Word: rocked
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...PROGRAM aptly billed it as a "New Rock" concert. Peter Ivers, fresh from New York, has put together a strain of music incorporating jazz and blues with the sugar-coating of a rock-beat to stir our minds a bit, drenched as they are in the winter gloom...
There is a new breed of black city musicians emerging whose sound is represented by the Chambers Brothers at its worst (and that's not bad) and by Sly and the Family Stone at its best. Chaka is of this breed--a gay and competent group of black rock-and-rollers...
...signs of this new rock is its emphasis on intricate rhythmic patterns of voices. The Family Stone manage to carry these off on both fast and slow songs but Chaka was successful mainly on the up-tempo numbers. Gilbert Moses on lead guitar contributes deft Cropper-like touches, and the band generally held together well--particularly on a superb sliding easy version of "My Girl." This new city-soul sound is, of course, heavily influenced by Booker T., and Chaka showed this in its obvious delight and skill at playing "funky instrumentals...
Regardless, the film has a nice little story and Hollywood can still handle these things with class now and then. A scene between Rock Hudson and Patrick McGoohan when the latter reveals the nature of the mission we've been wondering about for two hours is a model of well-written exposition, neatly paced and satisfying to all. Other crucial plot points crumble in treatment: the obligatory submarine flooding scene is telegraphed too early by deliberately distracting conversational small-talk injected suddenly into a script previously given over to cut-and-dried function. More irritating, 90 percent of the mechanics...
Going down the list, John (Bad Day At Black Rock, The Great Escape) Sturge's direction is adequate, bolstered by Daniel Fapp's thoughtful, occasionally elegant, Panavision camera, Color is unexceptional. As for special effects, the studio North Pole is convincing insofar as none of us have been there to challenge it, and the airplane sequences, though plainly process shots miniatures, are kind of a groove and will evoke comfortable chuckling. After 2001, routine special effects simply don't pass by without a wince or two. The film's tight acting accounts for several of the small virtues, with Ernest...