Overall rating: 4.571429 / 5 from 14 reviews.
Review topics: ["documentary","release","artwork","watch","accompaniment"].
"I found the documentary interesting. Artie Shaw seemed to be a talented musician and brilliant guy. However the commentary by the director reveals that he was trouble to deal with after the movie's release which soured my feelings about the movie. The artwork is very nice on the slipcover."
"A great documentary about a good musician and a fascinating person. Not a film I’d typically associate with VS - like, at all. But I applaud them for giving this film some recognition."
"Love the artwork on this release. Oscar winner and one I’d never seen before. Fantastic musical accompaniment"
"Nice release"
"The refreshing aspect of this documentary about the innovative Clarinetist and band leader Artie Shaw is how the director doesn't try to steer him in any direction in particular or to make him look or sound like he has finesse. That isn't Artie Shaw, certainly at this later stage of his life, and director Brigitte Berman, armed with a cornucopia of archival images and footage from the period and throughout his career, shows him as craggy and opinionated as he was then. In truth, a lot of what he says makes sense, even when he sounds to be a little insulting (ie the highlight or one of them at least is his episode circa 1939 where he called teens who did the Jitterbug "morons" - he had a pretty good reason in context, but it would have been hard to communicate that in a headline). There is some heady and impressive points of history as well to take in, like during the second World War when Shaw and his band played for one of the great warships, but that isn't the main draw: what hooks us in is that this is about the needs and desires of an artist versus commercial expectations, and how that can lead to constant anxiety. I do wonder if there were points Berman did steer the conversation or answers and we didn't see it so much, but I doubt it. The presentation via the narration is a little dry, and it may cover some parts I personally wanted to know more about (ie his marriage to Lana Turner seems to be hand-waved away, not to mention Ava Gardner), but that is my only main knock against it (that and perhaps those bits where he just sits listening to his own music doesn't add as much as Berman thinks). This is a fascinating capital-C Character of the world of music and the 20th century American imagination; despite all of his existential troubles, Shaw's candid admissions and how often his ornery opinions mesh with a plain spoken sense of his life and career and collaborators (and even his psychotherapist) is involving and you want to keep hearing him talk."
"Artie Shaw was one of those Mothers, He had licorice Stick all figured out. A wonderful portarit and interesting to get to know more about the man. Met some great players that all said Artie was the one made them wanna play. Highly Recommended"
"Revealing documentary about the clarinetist featuring an extensive interview with the man himself and the people who new him best. Highly recommended for fans of jazz and the big band era."
"This is a good release of a rather unimpressive “4K restoration” due to the large amount of archival footage within it. The supplements are appealing and the slip case artwork looks beautiful."
"Great autobiography w/ Artie Shaw about his many wives & musical self-inventions through the decades-I felt like I really knew him after viewing this!"
"Thanks for putting out this Oscar winner for Documentary. I hope you can put out more that have never been released on DVD or Blu-ray."
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