Change Your Image
scott-381
Reviews
Great Performances: Pete Townshend's Psychoderelict (1993)
Concert version of the CD, with actors & projections
This is a concert film, and just the concert - no interviews or any junk like that. It starts off with a couple Who standards, like "Behind Blue Eyes" and then goes into a fairly straightforward concert presentation of "Psychoderelict", complete with the three main voice characters actually appearing onstage as their characters, plus video projections of various things including the hacker character "Spinner".
The actors probably put a few viewers off; I liked the effect. The video stuff was quite interesting, and included some computer-generated fractal displays during instrumentals. The radio-show style plot of the CD was slightly rearranged.
Overall I like the music on this film better than the CD - it's a really good live performance, especially compared to parts of the CD which were more sequencer/keyboard based.
This showed up (in the US) on PBS's "Great Performances". I managed to get it on tape and have watched it a bunch of times. It should be available from Townshend's website, and if I find it on DVD I'll go ahead and buy it.
White City (1985)
Pretty interesting - worth seeing for Townshend fans
This movie lives in a bit of gray area - never exactly released in the US, but a copy turned up at my favorite video place. It's a bit more closely tied to the album "White City" than expected; the weird little spoken word snippets are actually of a street preacher in the movie.
Synopsis, as best as I can remember: The "White City" is sort of a British housing project - small apartments, a fair amount of poverty. The main character is a rather young fellow having problems with his marriage. Townshend appears as his friend, and essentially as himself (he's referred to as the "rock star" by at least one character in a pub). The action revolves around Townshend setting up a dance/concert in the project's swimming pool / civic center (warning! terrible 80's clothing and fake band members!!) while the main character breaks up with his wife.
The plot isn't that great, but it's still neat to watch. Also cool was some odd footage at the end of the video - a short interview with Townshend and also a live/studio performance of "Night School", a Townshend disco tune?!?
Quadrophenia (1979)
Some incredible moments
I've never been able to appreciate the "Catcher in the Rye" sort of character, so the film's protagonist is rather annoying to me.
However, there are some moments which surpass any other problems - definitely a nice match of music to images, such as the Brighton beach shots and a few other areas.
Overall worth seeing once. This is not a documentary, but then nobody else has really covered the mods vs. rockers period so you might as well consider this a historical document.
Gai shi qi hua (1981)
Obvious wire-fu, but otherwise pretty good
Basic premise: girl's mother dies, so she goes on a trek to find, um, somebody. The plot could be a bit more concise, but basically it's about a long-delayed revenge. However, the plot is not the good part. There are some pretty impressive fights, like the sword fight on top of the waterfall, and some not-so-impressive fights featuring crappy wire-fu stunts. But that's not the good part either. Instead, this film seems to feature a couple different things that later cropped up in much bigger movies: Some stop-action fight effects of the sort which later became the hallmark of "The Matrix", and quite a bit of scenery and fighting which reminded me of parts of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Slow movie to start, but after about 30 minutes it really gets moving and is well worth watching.