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Amy – nf

As you may know, Amy Winehouse came from a Jewish middle class family in England and became a world famous singer. She died of alcohol and drug use at the age of 27. This documentary film directed by Asif Kapala uses archival film and narrations by people who knew her. We see her as a four or five-year-old girl seemingly independent with a mind of her own which was characteristic of her as she got older. She was confident in her singing as well as in her writing lyrics and she brought to life the words that she wrote which described her life and world around her.

We really were not shown enough to understand her family dynamics. Her parents divorced when she was 10 years old and her father was shown trying to control her career and her mother seemed to be a loving woman in the background. While her music was meaningful to a very large audience, her personal relationships seemed quite troubled. Blake, her boyfriend, then husband and then ex-husband who also spent a few years in jail, brought her deeper into drugs as she got older. Amy was an interesting young woman who had a meteoric rise and then fall. However, we are not really provided with in-depth interviews of the significant players in her life. Perhaps some future biography will provide this. The film, of course, was mostly in a foreign language (British English). Subtitles were frequently provided especially when she sang but not all the time. So occasionally, we would not know what was being said on the screen.

The highlight of the movie was a video segment showing Amy and Tony Bennett working in the studio to produce a recording of their duet by them. Bennett said that he thought Amy Winehouse was one of the greatest jazz singers of all time alongside of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. (2015)

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Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel – sp – Filmmaker Brigitte Berman won an Oscar for her documentary film about iconic musician Artie Shaw. Hugh Hefner is a great jazz aficionado and founded the acclaimed Playboy Jazz Festival which is how they had occasion to meet and get to know each other. Berman then decided that she wanted to make a documentary about Hefner but one, which shows the largely unknown side of the man who in most people’s minds represents the Playboy lifestyle of beautiful women and lots of sex. Hefner liked the idea of such a film and gave Berman free access to his vast archives as well as participating in extensive interviews with her. Friends of Hefner such as James Caan, Tony Bennett, Dick Cavett, Joan Baez, Jessie Jackson, Jim Brown, Bill Maher, Dick Gregory and others also gave very fascinating interviews. What emerged in the two hour and 4 minute film was a picture of a hardworking man who was determined to be a success. He loved women (many women) and did not believe that he was demeaning them by making them sexual objects. More to the point of the documentary, he had a sense of fairness and acceptance that was completely color blind at a time when much of the country and certainly the entertainment industry was not. He did not allow discrimination towards blacks to occur in his Playboy Clubs and commonly showcased black entertainers on his after hours TV shows. Interviews with Jessie Jackson, Jim Brown and Dick Gregory were extremely clear on this point. Hefner also did not hesitate to have writers, who were blacklisted as communists or communist sympathizers by the nefarious Senator Joseph McCarthy, to continue to write for Playboy magazine under their own name, which was unheard of at that time. This film is not only enlightening about these contributions of this man but it also is quite entertaining as it includes wonderful clips of Sammy Davis Junior performing as well as adlibbing on the Hefner TV show. There was a young Tony Bennett performing in his relaxed style. We saw a beautiful Joan Baez singing and youthful Pete Seeger doing his thing with some injected clips of the craggy older Seeger reflecting on the significance of Hefner’s support of him and his causes. James Mark Stewart provided an excellent original score for the background of most of the movie There are a few counterpoints to the Hefner’s views about sexuality and the Playboy life style which are periodically presented in the film by such people as Susan Brownmiller, Pat Boone and others. They are shown as weak rebuttals, at times almost humorous. It is clear that this film is an admiring tribute to Hefner now in his 80s. Ms. Berman director, producer, writer and editor told us that Hefner was extremely pleased and touched after seeing the documentary. The filmmaker said that she wanted to show him objectively as he really was which led me to ask her if there was anything in the film that Hefner didn’t like? She said no. The film comes to an end with Hefner being true to his philosophy and reinventing himself after two marriages by now having seven intimate girlfriends which he then cuts down three. There is a very revealing statement by this older guy reflecting on his life. He indicated that he understands that his outgoing life style of loving and enjoying many women has to do with the fact that his parents were very cold and rejecting. In fact as a child he says he was never hugged. Even though he has had a very successful life, it is sad to see the lingering effects of what has been missing from his childhood. 2010