Almost Famous

Rating:
Summary: This wasn't a "double-dip"
Review: I've read a few reviews here where people are complaining about Almost Famous being released for a second time, arguing it was only released to cheat the fans who bought the "bare bones" version that was released in March 2001. Well sorry to tell you fellas but the distributor did not cheat you. The Bootleg Director's Cut was the one Cameron Crowe wanted to release in the beginning, with all the extras including his commentary. Unfortunately scheduling conflicts would have pushed back the release date for the disc.

What they elected to do was to release a stripped down version first, then release the long awaited director's cut later on, with all the extras they had originally planned to put on the first disc. The company announced this before the first version was even released. So, don't be mad at the company and accuse them of trying to cheat you out of your hard earned cash (at least not in this instance.) They let it be known before the first version was released that a better, more complete version would be following soon afterwards.

Blame yourselves for not doing a bit of research and for not being educated consumers.

Rating:
Summary: CAMERON CROWE'S VANITY PRODUCTION
Review: Cameron Crowe's highly personal and slightly fictionalized 70's coming of age musical road trip with a Led Zeppleny kind of band gets an extended director's cut and an utterly amazing commentary with Crowe and his mom in "ALMOST FAMOUS: THE BOOTLEG CUT."

Sentimental and sweet, this simple, attempt at a feel good movie evokes a bygone era and the tunes that underscored (and undermined?) a generation of X-ers. Both versions of the film and numerous extras fill two discs. A bonus CD of "Stillwater" in concert is part of the package. But the star of this version is the weirdly nostalgic and sentimentally unsettling conversation between Cameron and his mommy on the commentary track. ...

Rating:
Summary: Crowe's Life
Review: The main character in Almost Famous is a 15 year old rock journalist named William Miller. He gets the chance to write an article for Rolling Stone magazine about an up and coming rock band, Stillwater. He goes out on tour with the band and what starts out as a simple assignment, turns into a life altering experience for all involved. The character of William is director and writer Cameron Crowe's on screen alter ego. Mr. Crowe was a 15 year old who wrote for Rolling Stone and the story is based on his life. The film also involves William's overprotective and aggressive mother (played by Frances McDormand) and the battles she waged with his sister. They are based on Mr. Crowe's own family's struggles and the fact that he was willing to air his family's problems in public adds a touch of humanity and reality to the film. Stillwater is led by Jeff Bebe and Russell Hammond who bicker at one another about the band's future and possible fame. Billy Crudup plays Russell the lead guitarist and Jason Lee is Jeff the lead singer. They have a natural fear of the press and refer to William as the enemy. In fact, William struggles to get an one on one interview with Russell throughout the film. The band is followed on tour by a bunch of groupies who refer to themselves as Band-Aids. Their leader is Penny Lane played wonderfully by Kate Hudson. She is in love with Russell, but it is William whom she confides in. The tender relationship between Penny & William is one of the film's great strengths. Throughout the film, William seeks and gets advice from legendary rock critic Lester Bangs. Mr. Bangs is played amazingly by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman provides the film's conscious and his brief time on the screen is electric. All the performances in the film are first-rate including Ms. Hudson who is luminous, Mr. Crudup is brooding and dark, Mr. Lee is self-righteous and Ms. McDormand is a fierce presence. But the most startling performance is that of Patrick Fugit as William. Mr. Fugit had never appeared in a movie before and had minimal acting experience, but he is the emotional center of the film, the link between al the characters. He plays William perfectly and captures the essence of what Mr. Crowe was trying to capture. Mr. Crowe guides the film with an eye for detail as the sets and feeling are completely real and harkens the spirit of the 70's. His screenplay perfectly balances drama and comedy and has some of the sharpest dialogue in a long time. Mr. Crowe took home a Best Original Screenplay Oscar at the 2000 Academy Awards for this great script. Almost Famous is Mr. Crowe's love letter to his youth and the 70's. The film is easily his most personal, but it is the personal touch he adds that gives the film its universal appeal. This is an expanded three disk DVD that has everything one could want regarding the film including a disk of Stillwater's live performance that was filmed for the movie and vintage Cameron Crowe Rolling Stone work. The DVD is as expansive as any released and worth the few extra bucks.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: While some saw the sweetness and innocence of "Almost Famous" as a failure of artistic nerve, it is actually the key to understanding the allure of a movie whose remarkable achievement is the embodiment of the passions rock inspires in and draws from teenagers. The success of Crowe's movie is that rather than trying to 'deconstruct' or 'explore' (i.e., flatten and schematize) rock'n'roll or the 70's or fame or whatever, he recreates in cinematic form just what it was like, and probably always will be, for teenagers to listen to their music.

While the basic plot is a version of the truth--teenaged writer wins the jackpot of being assigned by Rolling Stone to cover a band (in the movie, a shaggy Midwestern quintet; in real life, Led Zeppelin), and missing school into the bargain--the clearly fictional elements are what set the film above pleasant but limited period pieces like "Dazed and Confused." Of course the expected behind-the-music elements are here--the fights, the jealousies, the drugs (but not much), the often hilarious highs and lows of living fast and loose in the spotlight--and they are well done. Equally authentic are the scenes that show us the lost world and spirit of the 70's: the scene in which William's (the writer's) older sister forces her generation-gapped mother to sit and listen to Simon and Garfunkel's "America" by way of explaining why she feels stifled at home is priceless. But the center of the film is the love triangle Crowe develops between the likeable young protagonist, the band's talented and (of course) egotistical lead guitarist, and the young groupie who is doomed to love the man and his music but actually has more in common--integrity--with the sweet but desperately uncool boy. The fantasy who makes the film come alive and gives it its rich core is the luminous Kate Hudson, as the flaky but ultimately human and transcendant girlfriend Penny Lane, who becomes a living metaphor for William's--and our--relationship with rock music.

Penny is a young man's dream of a groupie: sexy and sweet, knowing and goofy, smart and child-like. Of course young William falls hard for her, almost from the moment they meet, and of course she falls hard for the semi-married lead guitarist and true talent of the band. Billy Crudup plays the handsome Darryl, who can hardly be blamed if he goes along with Penny's winsome beauty and no-strings-attached love and adulation and who never, really, ever promised her anything more, much as he might want it himself. He's a rock star, after all, with an ironclad dispensation--granted by the fans themselves, including Penny--from responsibility. How could any of them help themselves, living as the do in a world whose first commandment is 'follow your heart'? But as the relationships grow tortured, as the betrayals mount, as the carnivalesque world of rock 'n' roll gradually reveals that the other side of having anything you want is not having it for long, the answer becomes: Who can win in such a situation?

The chains of never-satisifed longing between the three, the ecstatic peaks and heart-breaking losses, come to be the emotional figures for the ideals, inspired by the music they adore, that the young embroider out of hope and desire and innocence and use to adorn the objects of their desire. This is the real heart of the film; the whole mess can only be called love. In this way Crowe foregoes 'commentary' for real insight, and gives us the splendid gift of taking us back to when we loved music like we breathed air. 'Almost Famous' goes beyond the rich soil of low comedy comprised of youthful missteps and naïve boners, of predictable rebellion and cliched coolness, and reminds us instead that it is love that young people feel for their music and their musicians. And for the possiblities and freedoms the music promises and instantiates, and that that love is as real and powerful as anyone's.

The film reminds us that music is young people's secret passion, hidden from parents and the 'real world' Penny continually mocks, only occasionally capable of being shared even with other music-lovers, because it is so deeply personal. This is a strong love that is at once perfect, sublime and desperately unrequited. When William's older sister bequeaths him her secret stash of rock albums as she runs away from home (away from her formidable and fabulous mother, played by Frances McDormand), she is giving him the keys to the kingdom of art and passion and beauty, miraculously immortalized in cheap vinyl. But the albums are, as her own flight shows, apt to awaken urges they cannot satisfy. The adoration that millions of us felt for John and Paul, Mick and Keith, Bob and Jimi and Janis and all the rest is played out, doubled and mirrored in the teenagers' twinned and ultimately hopeless passions. Penny is as foolish and reckless, and as lovely and eternally young, as the passions of William and all of us for the music that speaks only to us as teenagers--hidden away in bedrooms and dens, driving around aimlessly in suffocating towns and hellish burgs that feel like the edge of nowhere. Like her, the music gave us the strength, the faith, to go on, and showed us what we wanted out of life, at a time when not knowing seemed the cruelest joke we could possibly endure. Penny is the solace and promise of the perfect smile, musical and playful and knowing, suite Judy Blue Eyes herself, on a plane beyond pressure and expectation, beyond time and decay and ultimately, painfully, beyond sharing, the irreducible substance without which the soul cannot tell what it most wants to be.

Or, to put it another way: "Well I saw her face/ now I'm a believer."

Rating:
Summary: Anthem to 70's Rock
Review: "Almost Famous" is a sort of riff on Director Cameron Crowe's early years reporting for Rolling Stone. You don't have to be a rock enthusiast to enjoy its sweetness. Set in the early 1970's, when rock was drenched in a sort of easy-going, sun dried, alcohol and drug-fueled haze, and teenagers across America worshipped at the altar of Led Zeppelin with a fervor thought reserved by Star Trek fans, it tells the story of William Miller, a high-schooler trying to become a Rock N' Roll Journalist. Preternaturally mature (by age 11, he's in the same class as 13 year olds, and they still hate him), and sheltered at home by a lovingly domineering mother (superb Frances Mcdormand), William falls in love with Rock yet is less determined to become a rocker himself than follow in the footsteps of the legendary Lester Bangs, the self-appointed Dean of Rock Criticism. Getting his first break writing for Bangs's "Creem" magazine, Miller gets his big break when he's tagged by Rolling Stone to cover the burgeoning band "Stillwater" on its "Almost Famous '73" tour. Bangs remains ever present mentoring Miller through the process of covering the fast-rising band, an endeavor that requires Miller to remain aloof and objective, but not so distant that the band's suspicious members won't shun him as "the enemy". Despite her better instincts, and on Miller's oath that he won't miss high-school graduation, Miller's mother allows the boy to go on tour with Stillwater, a fictional band loosely hinting such 70's confabs as Credence, the Allman Brothers and the Eagles. A steady stream of sex with the band's dedicated groupies (called "Band-aids", young girls with fake names who insist that they're there for the music) and various feuds between band members helps to occupy Stillwater's principals, and frustrate Miller's attempts to get the band to say anything coherent on tape. Too sweet (or uncool) to be insistent, Miller follows the band across America, watching self-imposed deadlines come and go. Adding to Miller's stress is his own burgeoning love for Band-Aid in-chief, "Penny Lane" (Kate Hudson), whose adoration for Russel Hammond (Crudup), Stillwater Lead Guitar, blinds her to how the band uses its groupies.

"Almost" is a great movie, one of those understated gems from director Cameron Crowe. Though an anthem to 70's rock fandom, the film excels on its characters - Stillwater's lead vocalist's pompous platitudes on the significance of Rock, Crudup's acid-induced meanderings at a party he crashes in Topeka, Phillip-Seymour Hoffman as the sage Bangs and especially Macdormand. Like a band, the film excels not only on solo acts but also on how the characters impact each other - the look on the Topeka partygoers or (in one of the flick's running gags) the look on the faces of hotel workers who have to take messages from Miller's mother, or the lecture that Hammond receives from Mrs. Miller herself. (I'm not sure if Mcdormand's character is supposed to be a reference to the song, Mother", off of Pink Floyd's "The Wall".) Above all, the script drips with tasty lines, bizarrely unforgettable zen koans (like the one about groupies who eat steak but don't use birth control) and a fair amount of period rock references. When Crudup's Russel Hammond proclaims himself a "golden god", you might miss the Zeppelin reference, but you won't miss the imagery, one of a lost age that outdid ancient Greece in resembling the cover of "Houses of the Holy".

Rating:
Summary: NO DTS ON THE BOOTLEG CUT!!!!
Review: What's THIS about?! I bought the stripped version a long time ago when it came out and absolutley loved it. I'm an huge DTS fan, okay....and naturally, loving this movie I HAD to have the bootleg cut...so I bought it this week only to find out the bootleg disc doesnt have a DTS track on it! What (...)is THAT about? The theatrical version does but this one doesnt???

I would have rated it 5 stars but gotta take one off due to technical stupidity. C'mon Crowe, you release a movie the way you wanted it to be seen and then cheap out on us with the audio options? Bad move if you ask me....

Rating:
Summary: Great, but...
Review: I am looking forward to the director's cut edition that is coming out soon which is featuring 30 minutes of scenes cut from the theatrical version. I wanted more and I just felt with this version while very good and the actors deserving of the praise and accolades rendered I felt like there were some moments that were cut short. For example, the scene of Penny Lane dancing in the theatre actually lasts about five minutes and much of it was cut from the theatrical release. There are some other scenes as well that were cut and an additional scene from the end. This is the only reason I am giving it four stars. If you are unfamiliar with this film, watch it. It is a feel-good film no doubt, but well-written with expertly drawn characters.

Rating:
Summary: What The First DVD Should Have Been
Review: What an incredible edition of an incredible film. This DVD is a 3 disc set. Disc 1 is the Bootleg Cut, not called "Almost Famous" but called "Untitled". It has approx. 36 minutes of new footage (most of which should never have been cut), and new scenes include a hilarious radio interview with Stillwater featuring Kyle Gass of Tenacious D, many extended scenes which explain the few flaws and uncertainties of the film, , a kick-(...) commentary with Cameron Crowe and members of the Vinyl Films team, not to mention his on mother. Also, the are actual interviews with the REAL Lester Bangs, a behind-the-scenes documentary, Cameron Crowes Top 10 Albums of 1973 (narrated, of course) among many other features. Disc 2 is the Theatrical Release, and features extras like an entire Stillwater Concert, the ENTIRE screenplay (Which won an Academy Award), and the precious "Stairway To Heaven" deleted scene, in which William and his friends and mentors use the Led Zeppelin epic to convince her the positivity of rock music and let him go on tour with Stillwater. The scene was not included because they could not get the rights to the song, so the scene directs you to get your copy of "Stairway" and play it along with the scene as you watch it. Among the other features are a trailer, cast & crew bios, production notes, all of which were included on the first DVD. The third disc is an audio CD of all six Stillwater songs heard throughtout the movie, all in studio form, which are all excellent. This movie was the best movie I had ever seen before this release, and i couldn't imagine how better it could have gotten. How wrong was I? This is a must-have DVD, good for any collection. Everybody in this film gives a superb performance (Kate Hudson was robbed at The Oscars), and the film itself is a masterpiece. It gives an honest backstage view of the final glory days of rock, before rock changed to an "Industry of Cool". One of my favorite films and DVD's ever.

Rating:
Summary: Besides the great flick, it's full of cool extras
Review: (THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE "UNTITLED - BOOTLEG CUT" DVD SET)
(4 and 1/2 stars) Since there are many reviews of the movie itself already available, I will focus here on what's in the "Untitled" DVD set.
--- The extra scenes in the "Director's Cut" give more depth to the characters and connect the story together even better. It's not that there's anything amazing in the extra stuff (or else it would have been in the theatrical version), but it's certainly fun to watch - especially the scene with a stoned DJ interviewing the band.
--- The "Cleveland Concert" is actually just 3 songs, 15 minutes long. Interesting to watch, good music, although it does sound like studio recordings with a bit of crowd noise before and after the songs. (No crowd noise at moments during the songs where it might be appropriate.)
--- The music CD has 6 songs by the fictional group Stillwater. The last 3 sound as if they're the same exact recordings as in the "Cleveland Concert." Still, this is one of the attractions that got me to buy the set, and it's something to play in the stereo or in the car. (I wonder why these songs weren't on the soundtrack CD though?)
--- I enjoyed hearing Mr. Crowe's rundown of the "Top Albums of 1973." He explains the enduring value of each of CDs by Bowie, the Stones, Jackson Browne and others.
--- The infamous "Stairway to Heaven" scene is finally released. I expected it on the previous DVD edition, but at last now I was able to do the interactive thing of playing my own Zep CD along with the scene. It is kind of an amusing scene, and gives us a chance to watch Crowe's mom playing one of the teachers.
--- Several of the other extras were worthwhile, like the Nancy Wilson demo for one of the Stillwater songs. I enjoyed it even more than the Stillwater version.

Rating:
Summary: Almost Famous Untitled Delivers!
Review: If you loved the theatrical release of "Almost Famous" then this is just what the doctor ordered. I'd read the script in it's original form before I saw "Untitled" and I knew that this version of the film would really complete the story. I WAS RIGHT! Throw in all of the extra features (including a 6 song CD of music from Stillwater) and you have a DVD that's a gem! If there was a disappointing moment it was when I realized that the intervention scene was still deleted from this version of the film. No worries though...Cameron Crowe couldn't get the rights to use "Stairway To Heaven" in the scene. The scene is included in the DVD set...you just add the song from your own personal collection. They tell you when to start playing it and the scene is complete. This is a must have for any "Almost Famous" fan!!