Reel Music 25

[January 9th, 2008]

For the first week of its 25th festival of tuneful documentaries, the NW Film Center is pulling out the big names: Bob, Pete, Anita and Stax. Do the movies measure up? WW ’s Music and Screen departments combined their powers to seek out the highlights.

65 Revisited

The Reel Music programmers made a savvy choice for the opening-night movie: With the memory of Cate Blanchett’s impersonation of Don’t Look Back -era Bob Dylan in I’m Not There still fresh in Portlanders’ minds, dipping into more D.A. Pennebaker footage is a luxurious soak. The outtakes from Don’t Look Back show a slightly more relaxed Dylan, good-naturedly fooling around with friends, reporters and fans. (Time to revise the revisionism: Turns out the boy genius wasn’t a complete dick.) Pennebaker has compiled a laid-back mix of banter and performances, but the most affecting sequence shows Dylan rehearsing “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” to an empty room. For once, it’s the crowd of commentators that’s not there. AARON MESH. 7 pm Friday, Jan. 11.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

He may now be best known as the hard-line folkie who tried to cut Dylan’s power cords at Newport (or didn’t, or said he wanted to), but Pete Seeger has a legacy of his own—as was well established by Bruce Springsteen covering his material in 2006’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Jim Brown’s new documentary provides a cursory look at the politically crusading troubadour’s career, speeding through the major events: the Guthrie years, the pop success with the Weavers, the blacklist, the folk revival, the civil rights songleading, the Hudson River cleanup. There’s not much revelatory material, other than some brief chats with the man himself and a fresh focus on his long-suffering wife, Toshi, but it’s a passable introduction. And it’s always a pleasure to watch the man “lining out” a song to a makeshift chorus, his warbling tenor sailing over the crowd. AARON MESH. 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 12.

Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer

Between her granny-next-door demeanor and disarming candor, it’s hard to believe that the pushing-90 Anita O’Day in this documentary is the same woman who broke the race barrier in reverse, beat a 15-year heroin addiction, and still found time to record a handful of jazz’s classic albums. The film lovingly recounts the story of this oft-underrated vocalist’s amazing life (spent largely on the road), and it does so with the patience and grace of the artist herself. Where filmmakers Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden tend to promote O’Day as a legend, the woman herself comes across as humble and low-fuss. The drugs were just part of the jazz life, she tells Dick Cavett and a pushy young Bryant Gumbel in some fantastic archival interviews. And while the press of her day obsessed over O’Day’s drug arrests, it’s her gorgeously complex vocal phrasing and personal warmth that leave the greatest impressions on the viewer. Somewhere in the midst of the film’s bounty of beautiful historical footage and heart-on-sleeve interviews with O’Day’s contemporaries, it strikes you: There’s a whole life’s worth of stories behind every sweet old lady’s smile. O’Day, however, was just something else. CASEY JARMAN. 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 13.

Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story

As tends to be the case with music histories, the story of seminal soul label Stax Records is replete with highs (Isaac Hayes’ ridiculous spending) and lows (songwriter David Porter being held at gunpoint), creative luminaries (Otis Redding) and their often tragic demises (again, Otis Redding). But what Respect Yourself centers itself on, for better or worse, is the Memphis label’s place in relation to the civil rights movement. Though the parallel is a bit heavy-handed at times—especially when voice-overs by (who else?) Samuel L. Jackson do the talking, rather than the story itself—it does color the course of the label’s life and offer some interesting insights into the socioeconomic incentives and inspirations behind the music of “Soulsville, U.S.A.” (That’s the handle Stax gave itself in response to Motown’s “Hitsville” nickname.) The most captivating moments, though, come when the film focuses on the talent: Rare, dynamic footage of Hayes, Mavis Staples, Sam&Dave, and the awe-inspiring Otis Redding (who, the film reminds us, penned—and performed a mean version of—“Respect” himself) is worth the long two-hour running time, and they bring the film’s focus back to the music. Isn’t that the point? AMY MCCULLOUGH. 7 pm Tuesday, Jan. 15.