Jump to content
🌙 COLDPLAY ANNOUNCE MOON MUSIC OUT OCTOBER 4TH 🎵
  • Guest
    Guest

    Coachella On The Big Screen

    coachella.jpg"Coachella," a documentary on the Coachella Valley's most important two-day tourism event, arrives at the Regal Palm Springs Stadium 9 on Tuesday for a one-night-only screening of a film that is generated raves.

     

    Variety calls it, "An excellent overview of the ambiance and showcased talent at arguably the best annual U.S. rock festival."

     

    The film, which premiered Thursday at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, features some of the most important artists to play in the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival since its debut in 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It features one song each from 25 artists including Radiohead, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the White Stripes, Bjork, the Pixies, Oasis, Morrissey, the Mars Volta, Kool Keith and Prodigy.

     

    It also captures the annual festival's ambiance by showing the uniqueness of its fans and their interaction with the performers and the interactive art pieces that help define the festival.Promoter Paul Tollett of Goldenvoice, which produces the film and the festival, said first-time director Drew Thomas and his crew began filming the festivals to document the bands in its first year. He said they began trying to capture the flavor of Coachella after deciding to seek a theater release last year.

     

    "We think it represents what going to Coachella is like," Tollett said. "That's the main thing we're trying to get across - not necessarily to put it next to other festival films throughout the years - (but) the feeling of going to the show."

     

    Festival documentaries have been rare since MTV began producing musical biographies, and record labels and publishers became more proprietary about the music and images of their artists.

     

    "Coachella" doesn't include appearances by such major past acts as the Cure, the Killers, Rage Against the Machine, Moby, Weezer, Queens of the Stone Age and Beck, although Beck and QOTSA leader Josh Homme are interviewed in the film.

     

    Tollett said that was only partly due to licensing problems.

     

     

    "It's a combination of what we were able to film, what we could afford to film, what film came out that wasn't dark," he said. "It mostly just comes down to your resources."

    Goldenvoice wasn't able to secure last year's headliners, Coldplay and Nine Inch Nails, even though Coachella gave their most recent CDs a huge boost.

     

    "It's been difficult," Tollett said. "No one's been hard to deal with, there's just been a lot of bureaucracy. I didn't realize how slow that it was."

     

    But "Coachella" captures the multidimensional feel of the event, starting with its brief history on the east valley.

     

    The film starts with reggae rapper Spearhead speaking intelligently about the war in Iraq, which is representative of the level of discourse at the festival.

     

    This festival isn't just a lot of ranting and raving about youth-oriented liberal politics.

     

    The early segments also capture the fun and confusion of the early hours of the event. Viewers see a concertgoer who has lost a friend who has all her money. There's a woman who says she was trying to find a hotel online and "everyone was laughing" at her futile efforts. And there's a guy walking around with his head in a small aquarium of water, reflecting the need to have lots of water on the hot Coachella days.

     

    The melodious Belle & Sebastian also are seen messing around on the song, "The Boy With the Arab Strap," which is typical of daytime acts having trouble connecting to the hot and restless daytime audiences.

     

    The film begins to pick up when Thomas shows some cinematic style in capturing Cut Chemist and Nu Mark in a DJ duel that creates a ripple through a tent audience. That provides just a taste of what it's like in those sauna-like tents, where the music is so powerful it's impossible to stand still no matter how hot it is.

     

    Perry Farrell, the Jane's Addiction frontman who has played every Coachella, makes an important point about another of the festival's secrets to success. While you may not be able to trust radio and most music providers to offer a consistently high level of music, "you can put your faith in Coachella," he says.

     

    The film doesn't build to a linear climax and that, too, is consistent with Coachella. The great music spreads out, adding canvases to fill by showcasing diverse musical genres. As at the festival, if one genre doesn't thrill, there's another down the way.

     

    That's how this festival film differs from other festival films such as the "Monterey Pop" DVD, which reveals how rock became a cultural force, but features more songs by the Mamas and the Papas than Janis Joplin.

     

    "Coachella" is filled with historical moments in its two hours. It shows the performance by the Pixies in 2004 that cemented their place in pop music history. There's also the reunited Iggy & the Stooges performing "I Wanna Be Your Dog" as if they were 30 years younger.

     

    And it sidesteps the flaws of other festival films by depicting a representative slice of life without turning it into a showcase for one particular act.

     

    "Coachella" deserves a place in the pantheon of great festival documentaries, although Tollett says that wasn't the film's point.

     

    "You can't re-create those films," he said. "You have to do the best you can based on what your show is."

     

    Source: http://www.thedesertsun.com




    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    There are no comments to display.



    Guest
    This is now closed for further comments

×
×
  • Create New...