Shine a Light

By Cyril Pearl -- Video Business, 7/21/2008

PARAMOUNT
Street: July 29
Prebook: now
> The Stones continue rolling toward immortality in this concert film by Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese leads a team of award-winning cinematographers—including Robert Richardson (JFK), John Toll (The Thin Red Line) and Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights)—to get behind a galaxy of cameras (some 18 of them) and capture The Rolling Stones’ “A Bigger Bang Tour” at New York’s majestic Beacon Theater in the fall of 2006. Scorsese doesn’t take the same studied, lingering approach that he did with 1978 classic The Last Waltz, opting instead to edit his camera operators’ material with cutter David Tedeschi and assembling it for maximum in-your-face excitement. (Tedeschi edited Scorsese’s 2005 Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home and is on board for the director’s upcoming George Harrison project). The band covers a good chunk of hits (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “Satisfaction,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”) and deeper cuts (“Champagne & Reefer” featuring Buddy Guy, a sizzling “Live With Me” with Christina Aguilera) spanning their 45-year career, noticeably ignoring the past two decades. The sound quality is outstanding, the vintage clips are fun and the musicianship is quite fine, an aspect that fans will undoubtedly debate for the next couple of years—until the band is back on the road again. A disappointing supplemental package includes backstage and rehearsal footage and four bonus songs, but that’s about it. Surely someone could have dug up something else from the archive on the second most documented band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll?!

Shelf Talk: Having garnered lots of press during its limited theatrical run last spring (as well as an IMAX version that also helped its publicity), Shine a Light will be a surefire seller to dedicated fans of both The Stones and, to a lesser extent, the work of filmmaker Scorsese. Younger audiences might be a bit harder to come by, but film appearances by Aguilera and The White Stripes’ Jack White might do the trick. The Stones—or at least one of them—are usually in the news, the most recent piece concerning guitarist Ron Wood’s booze-fueled weekend with a 19-year-old Russian model and his subsequent admission to a rehab center.

Concert, color and B&W, PG-13 (language, drug references), 122 min., DVD $19.99, BD $29.99
Extras: behind-the-scenes featurette, four bonus songs
Director: Martin Scorsese
First Run: L, April 2008, $5.3 mil.