Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
REVIEW (part 1) of āYou Can Call Me Billā 10/18/2023 at the Newport Beach
Film Festivalā¦WARNING: I tend to babble onā¦ Part 1 will be a general overview. Part 2 will be more specific.
I had this nagging feeling that if I didnāt take this opportunity to see āYou Can Call Me Billā last week at the Newport Film Festival, Iād regret it. Iāve read all the reviews of āYou Can Call Me Billā, but no one gives you the nitty-gritty of the documentary.
Going in, I knew that this wasnāt a ātypicalā documentary. Iāve certainly been intrigued as to why Legion M has had such a hard time selling the rights to the film in North America-whether it was Legion M or the film itself. THAT Iāll get into after my review.
THE FORMAT: This was exactly like Billās one man show. Bill sitting, tho, with varying degrees of extreme closeups, and talking. Fading in & out were numerous clips & photos (some weāve never seen). It was a lot more intense & detailed & personal than what I expected. Just like Billās sitting there talking to you. I can handle this!!! It was sort of like the old artsy films you used to see years ago only on your PBS channel. Unfortunately, I think they only used one camera to film this, so they couldnāt be more creative in their zooms in & out of Bill. But, hey, guess thatās what the director intended.
THE TOPICS: childhood, early career, etc., etc. What youād expect in a Bill ādocumentary.ā Obviously, areas HE wanted to delve into. He took, tho, this opportunity to go into these topics ALOT more in depth. Nice! REALLY nice!
OVERALL: It was SO different in the way it was filmed! It certainly ran you through a gambit of emotions. 1. Some points had you almost in tears, 2. some had you questioning the editorās/ directorās judgement, 3. some had you bored $hitless, 4. some had you enthralled by itsā beauty & wanting to jump out of your seat applauding, 5. and the ending left you in stunned silence. SILENCE!!! No applause when the lights came upā¦just silence. STUNNED silence is the only way to describe it. Really different approach, needless to say. Iām warning you now tho, that Iām not probably going to tell you exactly what it was at the end that left the audience in āstunned silence.ā I certainly wouldnāt have wanted to know how it ended prior to watching the performance myself. SOā¦just to warn ya, butā¦you can probably figure it out.
REVIEW (part 2) of āYou Can Call Me Billā 10/18/2023. The specifics of my 5 overall impressions from part 1ā¦
1.āSome points had you almost in tearsā,ā¦Bill talked in GREAT detail about his childhoodā¦loneliness, his dog & his mother & father. This sounds corny but you could actually hear the tears in his voice as it quivered in places discussing his parents & his need, as a child, for so much more from them. His attempts to get his fatherās approval & his recollection that he never got so much as a hug from his mother. OMG! Heartbreaking! Then discussing the death of his only dog as a kid. Coming home from school & jumping the fence to play with his dog, asking his mother where the dog was. Pretty dark & detailed. WOW!!
2.āSome sections ( two, actually) had me questioning the editorās/ directorās judgementāā¦The first was when Bill was talking about the death of his dog. OK. not that recalling the death of your dog isnāt emotional enough, but the editor kept cutting away from Bill to seemingly endless visuals. NOT of dead dogs, thank goodness. but fuzzy pics of a dogās paw, a dogās foot, etc. NOPE!!! AINāT WORKING FOR ME! I found myself, instead of focusing on the image Bill was portraying, wondering what other artsy portrait the editor was going to fade into next. DIDNāT WORK! I DO admit, tho, that part of the issue was that Bill himself was going on & on recalling the memory. Heart wrenching.....except for the visuals. When in doubt, focusing on Bill was a far far better option than overusing fuzzy pics of dog parts. Was totally distracting from the narrative. No doubt the dog lover in me speaking hereā¦,The second section where I found myself questioning the editorās/ directorās judgement, was the ending. This was either the greatest ending in the history of documentaries or the worst! Canāt decide. Certainly, was the most memorable ending of any documentary youāll ever see. Iāll discuss the ending in more detail in the last section here, BUTā¦as I said earlier, not the actual ending, I think. Would be too much of a spoiler.
3.āSome sections had you bored $hitlessāā¦.Amazing to me, it seemed TOO LONG, even for a Shatner fan ( 96 minutes). Billās voice & the format of the film kinda lulled you to sleep in places. And then there were the TREES. UGH!! Bill discussed his desire to be cremated & buried under a tree. Fade into beautiful images of treesā¦and more treesā¦and yet even MORE trees. OK, editor, we get it. No need to hit us over the head with pictures of trees. When Bill was discussing the plight of earthās future, guess what? Trees. Never want to see another picture of a tree in my life! BUT, when I do, Iāll surely think of this documentary & Bill.
4.āSome points had you enthralled by itsā beauty & wanting to jump out of your seat applaudingāā¦Near the end was a prolonged & absolutely beautiful sequence of images to the audio of Bill & Brad Paisley performing āReal.ā This was like, WOW! THIS I needed more of. Nearly jumped up cheering. THIS was specialā¦real special! It was such an unbelievable high. Absolutely PERFECT way to end this thing. And thenā¦BOOM!
5. āand then the endingāā¦A 2-3 minute segment before credits rolled. SILENCE! Lights came up in the theatre to total silence. Folks got up from their seats and you heard NOTHINGā¦not a word! To go literally from the highest of highs one moment to a stunned silence the next was certainly unexpected. Kinda a Hitchcock-like moment. The ending wasnāt sad, wasnāt hopeful, wasnāt joyous. Not sure how to describe it, but it certainly was memorable. No doubt you have to see the documentary yourself to appreciate the effect of the ending. And, hey, maybe itās just the Shatner fan in me thatās reacting.
To share with you here what that 2-3 minutes ending segment was would be totally detrimental to your viewing enjoyment IMHO. Sorry! You definitely need to go see it! Hopefully Legion M can get their act together & sell the rights in North America so you CAN see it.
EDITORIAL COMMENT:(which I probably need to delete)
SOā¦.Legion Mā¦itās been 8 months since the documentary premiered at SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Tx in March 2023. They succeeded in selling the rights quite quickly to non- North American venues. HUH!!! So, whatās the hold up HERE, I wonder? OKā¦it IS what Iād consider an āartsyā film. BUTā¦itās an artsy film about WILLIAM SHATNER!
I mentioned at the beginning that āI had this nagging feeling that if I didnāt take this opportunity to see āYou Can Call Me Billā last week at the Newport Film Festival, Iād regret it.ā Wellā¦this was the second Legion M event Iāve attended (the first was SDCC handprint ceremony & afterparty in 2022). Briefly met most of the Legion M folk. My impressions? Probably irrelevant and probably not the opinions of most. That ānagging feelingā in my gut keeps telling me that this documentary isnāt going to be released anytime soon in North America.
Just MY impressions of the documentary & Legion M . Might not be yours.
5 - 3
5/2/2023 There was just a copyright claim on the 1957 "Oedipus Rex" video I posted & it's now blocked. Sorry! It can be found here: archive.org/details/sophocles-oedipus-rex-1957_202ā¦ It's currently up on you tube here: https://youtu.be/s_L_jzb8yiM
2 - 0
1970 "Andersonville Trial" can be streamed here:
archive.org/details/the-andersonville-trial-1970
3 - 0
Playhouse 90 "A Town Has Turned to Dust" can be streamed here: archive.org/details/a-town-has-turned-to-dust
6 - 0
Sorry, but I felt it necessary to delete my upload of "The Andersonville Trial" since it's now available on Amazon Prime. Certainly don't want my account terminated....which is what happened to the person who uploaded a digitalized version of this particular show. TRYING not to upload stuff that's available on DVD for this very reason. I'll try an upload of selected scenes relating to the moral issues of following orders. BUT.....the entire show can be streamed here: archive.org/details/the-andersonville-trial-1970
11 - 2
Link to the "What A Man" skit from Shatners' appearance on SNL 12/20/1986. It takes awhile for it to load, but it's worth the wait. www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/what-a-man/2ā¦
2 - 0
Link to the Archive of American Television Interview with William Shatner. 3.5 hours long. Parts 1-5 were filmed in 1999, parts 6 & 7 were added in 2009.
interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/williaā¦
2 - 0
I used to collect old William Shatner TV shows/interviews. The videos are old....William Shatner is young.... in most of these.. Many of the TV shows are 50 + years old. None of the videos I've uploaded have been officially released on VHS or DVD, as far as I can tell, so I sure hope there aren't any problems with copyright. I'm just sharing some Shatner stuff that isn't available for purchase anywhere!! The quality isn't the greatest. BUT.........you take what you can get back from them there days.
I'm ALMOST done uploading all the old TV shows I dare to that are in āwatchableā condition.
I'll start on a few old interviews.....and some clips .....just a few , right?
OK....8/19/2021....this is about all I'm willing to upload. That's all she wrote, then, unless I've missed something in my stash of "Shatner stuff."
8/2022....Goanna try uploading some clips from old Shatner shows that HAVE been released on DVD & see how long they'll stay up. Worth a try, perhaps.