Movie Details
| Title: | Rock The Bells | |
| Director: | Denis Hennelly, Casey Suchan | |
| Year: | 2006 | |
| Genre: | Documentary | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 01.04.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 01.04.07 | Alamo Downtown | So, the title refers to the name of the concert that's being documented. I guess people in LA know what it is but for everyone else, it's a horrible title. Why is it a horrible title? because the whole story is about the concert promoter struggling to re-unite the entire Wu-Tang Clan for a show... so maybe throwing "wu-tang clan" in the title somewhere might help the millions of wu-tang fans out there to know that they want to see this movie. Because it's worth seeing. Damn worth it. So it's kind of like a Gimme Shelter setup with a promoter working his ass off to get this all-day festival going. His original goal was to get a few Wu-Tang members but after a while it looked like getting them all might be doable so he approached RZA and the movie's big question is will they all get there. Along the way, it's a near-Shakespearean tale filled with all kinds of characters including the promoter's mom, the wigging out production coordinator, colorful Wu-Tang management personnel, Redman, and a dynamic duo that makes up ODB's XXL Brooklyn support system. It's funny and amusing and impressive and really really scary. The amount of people that show up to this thing... and seeing how the show-runners react is pretty high drama. Sure, nobody gets stabbed but hey... maybe that's a good thing. However, after all the praise I can pile on (and there is plenty to pile... this movie is great), I have to say there's a big lost opportunity right at the end of the film, which kind of made the movie implode a bit for me when the credits came up. The movie follows the whole day really well, choosing to include several performance scenes of opening acts doing their thing. These are all really great and feel natural in the pace of the film and all that but they set up the one mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance at the end. There is no mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance at the end of this movie. After following so much and feeling the weight of stress on all of these guys through the whole movie, a mega final celebratory Wu-Tang performance song would really really pay off well. I understand that this is not like an official Wu-Tang movie and that even just the publishing rights to one of their songs has to be so far out of the filmmakers' budget that it's not even an option, but the movie needs it. It really does. You can't have the whole movie be about these guys coming together and not SHOW THEM TOGETHER! If I were these guys, I'd put together the best footage for one of their songs, insert the closing text summaries and ODB RIP stuff as it plays, and roll the dice with distributors. so yeah... great movie. |
