12-04-2008, 10:37 PM
Quote:last movie i saw: The lost World (from 1925).My last movie was a bit less old, but may be considered an antiquity too: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It is a registration of that concert in Hammersmith, with the famous farewell address; and the movie proves that it must indeed have been a splendid concert. The band is superb (Mick Ronson's solo in Moonage Daydream!) and Bowie is - well, he was at the height of his powers as a performer. As a songwriter, he was to write better stuff (the Berlin trilogy) but as an actor, he has never again reached the level of the Ziggy performances.
Here are some movie clips; and here is the grand finale (the farewell addres + Rock 'n' Roll Suicide).
Note at 3:45 how Bowie signals his band that they have to break off. A lesser performer would have continued that hymn-like singing, adding emotional intensity to the show, but Bowie remains in charge of what is going in - it had been wonderful, let's stop before it gets boring. This is why he was perfect; and perhaps this is why he will never be as loved as, say, George Harrison or Freddy Mercury. They were people who made mistakes; Bowie's perfection makes him, in the final analysis, superhuman, too brilliant, almost frightening. (Off-off-topic: that's why I do not like the plays of Sophocles - too perfect.)
The DVD with the music was less then 20 euro.