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David Bowie: Cracked Actor

The documentary depicts Bowie on tour in Los Angeles, using a mixture of vérité sequences filmed in limousines and hotels, and concert footage. Most of the concert footage was taken from a show at the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheatre on 2 September 1974 (Also featured are excerpts from D.A. Pennebaker's concert film shot at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973). Cracked Actor is notable for being a source for footage of Bowie's ambitious Diamond Dogs tour, and also for showing Bowie's fragile mental state during this period.

David Bowie: Cracked Actor

7.6 1975
The Fight

In 1971, maverick filmmaker William Greaves trained his cameras on both Muhammad Ali and his opponent, Joe Frazier, ahead of the “Fight of the Century” at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The epic battle was supposed to be Ali's big comeback following the suspension of his boxing license in 1967. In addition to the media circus surrounding both combatants, Greaves shot the match in its entirety from a dizzying array of camera angles, making the director's cut of The Fight both an invaluable historical document as well as a virtuosic piece of filmmaking

The Fight

NR 1974
Fast Break

Evoking a cinema verite feel not found in most sports documentaries, Fast Break examines the 1977 Portland Trailblazers basketball team in a surprisingly personal and compelling fashion. Inter-cutting excerpts from the 1977 playoff / championship season, the film steps outside of the basketball court, and into the everyday lives of the Trailblazers, as well as their coach Jack Ramsey. Whether it’s biking the Oregon coast with star center Bill Walton, hosting a kids basketball camp with Dave Twardzik, or joking with Maurice Lucas at the pool – Fast Break lets the players speak for themselves: about basketball, life and playing in Portland. Fast Break, a film documentary about Bill Walton and the Portland Trail Blazers winning the 1976-77 NBA title and the aftermath of their accomplishment, is the greatest movie I have ever seen on the subject of professional team sports, basketball as a metaphor for life, and the perfect practice of Zen Buddhism in American society.

Fast Break

10.0 1978
Independence Day

In this drama that was a UCLA student thesis expanded to feature length, two African-Americans come from Tennessee to Los Angeles. The man will not marry the woman as he has just been released from prison and cannot commit himself. He ends up working in a factory, while she gets a job as a maid. The two split up after he gets involved in a strike. She goes to school but ends up laid off from a good paying job. Later the two meet again. Both are surprised by the great changes in their lives since they have been apart.

Independence Day

8.0 1976
Starmaker

In Granada TV’s 1974’s Starmaker, head Kink Ray Davies proved once again that he’s not like everybody else, producing a rock opera for television that tells the story of an insufferable, vain, egotistical rock star (played by Davies, naturally) who switches places with an “ordinary person” named Norman, working in Norman’s crappy job and living Norman’s crappy life to find inspiration for his next album. (Well, it’s a little more complicated than that…) Davies’ play reveled in breaking the fourth wall: cameras and microphones are visible throughout and the play’s author/star himself even ends up a member of the audience. Starmaker was a dry run for the themes of the Kinks’ 1975 album, The Kinks Present a Soap Opera.

Starmaker

NR 1974
Arruza

Eight years in the making, Boetticher’s portrait of his longtime friend, the famous bullfighter Carlos Arruza, was a labor of love that the renowned director of westerns pursued despite contending with illnesses, bankruptcy, jail time, and lucrative offers from Hollywood. The result is an astonishing work of poetry, immediacy, and violence that fearlessly wrestles with the filmmaker’s own ambivalence about the titular matador’s triumphs prior to his death by automobile accident at the age of 46.

Arruza

6.8 1972
Flick

Viktor Frankenstein, expelled from Ingoldstat U for doing weird experiments and for acting a bit looney, goes to college in Canada to study brain control under Prof. Preston. Campus radicals frame Viktor (photographed holding a joint) in an attempt to discredit both Preston and the Dean and Viktor is once again expelled. Vik injects Tae Kwan Do expert Tony with his new brain control pellets and soon Tony becomes an instrument of revenge, beating radicals to death, drowning the photographer in a developing tray, and karate-chopping a reporter in the throat to name a few. But why won't Viktor remove his clothes when doing his often naked girlfriend and who is the "real Frankenstein"?

Flick

6.2 1970
Luisa Miller: Metropolitan Opera

Renata Scotto is the innocent Luisa, very much in love with Rodolfo (Plácido Domingo in one of his best roles). But he turns out to be the son of the Count Walter (Bonaldo Giaiotti), who has other plans for his aristocratic boy. Enter the evil Wurm (James Morris) whose blackmail eventually backfires, destroying the young lovers despite everything Luisa's father (Sherrill Milnes in a superb performance) does to protect her. James Levine's affectionate conducting and director Nathaniel Merrill's production help make this a performance to treasure.

Luisa Miller: Metropolitan Opera

NR 1979