Daily Archives: December 16, 2008

The Story of the Yardbirds

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Have trouble keeping track of exactly which 1960s bands served as incubators to other seminal groups? Answers arrive in the form of The Story of the Yardbirds, a solid documentary covering the group in question, as well as the 1963 to 1968 rock scene in general, in glancing, effective shorthand.

Running about 52 minutes, this behind-the-scenes look at an influential but short-lived supergroup includes tons of original tunes, archive convert footage, interviews with bandmates, session musicians and other associates, and of course plenty of footage of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Two 1964 live cuts with Clapton and the Yardbirds, “Louise” and “I Wish I Would,” are given the most reverential spotlight treatment, but in all honestly the title works as both a primer for classic rock neophytes and a nice little blood-pumping exercise in reminiscence for long-time fans. The rest of the track listing of musical selections is as follows: “I’m a Man,” “Heart Full of Soul,” “Still I’m Sad,” “Train Kept Rolling,” “Over, Under, Sideways, Down,” “Shapes of Things,” “Happening Ten Years Ago,” “For the Love,” “My Girl Sloppy,” “Stroll On” and a personal favorite, “Dazed and Confused.”

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Story of the Yardbirds is presented on a region-free disc in 16×9 widescreen, with an English mono audio track. The sole supplemental feature comes in the form of 14 minutes of full-frame bonus footage of the Yardbirds, with a very young Jimmy Page on guitar,
from a German TV broadcast in late March, 1967. Trippy, amusing stuff, though an academic/talking head dissection of it would have been a cool inclusion as well. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Wendy and Lucy

Film Reviews

Alone except for her dog Lucy, a retriever, and some vaguely defined dreams of a new life, Indiana native Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is driving through the Pacific Northwest to Alaska, in hopes of a summer of lucrative work at a fish cannery. When her car breaks down in a sleepy, boarded-up Oregon mining town, however, the thin fabric of her already tenuous financial situation comes apart, and she confronts a series of increasingly dire economic decisions, with far-ranging repercussions for herself and Lucy.

Working from a screenplay written with her Old Joy collaborator Jon Raymond, director Kelly Reichardt uses a formal minimalist style to construct an emotionally impressionistic road movie that feels rudderless in ways mostly enthralling but also sometimes frustrating. A carefully observed film about sympathy and generosity at the dirty-fingernailed edges of American life (one is reminded of the refrain from U2’s “One” — “we get to carry each other” — about the privilege of shared sacrifice), Wendy and Lucy also touches on the limits and depths of people’s duty to one another. If the film sputters a bit in conveying much of substance about what Wendy thinks about her predicament, Williams herself is never less than hypnotizing. And in the current recessional times, the film’s blank canvas and broadly sketched melancholic tones serve as an empty vessel for those who would watch a film and like to turn the personal into the political. (Oscilloscope/filmscience, R, 80 minutes)