REAL MTV: Music Documentaries, part 3

 Continuing my look at some really good music documentaries that I've watched in recent months, here's my last batch of reviews.  

    Few stories are as compelling as Tina Turner's. She truly has lived a dozen lifetimes in one. She's known extreme poverty and enormous wealth. She's found herself at professional lows and highs, lower and higher than only a very few people have experienced. She's endured racism and violence. The HBO documentary Tina tells her story, with her full participation, and without pulling any punches. She goes there; she goes into detail about her relationship with and abuse by Ike Turner, who discovered her as a young and naïve backup singer and then realized that she was a bright star that could take him to heights that he had never dreamed. After she escaped, quite literally, that relationship finally, she still had to endure the press questioning her about the relationship and about subjects that he wanted to keep to herself. The performance bits are great, the interviews are direct and honest. I highly recommend watching Tina. 

(trailer)

    INXS was a huge band in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the Aussie band's frontman, Michael Hutchence, was a superstar frontman. Handsome, sexy, talented, mysterious - he seemed to have it all. Then, in 1997, he was found dead in his hotel room, a suicide. Mystify looks at the career of the band and the man himself, revealing Hutchence's true character. Hutchence was quiet, introspective, sensitive, and very reserved. He didn't like all the attention. One of the interesting things I picked up from the doc was that his vision was extremely poor; he usually didn't wear glasses or contacts when he performed, so he rarely saw his audience, and he liked it that way.  

(trailer)

    Duran Duran is one of those 80s bands that has persisted into the current day, still touring and still releasing new, good music, always evolving.  There's Something You Should Know covers the history of the band and their music, focusing on seven albums and how they were made and how they grew with each release. 

(trailer)

    Rick James was one of those performers whose talent and accomplishments were overshadowed by the negatives - drug use and criminal charges. Did you know, that early on, he was a band mate, and roommate, with Neil Young? He started his musical career in Canada because he had crossed the border to evade the Vietnam-era draft. He dreamed of becoming a rock star and had moderate success. Then he left that band and eventually created the character of Rick James, and his music combined funk and rock. He became a superstar performer and producer. Unfortunately, he also became a major drug addict, leading to some very low spots in his career and personal life. He was an extremely talented man, and he deserves respect for his musical accomplishments.  He really is under-appreciated. Treat yourself to this doc, Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James,  and dig in.  

(trailer)