Lenny Kaye Movies

One of cinema's greatest provocateurs, Jean-Luc Godard, presents another barbed but thoughtful meditation on culture, politics and cinema in this experimental drama. Shot using high-definition video equipment and a consumer-grade cell phone, with the crisp images of the former playing off the grain and distortion of the latter, Film Socialisme is divided into three segments. The first takes place on a luxury liner cruising the Mediterranean, as tourists from different lands attempt to communicate in their different languages. In the second, a French family calls a private tribunal, as the children challenge their parents on the issues of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity while the media watches from outside. And, finally, Godard and his crew visit six different places -- Barcelona, Egypt, Naples, Odessa, Palestine, and "Hellas" (the latter could be Greece or France) -- as he confronts issues of truth versus myth and where the global community is headed. While Film Socialisme features dialogue in a number of different languages, the English-language subtitles which appear in the film deliberately confuse matters by being made up of statements which bear no relation to what is being said onscreen, and usually have a provocative political undercurrent. Film Socialisme received its world premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival; to the displeasure of some distributors, it was made available though Video on Demand the day after its debut screening. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Big Brother & the Holding Company was one of the first major bands to emerge from the nascent psychedelic music scene in San Francisco, CA, in the mid-'60s. Conjuring up a high-powered blend of blues and folk, the band had already begun to gain a significant local following when the group's manager, Chet Helms, introduced them to a young woman from Texas who was looking for a gig -- Janis Joplin. After Joplin joined the band, Big Brother & the Holding Company became major stars, and their album Cheap Thrills became one of the touchstones of the early San Francisco sound, but Joplin's presence proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Her powerful vocals on tunes like "Piece of My Heart" and "Ball and Chain" helped make the group a hit, but once the music press singled out Joplin as the star of the show, the bandmembers soon found themselves in the shadow of their singer, even after she left the band to go solo. Big Brother and the Holding Company With Janis Joplin: Nine Hundred Nights is a documentary which examines the group's rise and fall, featuring interviews with the surviving members of the band and rare footage of the group on-stage, including performances of "Piece of my Heart," "Combination of the Two," "Ball and Chain," "Down on Me," "Light Is Faster Than Sound," and more. Rip Torn narrates. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi