reviews
Berlin review from Variety http://www.variety.com/ Shine a Light By TODD MCCARTHY The arc of the Rolling Stones’ evolving reputations - from rock ‘n’ roll’s bad boys to its most beloved and resilient granddaddies - can be traced by the most prominent guest stars in their early and late-career concert films: the Hell’s Angels in “Gimme Shelter” and former President Clinton and family in “Shine a Light.” Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time. Revenue from home entertainment markets will far surpass that from limited theatrical runs, which launch in early spring after its Berlin Film Festival world preem Thursday night. An old hand at contempo music docs dating back to his editing chores on “Woodstock,” Scorsese doesn’t attempt anything nearly as ambitious here as he did with the Band on “The Last Waltz” or with the epic Dylan piece “No Direction Home.” Other than initial glimpses of the helmer planning the shoot and fretting over not having a song list in advance, ”Shine a Light” doesn’t really bear much of the director’s imprint; it’s a proficient celebration of the band’s great songs, performing skills and durability, and perfectly enjoyable as such. One hundred minutes of the two-hour film are devoted to the show itself - more than 20 numbers, mostly Stones standards performed with some but not much variation on the way they’ve been played for up to 40 years or more. As the band’s concerts always have been, “Shine a Light” is mostly a Mick Jagger show, as a battery of great cinematographers (under the eye of lead d.p. Robert Richardson) keeps its cameras trained on him as he cavorts around the stage and penetrates the audience courtesy of a thrust platform; drummer Charlie Watts, guitarist Ronnie Wood and especially Keith Richards warrant occasional cutaways, as do the numerous side musicians, but the star is the star. As he always has, Jagger puts on a terrific show. For the past two or three tours now, he’s inspired admiring comments on what great shape he’s in, about how inexhaustibly he dances and runs and, in large arenas, scampers to the furthest corners of the stages and catwalks and never seems to lose his breath. Even though the Beacon’s more constrained playing area limits his mobility somewhat, he still obviously has what it takes, in spite of a voice no longer capable of either the tenderness or the insinuation of its youth. Sixty-three at the time of the concert, Jagger is not entirely impervious to the ravages of time, and the relentless closeup scrutiny could not be more revealing - not only of his taut muscle tone and evidently fat-free physique, but of his deeply lined face; some low-angle shots are so tight you can examine the dark bridgework on the back of his front teeth. The band members’ endurance gains perspective through some wonderful interspersed clips and interview footage from earlier decades. Queried as to what question he is most frequently asked, a very young Jagger replies, “How long do you think you’re going to carry on singing?” In 1972, when Dick Cavett asks the star if he could imagine doing what he does at 60, Jagger immediately replies, “Easily.” Jagger’s and Richards’ youthful drug busts are briefly covered, although any mention of Brian Jones is conveniently avoided. But for all the group’s early unsavory reputation, by far the predominant impression Jagger conveys in the archival stuff is one of overwhelming sweetness. After chugging along nicely for an hour, pic kicks into high gear - and pretty much remains there - when Jagger duets with charismatic, boom-voiced bluesman Buddy Guy on a wild old Muddy Waters tune, “Champagne and Reefer.” Jagger takes a break when Richards winningly knocks off “You Got the Silver” and “Connection,” and singers Jack White III and Christina Aguilera come aboard for one duet apiece. Scorsese doesn’t push the comparison at all, but Jagger’s hard-working British persona and his advancing years sometimes put one in mind of modest but equivalent events of yesteryear, when old-time English music hall performers would run their venerable acts out before their adoring same-age fans one more time. Jagger is hardly at such an advanced point but, notwithstanding the bodacious 20-something babes strategically lining the stage, it’s no secret that most of the audience are boomers like Clinton, who is conspicuously present celebrating his birthday with family. Pic is dedicated to longtime music guru Ahmet Ertegun, who, at 83, took a bad fall at the recorded concert and died shortly thereafter.

The Hollywood Reporter The London Times - James Christopher The Daily Telegraph BBC News Uncut Magazine AICN Emanuel Levy Screen Daily The London Times - Bryan Appleyard Andrew Sarris

From the iorr.org forum, here's a description of the film's ending... A great little touch at the end of the film just before the credits start rolling; you see one of them (can't recall if it's Mick or Keith) come of stage, shout for his towelling robe, put it on, start walking, the exit door opens, there's Scorcese frantically shouting instructions to some camera; he's shouting "up up up" ... and the camera duly pans upwards and into the night sky over Manhattan. It zooms outwards and outwards, and then no doubt courtesy of some other footage and/or creative editing you're left with a view of the whole of Manhattan from just offshore the southern tip of it. Finally, in the top right hand corner of the screen, there's the moon. I THINK it winks at you first, and then changes into a Stones tongue !! And finally the credits start rolling to Shine A Light !!

Variety's Anne Thompson: I was delighted with it when I saw it Tuesday night. That's partly because Scorsese gives camera operating duties to 10 top cinematographers (Robert Richardson! Robert Elswit! Ellen Kuras! John Toll! Declan Quinn!) to shoot two Stones concerts at the Beacon Theatre in New York. The results are dazzling for those of us who get a kick out of swooping cameras and brilliant editing and the whirling Stones.

I've just seen the film here in Barcelona...IT WAS GREAT!!! Every thing in it just works so well: all the musicians at their best, great cinematography, the set, the mood, the stones, marty himself so on. Maybe recent interviews and a couple of classic songs like "gimme shelter" would make the movie even better. GREAT! Here's a review from aintitcoolnews: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/36250

Review from New York Magazine http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/45605/index.html

4/4 stars By Roger Ebert Martin Scorsese's "Shine a Light" may be the most intimate documentary ever made about a live rock 'n' roll concert. Certainly it has the best coverage of the performances onstage. Working with cinematographer Robert Richardson, Scorsese deployed a team of nine other cinematographers, all of them Oscar winners or nominees, to blanket a live September 2006 Rolling Stones concert at the smallish Beacon Theatre in New York. The result is startling immediacy, a merging of image and music, edited in step with the performance. In brief black-and-white footage opening the film, we see Scorsese drawing up shot charts to diagram the order of the songs, the order of the solos, and who would be where on the stage. This was the same breakdown approach he used with his doc "The Last Waltz" (1978), which would hopefully enable him to call his shots through earpieces of the cameramen, as directors of live TV did in the early days. The challenge this time was that Mick Jagger toyed with the list in endless indecision; we look over his shoulder at titles scratched out and penciled back in, and hear him mention casually that of course the whole set might be changed on the spot. Apparently after playing together for 45 years, the Stones communicate their running order telepathically. In a sense, this movie marks where Scorsese came in. I remember visiting him in the post-production loft for "Woodstock" in 1970, where he was part of team led by Thelma Schoonmaker who were combining footage from multiple cameras into a split-screen approach that could show as many as three or four images at once. But the Woodstock footage they had to work with was captured on the run, while "The Last Waltz" had a shot map and outline, at least in Scorsese's mind. "Shine a Light" combines his foreknowledge with the versatility of great cinematographers so that it essentially seems to have a camera in the right place at the right time for every element of the performance. It helped, too, that the Stones' songs had been absorbed by Scorsese into his very being. "Let me put it this way," he said in a revealing August 2007 interview with Craig McLean of the London Observer. "Between '63 and '70, those seven years, the music that they made I found myself gravitating to. I would listen to it a great deal. And ultimately, that fueled movies like 'Mean Streets' and later pictures of mine, 'Raging Bull' to a certain extent and certainly 'GoodFellas' and 'Casino' and other pictures over the years." Mentioning that he had not seen the Stones in concert until late 1969, he said the music itself was ingrained: "The actual visualization of sequences and scenes in 'Mean Streets' comes from a lot of their music, of living with their music and listening to it. Not just the songs I use in the film. No, it's about the tone and the mood of their music, their attitude. I just kept listening to it. Then I kept imagining scenes in movies. And interpreting. It's not just imagining a scene of a tracking shot around a person's face or a car scene. It really was events and incidents in my own life that I was trying to interpret into filmmaking, to a story, a narrative. And it seemed that those songs inspired me to do that, to find a way to put those stories on film. So the debt is incalculable. I don't know what to say. In my mind, I did this film 40 years ago. It just happened to get around to being filmed right now." The result is one of the most engaged documentaries you could imagine. The cameras do not simply regard the performances; in a sense, the cameras are performers too, in the way shots are cut together by Scorsese and his editor, David Tedeschi (who also edited "The Last Waltz"). Even in their 60s, the Stones are the most physical and exuberant of bands. Compared to them, watching the movements of many new young bands on Leno, Letterman and "SNL" is like watching jerky marionettes. Jagger has never used the mechanical moves employed by many lead singers; he is a dancer and an acrobat, and a conductor, too, who uses his body to conduct the audience. In counterpoint, Keith Richards and Ron Wood are loose-limbed, angular, like way-cool backup dancers. Richards in particular seems to defy gravity as he leans so far over; there's a moment in rehearsal when he tells Scorsese he wants to show him something, and leans down to show that you can see the mallet of Charlie Watts' bass drum, visible as it hits the front drumhead. "I can see that because I'm down there," he explains. The unmistakable fact is that the Stones love performing. Watch Ron lean an arm on Keith's shoulder during one shared riff. Watch the droll hints of irony, pleasure, quizzical reaction shots, which so subtly move across their seemingly passive faces. Notice that Keith does not smoke onstage not simply to be smoking, but to use the smoke cloud, brilliant in the spotlights, as a performance element. He knows what he's doing. And then see it all brought together and tied tight in the remarkably acrobatic choreography of Jagger's performance. I've seen the Stones in Chicago in venues as large as the United Center and as small as the Double Door, but I've never experienced them this way, because the cameras are as privileged as the performers onstage. And the music? What do I have to say about the music? What is there left to say about the music? In that interview, Scorsese said, "'Sympathy for the Devil' became this score for our lives. It was everywhere at that time, it was being played on the radio. When 'Satisfaction' starts, the authority of the guitar riff that begins it is something that became anthemic.'" I think there is nothing useful for me to say about the music, except that if you have been interested enough to read this far, you already know all about it, and all I can usefully describe is the experience of seeing it in this film.

4/4 stars BY Michael Wilmington Anyone who loves movies or rock 'n roll, or both, and doesn't get excited at the prospect of Shine a Light -- the new concert film with the Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese -- may cheat themselves out of a tremendous experience and a knockout show. This is the incandescent record of a live 2006 concert at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre on the "Bigger Bang" tour -- thrilling and vibrant and knock-you-on-your ass brilliant. No one plays rock and blues with more lustiness, gusto and power than the now-in-their-60s Stones: Mick Jagger, the tireless perpetual motion sex machine front man; Keith Richards, the wasted-looking, devil-fingered genius guitarist; Ronny Wood, his virtuoso reed-thin guitar buddy; and Charlie Watts, the stoic peerless calm-at-the-eye-of-the-storm drummer. And no one records and captures rock with more sensitivity and visual panache than Scorsese -- the nervous fast-talking rock n' roll movie master. Marty edited part of the 1970 epic Woodstock at the start of his career, recently knocked off that stinging Bob Dylan rock doc No Direction Home and, in The Last Waltz, with the Band and their all-star friends (including Dylan), he crafted a real gem and one of Shine's few rivals as a rock concert film; both of them are movies that put you right on stage, hurl you into the heart and soul of the music, start you up, get your heart pumping, zap you, unzip you and send shivers down your spine. Neither Marty nor the Stones disappoints us in Shine the Light -- and that's putting it mildly. Scorsese's director of photography, as in The Aviator, is the white-haired, fiery-eyed Robert Richardson (who often works with another Stone). And backing up Richardson is a whole hall of fame of fellow cinematographers, including John Toll, Andrew Lesnie, Robert Elswit, Ellen Kuras, Stuart Dryburgh and Emmanuel Lubezki. With that team of pro's pros on call, Scorsese uses the intimate shooting techniques he mastered in The Last Waltz. He keeps the cameras roaming the stage like best friends or co-conspirators, while the editing (David Tedeschi) pulls you in further and deeper. The movie seemingly shows us everything we'd want to see (the music, the camaraderie, the little back-squeezes and wry smiles), and it punches across both the thrill of listening to the concert and of making and living that music on stage. Is Shine a Light the best rock concert movie ever? It's damn close. Stop Making Sense, by Jonathan Demme out of Talking Heads, is a frequent and worthy candidate for all-time concert movie honors. But Sense doesn't move you and shake you like this one. Neither does U23D, a plausible and more recent candidate that also pales next to Shine a Light. I'm really partial to the best of the Stones' other concert movie gigs -- especially the Maysles Brothers' searing 1970 cinema verite classic Gimme Shelter and Michael Cohl, Julien Temple and company's huge screen blowout The Rolling Stones Live the Max -- but they're a step or three behind Shine as well. Woodstock and The Last Waltz are its only real competitors. The inevitable questions arise, since the Stones are all now in their 60s: Could this be The Last Time? (I hope not.) And is Shine a Light an old man's movie? Not really, though it definitively shatters the myth that rock is a young man's game. The guys here wear their wrinkles and lines like badges. They can still boogie and scream up a storm. And God, they can still play and sing. Richards, the one we've been worrying about for four decades, rises from his Chuck Berry-Muddy Waters inferno once again and does another variation on his famous signature hey-I'm-still-alive greeting "Good to be here! Good to be anywhere!" by turning it into "Great to see you! Great to see anybody!" before proceeding to out-play and out-grin (and even for a moment, on "You Got the Silver" out-front) any half-dozen modern day pop tarts or guitar heroes. As for indefatigable health nut Jagger, he once again lead-sings and sprints through a good part of rock music's all time best songwriters' catalogue, the Jagger-Richards file. (Sorry -- Lennon-McCartney, Harrison and Starr quit too early). From "Start Me Up" to "Satisfaction," he jumps and jack-flashes, out-sings and out-dances everyone in sight or memory -- even, in some ways, the younger Mick. Somehow, this no-fat-on-these-bones 63-year-old impresses you more in his latter years. Midway through, when Jagger traverses a wall of blazing light on stage, as the drums roll and pound for "Sympathy for the Devil," he seems to be passing through both Heaven and Hell, to some place better than either. He's the Stone that, like Sisyphus' rock, never stops rolling. Am I forgetting Charlie Watts, the great Stone face with the magic hands, Buster Keaton's drum-pounding heir, the architect of the beat? Or Ron Wood, the fiercely intent guitar man/painter spilling out rivers of melody? Not much chance of that. So much guts and energy and great roaring music pours off the Beacon stage from the Stones and their top-chop backup band and backup singers (including primo bassist, Miles Davis veteran and Bill Wyman replacement Darryl Jones), that it seems a sin and a stupidity to run across the old dumb chestnut that rock is the musical province of youth and rebellion and the current Stones are superannuated corporatized pop geezers, ripe for exposure and hype-deflation by rock-crit whippersnappers or sodden star writers. (Sure, sure.) Jagger a fossil? Richards a fig? Charlie a fogey? Ronnie a relic? Crap and double crap. Rock is not intrinsically and exclusively the music of youth, community and rebellion. That's a dubious seminar notion meant to scare up a little grad school respectability. At its core, rock is more the music of getting laid and getting high -- sometimes, of course, in youthful, communal, rebellious ways. Does that seem to trivialize the music? It shouldn't. What's more important in life -- and to life -- than getting laid? Who makes better accompanying records for lovemaking than the Stones? The rise of rock (and the Stones) paralleled and mirrored the Civil Rights and Vietnam eras. But the songs and their singers never had to be calls to revolution or social conscience to win us over, though "Salt of the Earth" and "Street Fighting Man" still seem pretty good ones. The Stones grea-*test*-('") songs -- including "Satisfaction," "Jumping Jack Flash," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Start Me Up," "Brown Sugar" and "Honky Tonk Women" (all on the set-list here) and others are mostly riveting, raunchy, primal turn-ons. That's why they're great. Bill and Hillary Clinton -- Bill was the evening's birthday boy emcee -- were present at this concert. So was Ahmet Ertegun, the grand impresario of Atlantic, who died in an accident on concert night and has the film dedicated to him. Now, both the Clintons seem long-time Stones fans. (So is Barack Obama, who, when asked on TV to choose between the Beatles and the Stones, voted the Stones ticket.) And that shows something about the band's constituency, from Boomers on. No matter whom they share a stage with -- and the other guests here include famed youngsters Jack White and Christina Aguilera (grinding away with Mick) and magisterial bluesman Buddy Guy, (who gets Keith's guitar for a trophy) -- the once bad boy Stones always seem the real royalty. And more. They can still get it on. They still make us happy. When they sing and play, they're the ones who, like Dylan in that transcendent scene in Scorsese's other rock concert masterpiece, seem forever young.