From the Studio:

In 1959, Berry Gordy gathered the best musicians from Detroit's thriving jazz and blues scene to begin cutting songs for his new record company. Over a fourteen year period they were the heartbeat on "My Girl," "Bernadette," I Was Made to Love Her," and every other hit from Motown's Detroit era.

By the end of their phenomenal run, this unheralded group of musicians had played on more number ones hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined -- which makes them the greatest hit machine in the history of popular music. They called themselves the Funk Brothers.

Forty-one years after they played their first note an a Motown record and three decades since they were all together, the Funk Brothers reunited back in Detroit to play their music and tell their unforgettable story in STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN.

Fourteen years in the making, this film is based upon a book of the same title that won the 1989 Rolling Stone / BMl "Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award", STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN was shot entirely in film, on location in Detroit throughout December of 2000 and January of 2001. This one hour and fifty-six minute documentary tells the Funk Brothers' saga through archival footage and still photos, narration, interviews, re-creation scenes, 20 Motown master tracks, and twelve new live performances of Motown classics with the Funk Brothers backing up Chaka Kahn, Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins, Montel Jordan, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joan Osborne, and Gerald Levert.

With the tumultuous sixties as a backdrop, Motown's unsung heroes take the viewer on a compelling journey in time as they trace the evolution of "The Motown Sound" from its origins in Detroit to its demise in Los Angeles during the seventies. Through the eyes of the riveting characters who ruled Hitsville's studio by day and the club scene of Detroit by night, we enter a world of unparalleled soul and emotion as the Funk Brothers revisit the sites of their musical roots, triumphs, and eventual heartbreak.

For more than four decades, from the dance floors of the world, to the Detroit riots of 1967, to the war in Vietnam, the music the Funk Brothers created has played a major role in the cultural fabric of all of our lives. STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN finally puts some faces on that music and introduces these heroic musical figures to the world.

Orson Welles's tongue-in-cheek look at famous fakes studies art forger Elmyr de Hory, Howard Hughes pseudo-biographer Clifford Irving, supposed Picasso muse Oja Kodar, and, finally, himself, from his WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast to the accusation that he stole a writer's credit on CITIZEN KANE. This was one of Welles's last films, and though it defies easy categorization, no Welles fan should miss it.

Out of 1970s England rose a clamour of anger and anarchy. A group of downtrodden lads - John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Sid Vicious - raged against the establishment and became the frontrunners of a new form of musical expression: Punk Rock. A reaction to self-indulgent, overproduced, early '70s progressive, or "Art" Rock (Rotten was known for wearing an "I Hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt), Punk became the first musical form since the '60s to shake up the system. Filmmaker Julien Temple covered the band in their hey-day, creating the unforgettable Sex Pistols: The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. The Filth and the Fury, a nostalgic look at the pioneers of the  safety-pin-in-the-cheek set, is an insightful and revealing biography that explores the Pistols early days, their meteoric rise to fame and their all-too swift drug-fuelled demise. With archival footage, never-before-seen performances, rehearsals, recording sessions and interviews with band survivors, this is the definitive Pistols DVD that fans - and old Punks - will cherish.

 

The film that Spin calls, "as worthy of a place in the rock-doc pantheon as Don’t Look Back and Gimme Shelter", is an intensely intimate look at one of the biggest hard rock bands of all time. Some Kind of Monster takes you inside the studio and into the psyches of Metallica, as they record their Grammy-winning album St. Anger while battling their way through addiction, fatherhood, backlash from fans, and near-total disintegration, during the most turbulent period of their twenty-year history. Jam-packed with bonus features, this rock ‘n’ roll psychodrama is unlike anything you’ve ever seen!

Barbara Kopple's incredible film traces the effects of a strike on 180 coal-mining families. This acclaimed documentary was selected for permanent preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1990.

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is the inside story of one of history's greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America's 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. The film benefits greatly from Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who were among the first journalists to raise questions about Enron and who co-authored the best-selling book "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Using insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Gibney shows the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The film comes to a harrowing denouement as we hear Enron traders' own voices as they wring hundreds of millions of dollars in profits out of the California energy crisis. As a result, we come to understand how the avarice of Enron's traders and their bosses had a shocking and profound domino effect that may shape the face of our economy for years to come.