Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The end of Flower Power!, 13 Jun 2000
By A Customer
If you're a fan of the Sixties or the Rolling Stones, you simply have to have this video. This is the Stones at their best before it all went tragically wrong at Altamont when 18 year old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death in front of the stage by Hell's Angels. For many, this free concert by the Stones at Altamont at the end of 1969 spelt the end of the Sixties and the flower power era. For that reason alone, this is compulsive viewing for devotees of the genre.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Preach it brother!, 5 Dec 2005
Gimme Shelter is an astonishing look at the dark side of the rock 'n'roll collective hallucination: Jagger thought he was lucifer, the fans thought he was lucifer ... and the Hell's Angels thought he was a loser.
The story is one of the best known examples of how not to organise a free concert.The Stones were at their musical peak: Mick Taylor was there to help Charlie keep it together, Keith had rarely looked so elegantly wasted and Jagger was Jack Flash in all his androgynous splendor.
Unfortunately it was decided that the Angels would make great security guards. Even more unfortunately they got to have as much alcohol as they could drink in return for herding hippies.
The Mayles cameras seem to have been omnipresent : in a situation where nobody could budge an inch they were absolutely everywhere. They got the endless to and fro with the Stones manager Grossman (?)trying to find a venue for the concert, the breath-taking build up with eye in the sky shots of thousands upon thousands of people honing in on the Altamont Speedway, the first signs that things were not going to go according to plan (what plan?)as musicians got attacked by Hell's Angels ("My God, they're attacking musicians? That doesn't seem right!") , the agonising slide into ugly anarchy, the irate fan (former fan ?) who punched Big J in the lip as he came out of his caravan to preen, the bad-tripping Angel/stage hand going down on bad acid and glaring at Jagger with contempt and fascination, the stray dog ambling across the stage totally unfazed by the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world, Jagger calling for calm as fighting breaks out yet again: "What are we fighting for ? You know if we really are all one, let's be all one!" ... to which an Angel snarls: "Yeah, preach it brother!", the attempted murder, the actual murder, the hysterical girl friend, the morning after ... and finally Jagger leaving the cutting room with a rather sheepish look on his face after watching the rough cut.
Despite my rather subjective review this is a marvellously objective documentary. I don't think you have to be a Stones fan like myself to be knocked out by the film-making prowess ... you might not come out of it liking Jagger so much but I'm sure he can take it!
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15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
35 years later ... where's the rest?, 20 Mar 2004
Okay, so the film has to be valued as a piece of cinema verite capturing a nightmarish moment in countercultural history, but going on 35 years later, I'm still waiting for the Stones tour documentary that was, after all, the original intent of having the Maysleses & Co. around the Stones at all. This "anniversary edition" of the film offers a ray of hope in the form of a few snippets of outtake material - the scenes from the Muscle Shoals studio in particular are a real joy (and bravo, guys, for showing you *were* capable of noticing somebody besides Mick Jagger for at least a few seconds!). So where's the rest? By all accounts the Stones' performance at Altamont was brilliant - they didn't just stop playing and flee, as this film misleadingly suggests. Granted, the events at Altamont turned the film into something other than originally anticipated - but that story's been told already, and the movie's gathered its due laurels. Now can we *please* finally see the rest of the Stones' concert?? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would value that miles more than the interminable self-congratulatory "commentaries" the filmmakers tacked onto this edition (really, who *cares* that you adore Mick's scarf?!). The remastering job is very fine, though, so ... all right, four stars. I'll save the fifth one for when you let us have the Stones.
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