6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The story of Hilly Kristal's New York club from its creation as an unlikely venue for Country, Bluegrass and Blues (CBGB) to what it ultimately became: a haven for new bands and a landmark in the history of punk, alternative rock and underground music.
Starring: Alan Rickman, Malin Akerman, Freddy Rodriguez, Stana Katic, Richard de KlerkMusic | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
History | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The club known as "CBGB" was founded in 1973 in lower Manhattan and managed to survive until 2006. Although its founder, the late Hilly Kristal, dreamed of creating a venue for Country, BlueGrass and Blues (hence the name), almost none of the 50,000 bands that performed on CBGB's tiny stage fit that description. CBGB is best known for hosting bands like Blondie, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Mink DeVille, The Cramps and, in their early days, The Police. Talking Heads famously got their start at Hilly Kristal's club, because they lived across the street. Kristal quickly realized that his creation has taken on its own life and added a subtitle to the name: OMFUG, which stood for "Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers". There's a great movie (probably more than one) to be made about CBGB, but the depressing caricature created by the husband-and-wife team of Randall Miller and Jody Savin isn't it. Despite input from Hilly Kristal's daughter, Lisa, and access to numerous authentic props and artifacts, Miller's and Savin's low-rent bio-pic doesn't contain one second of authentic feeling for Kristal's club or the musical personalities that kept it vital and exciting for decades—not just the big names, but the hopefuls who didn't make it, for one reason or another. The savagery of many of the negative reviews can be attributed to a sense of personal betrayal by writers who felt that their memories of a cultural shrine had been desecrated. Even some who haven't even seen the film have expressed outrage at its claim to tell the history of "punk", of which Kristal's club was certainly a part but in no way the whole. The real problem is that Miller and Savin have no feeling for the material. They may have recreated CBGB using original walls, artwork and even the toilets from the famously filthy bathroom, and they throw a few Seventies items into the frame (like President Nixon on TV declaring "I'm not a crook" or the famous Daily News headline: "Ford To City: Drop Dead"), but that doesn't mean they have any understanding of Hilly Kristal, his era or the phenomenon that CBGB's became. And casting a bevy of talented actors to imitate famous and not-so-famous musicians as they lip-sync to their songs does nothing to explain what made their music popular and transformative. In Miller's and Savin's hands, figures like The Ramones and Blondie become additions to the clown car that was Hilly Kristal's circus. They treat a major chapter of cultural history as if they were making an American Pie movie.
CBGB was shot by director Miller's long-time cinematographer, Mike Ozier. Specific information about the shooting format wasn't available, but the movie has a distinctly digital look, and not in a good way. I am not the first reviewer to observe inconsistency in CBGB's appearance, often varying from shot to shot, between a digitally grainy look that may be an attempt to suggest the grungy past and a clean, sharp style that would be suitable for any of today's high-end TV shows. Listening to the commentary, I got the distinct impression that the variance depended on where the shots were acquired, with the grainier ones originating in New York and the rest in Georgia, as if a decision was made to change shooting styles between the two locations. If so, even post-production on a digital intermediate couldn't eliminate the difference. XLrator's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced from digital files and, to that extent, should be deemed an accurate representation of Miller's and Ozier's intended look. Except for the aforementioned grainy shots, the image is generally clean, sharp, detailed and colorful. The average bitrate of 20.97 Mbps is somewhat on the low side, but since there doesn't appear to be any film grain to compress, and the digitally grainy shots are relatively few, no artifacts seem to have resulted. Overall, the Blu-ray image is more than acceptable. It just needs a much better movie to represent.
CBGB's DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is perfectly adequate, reproducing the dialogue with clarity and the sounds of Hilly Kristal's bar, both crowded and empty, with enough detail to be convincing, if not particularly overwhelming. A truly adventurous sound mix would plunge the viewer, at least occasionally, into the middle of the crowded club when a band was playing at full volume so that, at least for a brief time, one might feel the claustrophobic excitement of a live performance, but the makers of CBGB harbor no such ambition. The film has no original score, but relies on songs by Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, The Dead Boys, The Ramones and many more, both in "live" performance and as background.
If Alex Cox hadn't already made Sid and Nancy, he might have been the right director to tell the story of Hilly Kristal and CBGB. Or perhaps it could have been done by Julian Schnabel, whose bio-pic of Jean-Michel Basquiat demonstrated a special talent for conveying both a specific period and the sense of an artistic movement. There are undoubtedly dozens of unknown writer/directors out there with the skill and passion to tell this story properly. Let's hope that the existence of CBGB doesn't dissuade them. Rent if you must, but don't blame me if you want your time back.
2018
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