Word: concerts
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Shine a Light, which opens in theaters April 4, is Scorsese's fourth rockumentary. His others: The Last Waltz (1978), a record of the final concert given by The Band; Feel Like Going Home (2003), his affectionate retroglance at old Delta bluesmen; and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), a compilation of interviews and performances from Dylan's early years. All these films speak to Scorsese's fervent belief in movies as music. You see this in his studio pictures: in the operatic intensity of the acting and the camerawork and in their use of music, from arias...
...that standing outside the beacon Theatre in Manhattan after the 2006 (and, possibly, the 2,006th) concert by the Rolling Stones? Why, it's Martin Scorsese, instructing a camera operator to catch the action on the street and above. Gloriously above. The shot zooms upward from Scorsese to catch the crowd, then higher and faster so we see the marquee, then the neighborhood; and faster still, in an astronaut's view of receding Earth, until we can see all of Manhattan island illuminated by a full moon that dissolves into the Stones' jolly red-tongue logo. In Shine a Light...
...directors of fiction films make things happen; directors of documentaries find things happening and shape them into a story. In a fiction film, the essential tool is the camera; in documentaries, it's the editing table. That is where the snippets of real life, even if staged as a concert, are analyzed and alchemized into a movie that, if the stars are aligned, entertains the audience as much as any Harry Potter blockbuster...
...playlist of the songs; he gets it just as the show starts. Mick Jagger frets that the moving cameras will distract the audience and that the lighting will throw too much heat on the stage. (As even the director realizes, "We cannot burn Mick Jagger.") During the concert, the singer shouts, as if to Scorsese, "These lights are burnin' up my ass!" He suffers for his art, but there's a film to be shot. Basically, Mick wants to give a great performance, and Marty wants to make a great movie...
...years of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. When Christina Aguilera slinks onstage for a duet of Live with Me, he can't match her volume but aces her on charisma. The only guest who blows Jagger off the stage is bluesman Buddy Guy. When the concert was held, he had just turned...