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BirdRating:
Release Date: 30 January, 2001 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (17 total) |
Bird Reviews
a self absorbed paean to a dead junkie who made good music
clint eastwood directed this labor of love about jazz great charlie parker. like most labors of love, its a failure in appealing to all but true devotees. i shall comment here about jazz buffs: there are no more obnoxious fans of any art form than the fans of jazz. it is perfectly fine that they choose to discuss among themselves arcana like recording dates, side men, and the like. all fans of various art forms do that in their own little world, but jazz buffs expect the rest of us to listen to them and are positively insulted when we begin to yawn. ok, back to the movie; speaking of yawns ...
Next to listening to his recordings, this is a fine tribute to a great jazz musician
I am not usually a big fan of bio-pics about genius musicians because it is impossible to "act" them playing. And, after all, it is their playing that we care about. However, Clint Eastwood brings so much affection and integrity to this film and Forest Whitaker has such a perfectly fit genius of his own for this role that I think it comes off quite well.
Charlie Parker was a tortured soul whose musicianship was so powerful that he was able to teach himself a virtuoso style of playing jazz alto saxophone that has influenced nearly every alto-sax player since. Certainly, anyone with pretensions to playing bebop jazz. The film captures his difficult beginnings, his powerful rise and artistry, his terrible drug addictions (and how this also provided an unfortunate influence on others), and his early, far too early, death.
There is the sound of his playing throughout the movie, but it is in short snippets. We get more over the closing credits. But we get enough to remember what is special and unique about his playing. Everyone talks about his speed and harmonic variety. All that is there, certainly. However, there is also so much in Parker's commitment to what he is singing through his horn that allows us to feel the music in a way that was unique to him. Without that ability to reach into the heart of an audience, no amount of virtuosity can keep an audience for generations. Parker is still winning new fans every day and that is his greatest legacy. This film is a nice tribute to him. It is just so sad that he got onto such a self destructive path and the only way off for him was to die at 34.
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