The Last Waltz [Blu-ray] by Martin Scorsese, starring Robbie Robertson, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond: DVDNear.com

The Last Waltz [Blu-ray]

The Last Waltz [Blu-ray]
by Martin Scorsese

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Van Morrison
Director: Martin Scorsese
Brand: Sony
Producer: Robbie Robertson
Producer: Frank Marshall
Producer: Joel Chernoff
Producer: Jonathan T. Taplin
Producer: L.A. Johnson
Producer: Steven Prince
Writer: Mardik Martin
Audio: English (Unknown); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2006-07-25
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)

Movie Reviews of The Last Waltz [Blu-ray]

Movie Review: Blu-Ray Puts This Concert Into A New Light
Summary: 5 Stars

This is one of my favorite concert films (and I have thousands in my collection). I have owned it on VHS, DVD, DVD (Special edition) and my favorite, on Laserdisc. I thought I had experienced this historic concert until I saw it on Blu-Ray. I was shocked how clear the images were and how much that added to the enjoyment of concert.

I must admit that I am totally confused that, once again, the best few seconds of the film that were my favorite moment in the entire film were missing. On the VHS, at the end of "The Weight" Mavis Staples of The Staples is seen to look satisfied and heard to say "beautiful." She is right in enjoying what was truly a moving version of the over-played Band song.

The Band is an amazing group from several perspectives: (1) they have made an important contribution to the history of rock at its finest state-of-the-art since their early days with Ronnie Hawkins (you need to watch Ronnie in their one video doing the "Moonwalk" in 1958!) to their Last Waltz days and post-Last Walk "quartet" and Cates Brothers-based editions. When you hear them back up singers as diverse as Joni Mitchell and Muddy Waters without EVER losing their unique sound or dominating the guests' performance, you know how unique they are.

As a side note, one of my favorite moments of the film is Robbie Robertson telling the oft-told story of their 1965 visit to Helena Arkansas to visit with Sonny Boy Williamson II and jam with him. I am writing a biography of Sonny Boy Williamson II based on extensive oral history interviews with his friends, family, neighbors, and fellow musicians.

Helena Arkansas is a key player in this story as is nearby Turkey Scratch, a rural town of about 70 people today, from which both Levon (pronounced Lavonne in the area) Helm and Robert Lockwood Jr. (Robert Johnson's stepson and Sonny Boy II's and B. B. King's band leader during the 1940s and 1950s.)
Helena was arguably the landlocked state of "Arkansas' seaport." It offered jobs to non-sharecropper blacks in a Chrysler plant, a piano factory and on the docks shipping cotton grown on Arkansas' delta.

If you wanted to go over to Mississippi, Mr. Jenkins would take you over on his ferry. Mr. Jenkins son, Harold, learned to play by practicing his band using the instruments left in the KFFA radio studio by Sonny Boy Williamson II's band that played each weekday noon on "King Biscuit Time." Harold would later change his name to "Conway Twitty".

For a 70 mile radius of Helena which include about 10% of the black population of America at the time, this pioneering blues show (still airing each day today) began in 1941 and made Sonny Boy II the first media star of the South and influenced the entire generation of blues musicians who migrated from the Deep South to Chicago.
In the spring of 1965, Dale Hawkins, Ronnie Hawkins' cousin, told me he got his first drink from Sonny Boy's bottleSonny Boy's invitation outside at of KFFA'a studios.

Sonny Boy had returned to Helena expecting to die there and did. The two previous years he had spend 17 months in England, starring on the American Folk Blues Festival (AFBF) 1963 and 1964 seasons as well as recording albums with the Eric Clapton-led Yardbirds and Eric Burdon-lean Animals and Chris Barber (six years before Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry's "London albums.") Check out the AFBF DVDs released recently. He had serious health problems (I suspect the spitting blood story in The Last Waltz is because he had drunk so much for so long that it had eaten away the lining of his esophagus.

Anyway, he had returned to the site of his biggest early US successes and locals believed that he must have been "playing for the troops" instead of playing the greatest music halls of Europe.

The day in question, The Band arrived in town looking for him. Having arrived too late to catch him leaving KFFA's studios where he did King Biscuit Time, they asked around for anyone who had seen him. Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records was in town cutting a deal with Sonny Boy to release an album of his Trumpet recordings. The Band (then Levon & The Hawks) saw him and asked him if he had seen Sonny Boy and he told them he had seen him walking down a specific street and a man in a unique multi-colored suit (the right half black and the left half grey) was not hard to find. Chris never knew who they were and wasn't interested in signing them anyway as he said "I wanted that Boogie Blues."

The Band and Sonny Boy II jammed that night as Robbie Robertson said (the only American musician in The Band that knew Sonny Boy well was Levon Helm. I saw a similar unreleased interview with Rick Danko that showed that he didn't know much about Sonny Boy's history.) and went on their way after asking their manager to set up a bi-racial "salt and pepper" tour. While at Tony Mart's in Somers Point NJ, (check out the opening scene in Eddie and the Cruisers as they enter the bar and say "Tell Tony the Cruisers are here.") they got the sad phone call while at Tony Mart's from Sonny Boy's representatives telling them Sonny Boy had died.

If Sonny Boy had lived another few months, he might have been a member of The Band when they joined Bob Dylan. Although Dylan didn't need another harp player in the band, if Sonny Boy, already a well-known to European and British audiences, had opened for him, he might have gotten a very different reception (without the Boos) at his concerts. Check out "Don't Look Back" the documentary of the next year's Bob Dylan tour of England.

Subsequent interviews with Robbie add to this story on both his documentary "Robbie Robertson: From the Band to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" and The Band: The Authorized Biography", "Classic Albums: The Making of The Band" and on the Japanese Laser Discs "The Band is Back" and "Made in Japan: The Band Japan Tour 1983": The Japan Tour." Finally, the circle is completed when Eric Clapton leaves Cream and visits Woodstock intending to ask to join The Band (and chickens out).

The Last Waltz was an important turning point in the history of America Rock `n' Roll as The Band's connections with so many of their fellow pioneers changed that history.

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Summary of The Last Waltz [Blu-ray]

LAST WALTZ SPECIAL EDITION - Blu-Ray Movie

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The Last Waltz [Blu-ray]