Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.


March 2005 activity

Total Log Entries: 38

Total Comments: 14


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Monterey Pop: The Outtake Performances / USA / 1997

It is remarkable that this disc of outtakes from the legendary Montery Pop Festival almost doubles the amount of footage in the actual film. Most notably, included is The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away” in 5.1.

The effect of having watched this in the same afternoon as Gimme Shelter makes the latter film all the more harrowing. The films, documenting concerts that were only two years apart, seem to summate ’60s culture in a brief yet concentrated window of time—at Monterey Pop, a placid audience sits and listens, some with sleeping children, and even as Jimi Hendrix humps an amplifier and sets his guitar on fire with lighter fluid. In Gimme Shelter, the audience is the subject; the Rolling Stones can barely manage to complete one number uninterrupted by a Hell’s Angel with a cue stick. As they begin “Sympathy for the Devil” the entire mob of people (hundreds of thousands) ebbs violently in front of the stage. The Stones make it through the number tediously, distracted by what has the quality of a hostile monster before them.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: The Criterion Collection DVD
23 Mar 2005 10:32 AM | Comments (2)


Comments / 2 total / Submit Comment

  1. @Conor Dunphy / 13 February 2006 / 5:54 PM

    i like how Hendrix offered his smashed up guitar to the unsuspecting audience. how proverbial?

  2. mark / 16 February 2006 / 5:05 PM

    If I’m not mistaken, I believe this was Jimi’s re-introduction back to the Americas after gaining popularity in England and forming The Experience. He had a lot to prove (he felt) and personal sacrifice was his way to solidify his relationship with his new audience. Thus the demon was unleashed.

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