Film Screening 14th August, 2008

Poster for Shine a Light

Shine a Light 

8:00 PM, 14th August, 2008

  • M
  • 122 mins
  • Unknown
  • Martin Scorsese
  • Michael Maltese
  • Amy Adams, Frances McDormand, Ciaran Hinds, Lee Pace

If you haven't heard of the Rolling Stones by now ... well, I'm sorry to inform you, you're probably clinically dead. Or a foetus. It really isn't technically possible to get to an age where you're able to read without having heard "Satisfaction", "Gimme Shelter", "Paint it Black", "Start me Up", "Miss You", "Sympathy for the Devil" or... well, they've had rather a lot of songs over forty-odd years worth of career, and several of them are way awesome.

So, combine them with director Martin Scorcese, and add nine acclaimed cinematographers, and you get an incredibly engaging concert film (with a bit of archival footage for context, and a fair chunk of the backstage shenanigans as the Stones decide to make Scorcese's job just that little more difficult by switching around their set list before the concert). It's an intimate film about a massive band, with a massive history, but, in the end, it really is all about the music ((ndash)) the joy of performing, and the great, great songs.

Simon Tolhurst