"Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"
"Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" is the digitally remastered feature film of the last concert and final performance of David Bowie as his gender-bender, crazy-clad alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, in 1973. Documentary and music feature creator D.A. Pennebaker produced one of the early rock concert films and captures an event that even the band was not aware of - the end of Ziggy.
The film starts with behind-the scenes footage as the performer prepares for, what is for him, business as usual. He is surrounded by his staff as they carefully coif, costume and make up Bowie into his other persona before your eyes. The entertainer comes across as cool, confident and totally comfortable about lending his body to Ziggy. The music that ensues is a chronicle of the genius output by Bowie. Before the maestro begins his performance, composer Wendy Carlos gives a rendition of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony." What follows the classical opener is classic, too, as we get a great selection of many of Bowies early tunes.
"Space Oddity," "Suffragette City," "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide," "Changes," "Time," "All the Young Dudes," "Ziggy Stardust" are just some of the Bowie-penned songs, along with other's like Lou Reeds "White Light/White Heat" and the Jagger/Richards tune, "Let's Spend the Night Together." It's a tour de force concert, which, now, is just the tip of the iceberg of the work of the multitalented David Bowie (nee David Robert Jones).
The Spiders From Mars, the guys backing up Bowie, is made up by legendary rock guitarist Mick Ronson (who some consider the father of heavy metal guitar music), Trevor Boulder and Woody Woodmansey. This was their final performance as a band, though the late Ronson did reunite with Bowie in the early 90's for a cover of the classic Cream song, "I Feel Free." The artist died shortly thereafter. The band is every bit as capable at their craft as their leader and they do a splendid job in backing up the boss.
The opening and closing sequences of the film take us back stage and gives us a look at Bowie's first wife, Angela, before he dumped her for supermodel Iman, and a brief interlude between Bowie and his good friend Ringo Starr. There is not a lot of excess baggage to "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" as Bowie gets down to the music. The film documentation suffers from the technology of the day as director Pennebaker makes do with the existing light and frequently red costuming, which tends to bleed even in the re-mastered form. There is some, actually frequent, out of focus shots but I think the day's techs and the attempt to shoot really close up are the reason. (See Tim Pope's "The Cure In Orange" as an example of how a concert film should be shot.)
Even the non-Bowie fans - although, with the incredible body of work the man has generated, from rock classics to his brilliant narration of Peter and the Wolf (with the Philadelphia Orchestra) to some pretty remarkable film performances to his reading over the wonderful animation, "The Snow Man," I can't imagine anyone not a fan to some degree - will be entertained with this finale perf as the alien-like Ziggy. I don't think the theatrical release will garner big bucks, but it will be very popular on the aftermarket market. I give it a B.
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
robin@reelingreviews.com laura@reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 32639 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 757011 X-RT-TitleID: 1024440 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1488 X-RT-RatingText: B
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews