Wordiezett So much average

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

classicsoncall The fall of 1970 delivered a terrible gut punch with the passing of two rock icons, Jimi Hendrix on 9/18, and Janis Joplin on 10/4/70. I wouldn't go so far as to say they were 'idols' of mine, but I did hold their body of work in high regard, brief as their careers might have been. This recent documentary did much to confirm what I read about Janis in a recent book of her life. She was a lonely spirit, terribly insecure about her personal appearance and lack of meaningful relationships, finding her inner soul only when she was on stage and performing for the crowds that gave her the approbation she so desperately wanted and needed.What this documentary offered that I particularly enjoyed was musical footage I hadn't seen before, including songs Janis performed that I'd never heard before, like the opening "Tell Your Momma". The story goes on to describe Janis's close relationship with her family that she tried to maintain during the course of her rising career, even though she wanted to leave her Port Arthur, Texas roots well behind her. Much of the on screen personal dialog is handled by her sister Laura throughout the picture, with occasional clips of brother Michael.Fans of Joplin will know that her career breakout occurred with Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967. In these music documentaries, I try to stay attentive to scenes that offer a glimpse of memorabilia from the era, and I was astonished to see a ticket for the Festival during a quick scene. It's not unusual to see tickets priced at five or six dollars back in the Sixties, the Beatles' concert at Shea Stadium would have set you back a whole five bucks. But for Monterey Pop - a stage front seat went for a 'Charitable Contribution'! There's something to be said about the good old days.In any event, Janis Joplin has been and probably will remain my favorite female vocalist for a long time. There's something electrifying about her voice and the way she sustains that bluesy soul feeling in songs like "Cry Baby", "Maybe" and the song that epitomizes her life and tragic end, "Little Girl Blue". Listen to the words, and all the pain and sorrow is there that Janis experienced, and which unfortunately led to her premature death at the age of twenty seven. Man, I wish she were still around.

hyoga_saint This touching, intimate documentary chronicles the life of legendary singer Janis Joplin, from her childhood in Port Arthur to her untimely death, as told by her surviving family members, friends, lovers, associates, peers, and by Joplin herself, through personal letters and notes.When Don McLean talks of the "girl who sang the blues" in his seminal song American Pie, it is Janis he references. We see that smile of hers, so full of life, passion and joy. We also see the many faces of her sadness, that bewitching, heartbreaking pain that fed her powerful, inimitable voice.This documentary takes us beyond the music, although Janis was pure music. It is the medium that drove her to like-minded spirits, to someplace she could truly feel herself at home. It led her to recognition, adulation, success. She never seems as alive as when she is on stage.We see how she got there, her ups and downs, the loneliness, self-doubts, the need for an acceptance that may have never really come, especially from herself. Along with the music, the alcohol is also there, as are the drugs. A life lived on the edge, despair never fully going away.I would have liked a little more time to go even more in-depth, peel the layers even more and get closer still to Janis, that little girl blue with the harrowing, unforgettable voice. It is still a wonderful, moving trip to a time, a woman, a soul who remains, in many ways, untouchable.(+) A wonderful retrospective that will tell you who was Janis Joplin, converting newcomers and thrilling long-time fans.(-) More time could have been spent engrossing the story, showing more of the different sides of this haunted, incredible singer.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Nostalgia has no limit, no limits, absolutely none. It is in fact the frontier to dreams and the future, no matter how you look at it. With no nostalgia there is no imagination – nothing new under the sun except new assembly of old, eternal, ever present emotions.And emotional you have to be and get with this invocation of Janis Joplin.It was the dense and tumultuous time of "Fritz the Cat" (1972) and "Zabriskie Point" (1970). Three great artists and performers among the most innovative minds of their time, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Janis Joplin (1943-1970) and Otis Redding (1941-1967) died, two of an overdose and one in a plane crash. What a loss.The only woman in that triad, who was not the first woman in rock-and- roll in spite of what is said in the film, was the direct white heiress of blues, jazz and black music, all represented by Aretha Franklin (1942-and still living and kicking, and even making Obama wax sentimental in public) who was a black woman in this field before Janis Joplin. The film does mention her and the fact she was the model, the inspirational muse of Janis Joplin, which made Janis Joplin second in this music, even if she was the first white woman.What did Janis Joplin contribute to the world of modern amplified polyrhythmic music? A lot, indeed a lot, even more than just a plain lot.She had very hard, realistic and powerful lyrics that exposed society the way it was felt and suffered by young people in the 1960s and early 1970s. She had a singing style and voice that were unique at the time among women and first of all white women singers. She was possessed in her music by hope for sure, but with the conscious certainty that this hope would be betrayed, and it was of course, naturally and without any failure. We can always count on one thing from this rotten world we live in: it will betray our hope, our hopes and even our plain submissive obedient and subservient wishes. And betrayal is the major master word of this hell of a life we have to live through. In spite of the flashes of bliss from time to time when an emotion is responded to emotionally, when our love is received and shared with pure love and not short term greed or lust.It was betrayed by the use of drugs that made the hopeful forget the world cannot change in the proper direction, in the direction of human freedom, if you exit it by artificial means into virtual dreams of psychedelic freedom that turned into nightmares, like in the film "More" (1969) or those I have already quoted. That means the world can only change in the proper direction if you remain conscious and united towards that objective that you in no way control but onto the outcome of which you can weigh and even be of some influence by making your collective parameter heavier in front of the millions of other parameters that dictate history. Janis Joplin could be one of those who mobilized millions of individuals into pushing history in the right direction, which did not mean left or right, but right and not wrong. In the countries where they twinned up right with left and not wrong, they were made the slaves of decisions taken by others and of cosmic phenomena beyond any human control.Betrayed it was by the use of violence and here the film is silent about the Black Panthers and their being systematically killed by the dozens in Chicago or other places. And that's what one should only care about in that period: the systematic repression of any protest around and after 1968. No allusion to the assassination of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. No mention of the Vietnam War and the millions of people killed or maimed over there in the name of democracy and freedom for – and only for – the Americans and maybe here and there the West reduced to its anticommunism of Mathuselah's ancient times. And that was then "Good Morning Vietnam" (1987) that will take twenty years or so to come out of its Pandora's box of napalm and other green berets' adventures, capers, brutality and barbarity.Betrayed by all sorts of crooked, more or less crooked, rather more than less crooked, politicians from A.B. Johnson to Richard Nixon, via Spiro Agnew; and Ronald Reagan was just in the near future. There the worst part is that this systematically warped democracy enables the majority of those who want tranquility and no disruption in their everyday life and comfort, be they favorable to change or not, to always have the last word. The last reform of importance was the 26th amendment lowering voting age from 21 to 18, ratified in 1971, though not the lowering of drinking age and a few other age limits of that type, like being able to enter the music "saloons" or music bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and many other places where the best music was performed. It did not change anything in the logic of the political system, hence the social dependence we all cling to. And Nixon was reelected in 1972 by all these young 18, 19 and 20 year old voters. The debate was raging about this lowering of voting age from what I remember when Janis Joplin was at the highest point of her stardom just when she "decided" to OD in a motel room, alone.You can make a star out of a person but that person's solitude is even greater than before because stars are NOT dancing together. And what's more these stars are black stars and we all know what happens to black stars that could be starry star-like black holes.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Alex Deleon Viewed at 2015 Venice Film Festival., "Janis, Little Girl Blue" by Amy Berg, With Alex Gibney, himself an outstanding documentarian acting as producer, is a Great Doc about a great American singer, Janis Joplin, who died too young on the verge of salvation. Interviews with parents, sister, brother, surviving members of The Grateful Dead, Kris Kristofferson, and most surprising, Dick Cavett (1970). In a year of many good documentaries, this was the best of all -- a marvelous reconstruction of a tragic young life. Janis sang the blues with such conviction and such black feeling that even afro-Americans though she was black -- She died on October 4, 1970 in a Hollywood motel of an accidental heroin overdose at age 27 -- only two weeks after another rock legend, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. The film traces her life from humble origins in the nondescript north Texas town of Port Arthur, constant humiliation by her schoolmates because of her extreme nonconformity and relatively plain looks, up through her rise to prominence as the lead singer of the acid/rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company --one of the leading San Francisco rock groups of the mid sixties -- reaching the pinnacle when recognized as the top white blues singer of the age, her difficulties dealing with fame, her loneliness in the midst of adoring crowds, her battle with drug addiction, and finally her tragic early death on the verge of even wider fame and general acceptance by the serious music world. Needless to say, the film is liberally spiced with clips from her amazing stage appearances, which is an added enrichment, but this is far from a mere excuse to present her songs -- far more a penetrating probe into the life of an extremely complex personality ---a true artist who became the victim of her own profound talent. Myself more or less a product of the psychedelic sixties, I left the vast Venice theater thoroughly emotionally drained and realizing I had just witnessed a remarkable film about a most remarkable life. Alex, Budapest