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American Movie Classics rocks out
©Associated Press LOS ANGELES -- It is accurate to say that David Bowie and the Rolling Stones are equally well-preserved. On film, that is. The proof is in American Movie Classics' 10th annual film preservation festival, which includes restored versions of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and the Stones' Gimme Shelter. The theme for the anniversary celebration is "Rock 'n' Roll in the Movies," with an emphasis on the 1970s, when Hollywood moviemakers and the rock world were groovin' to the same beat -- or trying to. The three-day festival, today to Sunday, includes Ziggy Stardust, Gimme Shelter and the Bee Gees-flavored Saturday Night Fever among films in which the art forms clicked. Then there are misses such as Godspell and Thank God It's Friday. Even the latter movie, despite its mediocrity, had an excuse for living: It offers disco queen Donna Summer and that unbeatably catchy anthem Last Dance. "A lot of great moments of rock 'n' roll have been captured in movies," said AMC programming executive David Serhing. Some of those moments and some influential films, including the 1970 documentary Woodstock, are absent from the festival. But there are key films, including a restored The Last Waltz, which chronicled the final concert of the Band, in 1976. Martin Scorsese, the film's original director, supervised the restoration; the Band's Robbie Robertson took charge of remixing and remastering the soundtrack. Scorsese is president of the Film Foundation, which helps promote and fund film preservation and is involved in the AMC festival. The Last Waltz helps kick off the first night, airing at 10 p.m. tonight. It airs after the 8 p.m. debut of an original documentary, Hollywood Rocks the Movies: The 1970s. The ever-elegant Bowie narrates the documentary, which boogies through the decade when Hollywood was unafraid of movie musicals and musicians found success through exposure in films. Offering generous clips, the documentary trips through a dizzying array of '70s genres: reggae; disco; glam, classic and punk rock; and "avant-garde extravaganzas," as Bowie puts it, including the resounding flop Xanadu. "There's a lot of very, very bad films that came out in the '70s, especially when you got on the music side," the Bee Gees' Maurice Gibb comments in the documentary. "It was really cashing in on what Saturday Night Fever had done, and you cannot repeat a phenomenon." AMC, which has drawn fire for introducing commercial breaks during movies, said it will present Gimme Shelter, The Last Waltz and Ziggy Stardust uninterrupted. Other films will include a break to promote preservation. (The rock-oriented festival also dovetails with AMC's effort to reach a younger audience with contemporary films, leaving more of the "classic" classics to a digital, commercial-free spinoff, the future Hollywood Classics. Competitor Turner Classic Movies remains commercial-free.) TV PREVIEW: AMC's film preservation festival starts at 8 tonight with a new documentary, Hollywood Rocks the Movies: The 1970s, followed at 10 p.m. by The Last Waltz.
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