“The last great action film”


Excellent piece in The Guardian on a new book/oral history from the pop culture reporter for The New York Times, Kyle Buchanan about the making of Mad Max: Fury Road. The piece — “A fetish party in the desert’: the making of Mad Max: Fury Road– includes excerpts from more than 130 new interviews with key members of the cast and crew, including Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, and director George Miller.

I’ve watched the movie half a dozen times and, like the author, didn’t realize the stunts were not CGI. They were real. My copy of the book is on the way.

The Beatles: Get Back

“What’s startling about “Get Back” is that as you watch it, drinking in the moment-to-moment reality of what it was like for the Beatles as they toiled away on their second-to-last studio album, the film’s accumulation of quirks and delights and boredom and exhilaration becomes more than fascinating; it becomes addictive. We’re there in the studio, right alongside the Beatles, seeing — living — what they do. There are moments when “Get Back” meanders (at a certain point in Part 3, you may feel like you never want to hear “Don’t Let Me Down” or “Let It Be” again). Yet even the repetition is part of the documentary’s experiential quality. As you soak up the film in its totality, it become moving and momentous. “Get Back” is a long-form portrait of the dissolution of the Beatles and the togetherness of the Beatles.” — Variety review of Peter Jackson’s 8 hour documentary.

If you weren’t a fan I doubt you’d enjoy this. The Beatles exploded in 1962 and flamed out in the late sixties, neatly covering my high school and college years. A big musical influence in my golden years. (Good article on which US radio stations played The Beatles first)