Bluesland: A Portrait in American Music (1993)
Genre : Documentary, Music
Runtime : 1H 25M
Director : Ken Mandel
Synopsis
Blues as a genre shaped the sound of jazz in the early 20th century and directly led to the creation of rock 'n' roll in the '50s. The scales, chords, and progressions of blues as a musical form can be found in styles from jazz to rock to contemporary R&B.
Following a childhood tragedy, Dewey Cox follows a long and winding road to music stardom. Dewey perseveres through changing musical styles, an addiction to nearly every drug known and bouts of uncontrollable rage.
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble burn it up at the El Mocambo, a small club, performing a small set list. During the concert Vaughan pulls off some Hendrix style guitar heroics. He does whammy bar tricks, bangs it on he floor, and makes noises with it. He also plays it behind his back.
John Mayer: Someday I'll Fly chronicles the musical evolution of one of the most influential solo artists of his generation. Featuring rare demos, interviews and live performances; it is told in it's entirety from Mayer's perspective.
Centered mostly on his career and professional accomplishments, Someday I'll Fly strips away the typical gossip surrounding Mayer to provide an intimate look at the life and career of a lauded musician. Produced and edited by Eastwood Allen
When a radio falls from the sky into the hands of a wide-eyed Tibetan Mastiff, he leaves home to fulfill his dream of becoming a musician, setting into motion a series of completely unexpected events.
Los Angeles teenager Ritchie Valens becomes an overnight rock 'n' roll success in 1958, thanks to a love ballad called "Donna" that he wrote for his girlfriend. But as his star rises, Valens has conflicts with his jealous brother, Bob, and becomes haunted by a recurring nightmare of a plane crash just as he begins his first national tour alongside Buddy Holly.
In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.
A prim and proper schoolgirl goes against her grandmother's wishes when she dates a motorcycle-riding juvenile delinquent.
Fired from his band and hard up for cash, guitarist and vocalist Dewey Finn finagles his way into a job as a fifth-grade substitute teacher at a private school, where he secretly begins teaching his students the finer points of rock 'n' roll. The school's hard-nosed principal is rightly suspicious of Finn's activities. But Finn's roommate remains in the dark about what he's doing.
When record store owner and compulsive list-compiler Rob Gordon gets dumped by his long-time girlfriend, Laura, because he hasn't changed since they met, he revisits his top five breakups of all time in order to figure out what went wrong. As he examines his failed attempts at romance and happiness, the process finds him being dragged, kicking and screaming, into adulthood.
Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back togther to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.
In Venice Beach, naive Midwesterner JB bonds with local slacker KG and they form the rock band Tenacious D. Setting out to become the world's greatest band is no easy feat, so they set out to steal what could be the answer to their prayers... a magical guitar pick housed in a rock-and-roll museum some 300 miles away.
A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is looking everywhere for love, but never quite finding it.
To the Los Angeles elite, Ford Fairlane is known as "Mr. Rock 'n' Roll Detective." This loudmouthed ladies' man serves an exclusive rock star clientele, who depend on his keen eye and smug discretion. So when a heavy-metal musician dies mid-concert, Fairlane is on the case before the lights come up. But things turn shocking when radio personality Johnny Crunch hires Fairlane to find a missing groupie mere hours before he is electrocuted live on air.
Six actors portray six personas of music legend Bob Dylan in scenes depicting various stages of his life, chronicling his rise from unknown folksinger to international icon and revealing how Dylan constantly reinvented himself.
This film traces the road of the Blues and takes us on a journey to mythical places: From the banks of the Niger to New Orleans, going up the Mississippi through Memphis to the skyscrapers of Chicago. It tells the story of this culture which faced the worst barriers and shows that Humanity can overcome barbarity.
A definitive live concert film documenting AC/DC’s massive Black Ice World Tour. Shot in December of 2009, AC/DC Live at River Plate marks AC/DC’s triumphant return to Buenos Aires where nearly 200,000 fans, and 3 sold-out shows, welcomed the band back after a 13 year absence from Argentina. This stunning live footage of AC/DC underscores what Argentina’s Pagina 12 newspaper reported by saying “no one is on the same level when it comes to pure and clear Rock ‘n Roll.”
One of the world's biggest bands returns to the scene of their Live Aid triumph (one year earlier in 1985) to play all their greatest hits in front of a packed Wembley Stadium.
No other band in rock'n'roll history has rivaled The Stooges' combination of heavy primal throb, spiked psychedelia, blues-a-billy grind, complete with succinct angst-ridden lyrics, and a snarling, preening leopard of a frontman who somehow embodies Nijinsky, Bruce Lee, Harpo Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud all rolled into one. There is no precedent for The Stooges, while those inspired by them are now legion. The film will present the context of their emergence musically, culturally, politically, historically, and relate their adventures and misadventures while charting their inspirations and the reasons behind their initial commercial challenges, as well as their long-lasting legacy.