{"id":13701,"date":"2016-06-08T15:49:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T19:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13701"},"modified":"2016-06-08T16:07:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T20:07:00","slug":"dvd-janis-little-girl-blue-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13701","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Janis – Little Girl Blue (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JanisLittleGirlBlue\"Film<\/strong>:\u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> FilmRise<\/a> \/ MVD Visual<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a00 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0May 6, 2016<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Documentary \/ Biography \/ Music<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Vivid chronicle of the iconoclastic Janis Joplin, using rare film clips, stills, home movies, and interviews with colleagues, friends, and family members.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 4\u00a0Deleted and extended scenes – “Avalon vs. The Fillmore” (3:57) + “Big Brother Singing Acapella” (1:22) + \u00a0“Influences” (5:32) + “Walk of Fame Ceremony” (4:06).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amy Berg\u2019s documentary feels like the long-delayed follow-up and clarification to Howard Aulk\u2019s 1974 Janis<\/a><\/strong>, essentially a tribute film neatly edited from pre-existing interviews and live performances. Berg\u2019s film has the benefit of hindsight \u2013 an aspect wholly absent in 1974, in spite of being released 4 years after Janis Joplin\u2019s sudden death from a drug overdose at 27.<\/p>\n

Janis: Little Girl Blue<\/strong> also acknowledges quite clearly Joplin\u2019s ongoing struggles with drugs and alcohol, but it also clarifies likely reasons for the substance usage: besides being in vogue and part of the music scene, heroine and alcohol helped Joplin come down from the incredible high of a live performance, or as she described it, \u2018making love to millions, but going home alone.\u2019<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an extended interview with Alecia Moore \/ Pink in a deleted segment of contemporary artists reflecting on Joplin\u2019s rule-breaking status as a female rock star, a sexual creature beholden to no one, and a fierce independent mind who put every ounce of her atoms into performing. Moore essentially reiterates Joplin\u2019s take on going home alone, adding both poignancy and the reality of the job \u2013 after experiencing such a high in a stadium, you get onto an empty bus, and you sit at a table where they\u2019ve left a bottle of wine and a lighted candle to come down, and you get ready to do it again, the next day.<\/p>\n

Joplin\u2019s career is an extraordinary tale of \u2018the ugliest man on campus\u2019 who took all the severe bullying and tormenting from her childhood and teen life, the complex relationship with her parents, and being vulnerable to other people\u2019s emotional sensitivities, and organizing that hurt into one voice which, over time, would\u2019ve become more extraordinary. Her last producer on the posthumously album Pearl<\/strong> taught her to think differently about the future: instead of retiring in Santa Monica to run a bar when her voice craps out for good, recognize and develop the specific and unique shades of her voice, and parlay that into the best work of her career twenty years later.<\/p>\n

That is the greatest tragedy that viewers see coming in the doc\u2019s half hour: if the year 1970 alone were reflective of the quality and quantity of produced and released work live and in studio, the art that followed would\u2019ve been extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Berg\u2019s film exploits similar concert footage from Monterey Pop<\/strong> (1968), Woodstock<\/strong> (1970), and Festival Express<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0(2003), plus appearances on The Dick Cavett Show<\/strong> (1970), as well as colour footage from D.A. Pennebaker\u2019s in studio recording of \u201cSummertime,\u201d and there\u2019s the same news scrum footage from her high school reunion that proved to be an emotional disaster, but new are present day interviews with sister Laura and brother Michael; childhood friends and former lovers, Big Brother musicians Dave Getz and Peter Albin; and former managers.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a single dominant tone in JLGB, it\u2019s loss, and there are few visages who don\u2019t drain into masks of head-shaking sadness. Director Berg also interpolates elements wholly absent from Alk\u2019s 1974 film to create counterpoints between interviews and performances: former lover Dave Niehaus recalling his decision to break-up after she couldn\u2019t constrain her heroin use, and Joplin singing about their romance at a Canadian concert; and Kris Kristofferson reflecting on his surprise, awe, and the inherent sadness of hearing Joplin\u2019s rendition of his song \u201cMe and Bobby McGee\u201d only after she\u2019s died.<\/p>\n

Berg doesn\u2019t break any new ground in JLGB \u2013 it\u2019s a well-produced documentary co-produced by PBS for their American Masters<\/strong> series \u2013 but she organizes the material and their emotional content into a steady narrative that lives up to the film\u2019s title of a little girl with a huge voice, perpetually blue, and unable to wrangle and quell inner demons.<\/p>\n

The DVD from FilmRise \/ MVD Visual includes a handful of deleted segments that clearly didn\u2019t fit the doc\u2019s solid structure, but sit well on their own. A short acapella moment with the Big Brother members is cute, but there\u2019s more meat in the anecdotes that detail subjective differences between the Filmore and Avalon concert halls \u2013 former big band dance halls that became important performance venues for newcomers. (Detroit\u2019s own Grande ballroom, where Joplin also performed, was profiled in an excellent 2012 doc Louder than Love<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Also in the deleted scenes gallery is label exec Clive Davis giving a touching speech at the unveiling of Joplin\u2019s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a slightly meandering series of interviews that have Moore, Melissa Ethridge, Cat Power \/ Chan Marshall (who reads from Joplin\u2019s scrapbook and letters in the doc), and actress Juliette Lewis describing her impact. (Smaller extracts from these interviews were ultimately used in the film\u2019s End Credits.)<\/p>\n

Janis: Little Girl Blue<\/strong>\u00a0also exists on Blu-ray and as a Special Director’s Edition.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy Berg\u2019s documentary feels like the long-delayed follow-up and clarification to Howard Aulk\u2019s 1974 Janis, essentially a tribute film neatly edited from pre-existing interviews and live performances. Berg\u2019s film has the benefit of hindsight \u2013 an aspect wholly absent in 1974, in spite of being released 4 years after Janis Joplin\u2019s sudden death from a drug overdose at 27…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4480,4476,4479],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3yZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13701"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13731,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13701\/revisions\/13731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}