I wonder if those newer clips are landing with you guys... I know it's not acoustic jazz, but it's really the only Miles game in town. Could you imagine Wynton lining up 3 Hammonds and Fenders Rhodes to do Silent Way's Shh at Lincoln Center? .
Without rehashing the Marsalis argument, let's just say that Wynton has always been a standstill reactionary and Miles a bold innovator.
Wuz Ya Aware Previously? From The Wall Street Journal Late December Department:
[“You’ve been mid-wifing a Miles Davis movie for years. Is that baby still alive?”
”It is. It’s the longest in-utero in the history of babies. It’s three to five years average for most movies to get made, but often it’s 10 to 15 years. This is the kind of movie the business 10 years ago may have leapt at. But now, you don’t see movies like this. We have a studio offer and we’re trying to back into a budget number, like we always have to do, without gutting the piece.”
[“It’s been reported that a director has been attached to a competing biopic.”
”That’s something I just heard about in the last month. Look, if the world is ready to have two Miles Davis movies, fantastic. He should have eight or 10 of them.” ]
From the never-read thread "What Could Have Been, But Never Was (Thank God):
Posted: Mar 11, 2008 - 10:21 AM By: Jim Phelps (Member)
MILES DAVIS (2005) Tagline: He was the Picasso of Jazz. Directed by John Singleton. This worshipful, Oscar-winning biopic chronicles the Jazz trumpeter's (Samuel L. Jackson) life and career from NYC in the 1940s to his final performances at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival. Tom Savini's makeup won an Oscar. Lawrence Fishburne; Avery Brooks. With Halle Berry as Cicely Tyson.
You put it perfectly for me when you noted that you finally 'got' what Davis was doing. He's one of the select few musicians whose music I didn't really LIKE at first, but I knew there was SOMETHING there, so I kept trying.
BITCHES BREW, SKETCHES OF SPAIN, KIND OF BLUE, THE COMPLETE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS w/COLTRANE... I probably have 20 CDs of his, and some of it is the best 'trip' music to play while just hanging out after midnight.
"Milestones" as performed by his one-time band mate, pianist Bill Evans, in Evans' legendary trio on June 25, 1961 live at the Village Vanguard (and my all-time favorite music recording):
1959: The Year That Changed Jazz. Nice doc on four legendary albums released that year--including KIND OF BLUE. The voiceover guy is way too cool for his own good, but I'll take it.
It Was Twenty Muthaf_ckin' Years Ago Today (Give or Take Three Months) Dept.
June 1994. I was at Clarks Newsstand in downtown Ft. Lauderdale and the music playing on the shop speakers was undeniably Miles, but which Miles was this? It sounded different than the Second Great Quintet, but the same. I asked the burned-out, scraggy-grey-haired beat cashier perched atop the blonde wood front counter what was playing. He clacked through some CD cases and said "Miles Davis: Circle in the Round."
Saw the trailer for that Don Cheadle Miles Davis movie, which looks positively dreadful. It's supposed to take place between 1975-80, which is when Miles was musically inactive and doing nothing but shaggng chicks and snorting cocaine. They also show about ten gunbattles in the trailer which are all news to me. Miles does gloss over this period in his legendary, foul-mouthed autobiography, but did mention how depraved he was during that time. It figures that Hollywood would make yet another film set in an era where they could slap ugly '70s wigs and muttonchop sideburns on a bunch of actors.
I can only hope that this film, however good or bad it really is, will at least get a few Millennials to explore Miles' one redeeming value: his muthafuckin' music.
Has anyone seen the trailer for the biopic? It looks like a 70s made-for-TV movie. Not sure if that is good or bad.
I mentioned it yesterday, just a few posts above. The biopic trailer reminds me of that shitay Christian Bale movie of a couple of years ago. When will they learn that the 1970s can't be replicated? The 1970s just...ARE.