Shine a light (2008)

Stones
This is the IMAX Rolling Stones concert film directed by Martin Scorsese. Should this film have been? No! I’ll tell you why.

The Stones are too old and ugly to look at them for two hours so close and so large that you can see the dust collecting on their copious wrinkles magnified across a huge screen in a crisp digital image.

Another thing, it is shot at the Beacon theatre in New York City. The Beacon is beautiful but small theatre. The seats are practically stacked right on top of each other. Since it is so tight, the cameras don’t have much flexibility, and they certainly cannot to take advantage of grandeur of the IMAX format.

The film starts of with some drama about Scorsese not having the set list, it needlessly takes up 20 minutes of dead time.

Mick Jagger is the only member of the Rolling Stone with any charisma, and he is barely in it outside of singing.

Now let’s get to the actual performance. The Stones will always be the Stones, but now they are a band held together by a daily schedule of medicine to keep them going. Although the Stones are a five piece band, a whole other band supports them and almost carries the entire rhythm. The geezers do their thing and Mick Jagger has more energy than he should at that age.

They are a flickering flame. Sometimes they sound good, often they are flat like a stale soda. It’s really sad, but it’s been this way for a while. I remember going to the Stones concert in the 90’s with my sister, and it was the same way. You wished that they didn’t play an old favorite just so that you didn’t hear them murder it, but as my grandmother used to say “You murder it, but you can’t kill it” – so all of the Stones standard were performed and pleased the crowd.

They brought in some fresh blood to add plasma to the supply. Jack White of the White Stripes and Christina Aquilera join them, and old blues man Buddy Guy. Jack White looks like the happiest guy in the room to be playing with Mick and company. Maybe he understands that his moderately successful band has just been knighted by a band with a stature only lower to the Beatles with a singer as Rock ’n Roll as Elvis Presley.

Scorsese does mix clips of them current Stones with vintage clips of them, which reminds the audience that these guys were once young.

Although, they are in a more nature environment of a theater, which where they got there start, like the Beatles. A better IMAX concert film is U23D whose stadium presence fits the format comfortably. Shine a light is not worth the money.