Long-awaited Frank Sinatra documentary to air on HBO, April 5–6, 2015 (Updates: dvd/blu-ray)*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Bob F, Jan 23, 2015.

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  1. jhw59

    jhw59 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rehoboth Beach DE.
    HBO/Cinemax free preview April 10-13 so you can probably find the Sinatra doc then.
     
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  2. wave

    wave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Allen Park, MI
    This is off-topic*, but Warren Beatty's upcoming Howard Hughes film reportedly depicts the post-Aviator Hughes and focuses on the Vegas/recluse-on-the-go years; in other words, the really crazy, Kleenex box footwear Howard :love:

    Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop!


    So stoked!

    *Actually Sinatra and Hughes had a couple of notable connections: Ava Gardner and The Sands...
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2015
  3. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Additional play times, after the April 5–6 (8:00 p.m.) premieres...

    HBO:

    Part One: April 8 (11:00 a.m., 2:45 a.m.), 10 (5:45 p.m.)*, 14 (midnight), 18 (12:30 p.m.) and 28 (10:00 a.m.)
    Part Two: April 8 (1:00 p.m., 4:45 a.m.), 10 (7:45 p.m.)*, 15 (midnight), 18 (2:30 p.m.) and 28 (noon)

    HBO2:

    Part One: April 9 (midnight), 11 (8:00 p.m.), 23 (5:00 p.m.) and 25 (1:45 p.m.)
    Part Two: April 9 (2:00 a.m.), 11 (10:00 p.m.), 23 (7:00 p.m.) and 25 (3:45 p.m.)

    *NOTE: HBO is offering a free preview on many cable systems from April 10–13. If you have cable but don't subscribe to HBO, April 10 (5:45–9:45 p.m.) may be your chance. See —> FreePreviews.TV.
     
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  4. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    The publicity machine ramps up...

    New York Post —> Let's be totally Frank: Sinatra doc a swingin' affair

    The reviewer ruins his credibility by referring to "his late first wife, Nancy." Mrs. Nancy Sinatra, Sr. is still with us. She celebrated her 98th birthday yesterday.
     
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  5. Tina_UK

    Tina_UK Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Bob, thank you for posting, BTW I don't see where it says "late"
     
  6. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    I don't either. They probably (thankfully) fixed it...
     
  7. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Maybe they read my post. :)
     
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  8. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Los Angeles billboard:

    [​IMG]
     
  9. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    [Informative review from The Buffalo News —> HBO is reinventing documentary films for the 21st century]

    Sinatra: All or Nothing at All

    Even greater is Gibney’s two-part, four-hour documentary biography of Frank Sinatra through his songs.

    Gibney also is responsible for the great HBO James Brown portrait “Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown.” It is in that vein that he and a team of executive producers including Frank Marshall (Steven Spielberg’s old associate with Amblin Entertainment) were able to get the incredible and all-important cooperation of Frank Sinatra’s family – children Nancy, Tina and Frank Jr. – to use a megaton of hitherto-unseen material from the family’s archives in a Sinatra Centennial biography.

    It was, says Marshall, the first question he asked Nancy Sinatra when told about it. Sinatra’s story is so well-known, he asked, what could possibly be new?

    And then she showed him.

    Which is almost all you’ll see.

    The outlines of the tale of Sinatra’s “up from Hoboken” life are as familiar as any life story Americans have ever told each other. But, for one thing, you’ve never heard Sinatra himself tell it with such R-rated frankness in his language, abundant obscenity included. Everyone always knew that Sinatra came from the Hoboken streets but no one, until next Sunday, will ever have heard him talk that way. In those previously unheard voiceovers, his usual careful formality is virtually all gone.

    Among the astonishing things seen for the first time, is what was meant to be his 1971 “retirement” concert in California, an all-star formal event to which his Hollywood royal friends were invited. The film admits that the visual quality of it is less than grand. And, at the beginning, the audio even cuts out. But what is repeatedly heard from that event – in which he chose 10 of his songs to tell his life story in music – is spectacular intermittently for the next four hours. As someone who reviewed Sinatra live twice, I can tell you without hesitation he was as good at this late-life event (he was 56 at the time) as he was in any live recording you’re liable to encounter.

    Which is why no doubt, after being so burned out that he so desperately needed to disappear offstage, he returned a mere two years later.

    It’s obvious that with so much unfamiliar material from the family’s own archives, the four hours are going to tend toward hagiography of “the poet laureate of loneliness.” But executive producer Marshall insists that the only stipulation the Sinatra family made is that Gibney’s film – which was three years in the making – tell the truth.

    The praise of Sinatra is unstinting but, with the participation of some of the canniest writers and critics in New York – critics Terry Teachout and John Lahr and journalist Pete Hamill – none of it exaggerates what was Sinatra’s actual contribution to American culture of the past century.

    And with all of that, it’s very definitely “warts and all.” The mob is very much present and accounted for. You hear Sinatra bragging about punching poison-typewriter journalist Lee Mortimer and then, whenever they’d meet again, spitting at him and challenging him to fight back. (Mortimer, no fool, didn’t.) Gibney’s film doesn’t for a second find the casual racist joshery of the “Rat Pack’s” Vegas act all that charming. But at the same time, no one could doubt how much Sinatra quietly did for civil rights in the world of American entertainment.

    Anyone who might wonder why in heaven’s name such a liberal and significant Kennedy man turned so wholeheartedly toward Reagan and Nixon at the end of his life will hear the perfect explanation from Harry Belafonte: The Kennedys had, ultimately, rejected Sinatra. And “He really needed to hurt the Kennedys” back, said Belafonte. With his new pals Reagan and Nixon he could do just that. That, suggests Belafonte, was the Hoboken way.
     
  10. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    [NY Daily News —> 'Sinatra: All or Nothing at All' review]

    Alex Gibney's documentary on HBO is a fine, largely positive portrait

    By David Hinckley

    This four-hour documentary on the life of Frank Sinatra captures all the swash and buckle.
    It also reminds us, in a smart way, that Sinatra became one of the four or five best popular singers of the 20th century.

    In other words, director Alex Gibney hasn’t set out to make headlines by focusing on the flaws or the dark side of a life that had plenty of both.

    Where others have found ugliness in some of Sinatra’s behavior, “All or Nothing at All” mostly covers those parts in passing, with the unspoken suggestion they just came with the package.

    While Gibney includes extensive segments on Sinatra’s career implosion of the early 1950s, compounded by his star-crossed marriage to Ava Gardner, the longer story arc here paints a sometimes ragged march to musical triumph.

    The Jersey kid set his sights on becoming the next Bing Crosby, biggest singer in the world, and “All or Nothing” says he did it.

    We follow his music from teen heartthrob to fully accredited saloon singer, pondering life at closing time in the neighborhood bar.

    That image may not have fit all of Sinatra’s well-appointed jet-set life, but happily, Gibney also includes Pete Hamill’s fascinating remembrance of driving around New York at night in Sinatra’s limo, musing on life.

    Gibney covers the Mob stuff. He also suggests that in both his personal and professional life, Sinatra left a legacy of tolerance and color-blindness that opened doors and maybe some minds.

    With impressive clips and first-rate commentators like Hamill, Jonathan Schwartz, Terry Teachout and John Lahr, Gibney has explained why, like him or not, Sinatra mattered so much.
     
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  11. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
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  12. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
  13. wave

    wave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Allen Park, MI
    The first audio clip of Sinatra sounds like it's sourced from the videotaped interviews/conversations with George Schlatter that were featured on the 75th birthday special -- but obviously unedited (or will be on HBO) and more extensive.
     
  14. wave

    wave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Allen Park, MI
  15. Bob F

    Bob F Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Massachusetts USA
    Sinatra Centenary Marked with New Documentary

     
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  16. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    That Retirement show is really something to see (and hear). I'm glad it'll be available for all to see. The only embarrassment there was I thought Roz Russell really looked like she was in poor health. In case some people have never seen it, they will now see what it was like when Frank was 'on'.
     
  17. wave

    wave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Allen Park, MI
    Today's the big day -- part 1 premieres tonight at 8pm ET!

    On a side note, having watched all or most of the promo videos and interviews for this documentary (and other centennial-related events) featuring Sinatra's children, one thing stands out to me: regardless of the man's rough edges and controversies, he must have been an amazing father. I couldn't imagine any other celebrity offspring being so enamored with, and respectful of, their famous parent. And these are the people -- his family -- whose opinion about the man actually matter.
     
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  18. howlinrock

    howlinrock Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    SF Bay Area
    :) getting excited ....
     
  19. frankfan1

    frankfan1 Some days I feel like Balok

    It'll be worth it to see the retirement concert alone. I watched it last night again...he was the essence of a showman.
     
  20. Bob Belvedere

    Bob Belvedere Forum Resident

    Location:
    New England
    As with practically everything in life: tonight's documentary has both good and bad aspects connected with it...

    THE GOOD: From all accounts this looks like it will be a damn good job well-done. We'll see the warts - as we should because they influenced the Man as the Artist - but they won't be tabloided, ala the Devil's Maiden, the vile Kitty Kelly. Further, this will be a four-hour trip, nice 'n' long 'n' easy.

    THE BAD: Not wanting to subject Mrs. B. to an overload of Francis Albert - which she has been putting-up with since New Year's Day - instead of championing watching the Screen Archives Blu-Ray of Pal Joey I just got in the mail, I let her choose last night's movie for screening. Oh well...maybe next weekend [although her choice, Jersey Boys, ended-up being quite fun, if not quite historically accurate].
     
  21. deadbirdie

    deadbirdie Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    I liked it. Looking forward to pt 2.
     
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  22. swandown

    swandown Under Assistant West Coast Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Happened to stumble upon this tonight. Good stuff.
     
  23. ssmith3046

    ssmith3046 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arizona desert
    Enjoyed part one a lot.
     
  24. wave

    wave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Allen Park, MI
    Enjoyed part 1, but especially looking forward to part 2.

    One of the things I noticed last night was what seemed like additional footage from the 1965 Walter Cronkite interview. (It's been a long time since I watched it so I may be mistaken.) If that's the case, there's hope for what Martin once suggested here long ago: CBS may still have outtake footage from the September Of My Years recording session -- and if it's anything like the interview footage, it could be in pristine shape.

    There's no doubt in my mind this special will eventually be released on DVD/blu-ray, but I sincerely hope the Retirement Concert itself will be isolated in its entirety as an extra or on its own stand-alone disc.
     
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  25. on7green

    on7green Senior Patron

    Location:
    NY & TN
    I enjoyed also... and learned. Great photography and interviews.
     
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