On April 2nd 2011, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM played its final show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. LCD Frontman James Murphy, disbanding one of the most celebrated and influential groups of its generation at the peak of its popularity, ensured that the band would go out on top with the biggest concert of its career. The instantly sold out, near four-hour extravaganza featured special appearances by Arcade Fire and Reggie Watts and moved the crowd of thousands to tears of joy and grief. SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS both captures this once-in-a-lifetime event with stunning visuals and serves as an intimate portrait of Murphy as he navigates the 48 hours surrounding the show. Woven throughout is an honest and unflinching conversation between Murphy and author Chuck Klosterman as they discuss music, art, aging, and the decision to call it quits while at the top of your game.
You May Also Like
A documentary focused on Orson Welles’ fifteen years spent trying to finish his final film, The Other Side of the Wind.
The making of a serious, Canadian art house film descends into Hollywood farce when its producer is forced to compromise his vision to accommodate his drug-addled star, his leading lady and his venal backers.
THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY follows the creation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most attended fashion exhibition in history, “China: Through The Looking Glass,” an exploration of Chinese-inspired Western fashions by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton. With unprecedented access, filmmaker Andrew Rossi captures the collision of high fashion and celebrity at the Met Gala, one of the biggest global fashion events chaired every year by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. Featuring a cast of renowned artists in many fields (including filmmaker Wong Kar Wai and fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier and John Galliano) as well as a host of contemporary pop icons like Rihanna, the movie dives into the debate about whether fashion should be viewed as art.
Documentary revealing just how dangerous too much fat is to our most vital internal organs. The programme follows a specialist pathology team as they conduct a post-mortem on the body of a 17-stone woman whose body was donated to medical science. Their findings, as they dissect the body and its organs, are startling, exposing the devastating impact of obesity with stunning visuals and fascinating medical facts. Morbid obesity reduces life expectancy by an average of nine years and is blamed for over 30,000 deaths in the UK every year. With 65 per cent of people already overweight or obese, this extraordinary film is a powerful contribution to the debate about fat, food, lifestyle and how the health service will cope with the growing obesity crisis.
A documentary about nuclear fallout in the United States, specifically members of the Shoshone Nation whose sacred land continues to be cordoned off as a nuclear test site.
A personal memoir reflecting upon director Stanley Kwan’s career and identity, set upon the backdrop of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. Kwan adopts a complicated cinematic structure which includes excerpts from his previous films, his ’97 stage play, and the soundtrack to Wong Kar-wai’s “Days of Being Wild.”
Dainius, a young rock singer, locks himself away in a secluded country house surrounded by swamps. Hoping to meet his beloved in dreamland, the musician is eagerly assisted in his studies by a local boy exploited by moonshiners.
2016: Obama’s America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the worlds most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man’s past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question, “If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?” Across the globe and in America, people in 2008 hungered for a leader who would unite and lift us from economic turmoil and war. True to Americas ideals, they invested their hope in a new kind of president, Barack Obama. What they didn’t know is that Obama is a man with a past, and in powerful ways that past defines him–who he is, how he thinks, and where he intends to take America and the world. Immersed in exotic locales across four continents, best selling author Dinesh DSouza races against time to find answers to Obama’s past and reveal where America will be in 2016.
When National Geographic photographer James Balog asked, “How can one take a picture of climate change?” his attention was immediately drawn to ice. Soon he was asked to do a cover story on glaciers that became the most popular and well-read piece in the magazine during the last five years. But for Balog, that story marked the beginning of a much larger and longer-term project that would reach epic proportions.
A Reno singer witnesses a mob murder and the cops stash her in a nunnery to protect her from the hitmen. The mother superior does not trust her, and takes steps to limit her influence on the other nuns. Eventually the singer rescues the failing choir and begins helping with community projects, which gets her an interview on TV.
Escapes blazes a path through mid-20th-century Hollywood via the experiences of Hampton Fancher – flamenco dancer, actor, and the unlikely producer and screenwriter of the landmark sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Fancher recounts episodes from his life — romantic misadventures with silver-screen stars, wayward acts of chivalry, jealousy, and friendship — matched with a parallel world of film and TV footage wherein Fancher plays cowboys, killers, fops, cads, and the occasional hero. Escapes shows how one man’s personal journey can unexpectedly shape a medium’s future.
Away from professional stadiums, bright lights, and manicured fields, there’s another side of soccer. Tucked away on alleys, side streets, and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Every country has a different word for it. In the United States, we call it “pick-up soccer.” In Trinidad, it’s “taking a sweat.” In England, it’s “having a kick-about.” In Brazil, the word is “pelada,” which literally means “naked”—the game stripped down to its core. It’s the version of the game played by anyone, anywhere—and it’s a window into lives all around the world. Pelada is a documentary following Luke and Gwendolyn, two former college soccer stars who didn’t quite make it to the pros. Not ready for it to be over, they take off, chasing the game. From prisoners in Bolivia to moonshine brewers in Kenya, from freestylers in China to women who play in hijab in Iran, Pelada is the story of the people who play.