"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.
Member of Mothers of Invention
Member of Mothers of Invention
Member of Mothers of Invention
Member of Mothers of Invention
Groupie #1 (Janet Ferguson)
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Virgil Starkwell is intent on becoming a notorious bank robber. Unfortunately for Virgil and his not-so-budding career, he is completely incompetent.
Several pieces of Frank Zappa's music are set against clay animation by Bruce Bickford.
A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.
When the ruthless forces of the Motherworld threaten a quiet farming village on a distant moon, a mysterious outsider becomes its best hope for survival.
A young bride's wedding night turns into her worst nightmare when her ridiculously rich in-laws force her to play a gruesome game of hide-and-seek.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman, his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.
Thirty years after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han Solo and his allies face a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren and his army of Stormtroopers.
Every second of every day, from the moment he was born, for the last thirty years, Truman Burbank has been the unwitting star of the longest running, most popular documentary-soap opera in history. The picture-perfect town of Seahaven that he calls home is actually a gigantic soundstage. Truman's friends and family - everyone he meets, in fact - are actors. He lives every moment under the unblinking gaze of thousands of hidden TV cameras.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
A small town girl is caught between dead-end jobs. A high-profile, successful man becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. The man decides his life is not worth living until the girl is hired for six months to be his new caretaker. Worlds apart and trapped together by circumstance, the two get off to a rocky start. But the girl becomes determined to prove to the man that life is worth living and as they embark on a series of adventures together, each finds their world changing in ways neither of them could begin to imagine.
Tony Lip, a bouncer in 1962, is hired to drive pianist Don Shirley on a tour through the Deep South in the days when African Americans, forced to find alternate accommodations and services due to segregation laws below the Mason-Dixon Line, relied on a guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book.
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
A stage director and an actress struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal extremes.
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
In the 22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, but becomes torn between following orders and protecting an alien civilization.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?
A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
For the past ten years Zappa in composing has turned away from Rock and Roll music - for which he first became famous - and has been working on new, contemporary, orchestral electronic music; in solitude and beyond any commercial conventions or commitments. It is the first time that Zappa has allowed a film crew to study him during compositional work, actually filming the first moments of a new compositional process. By contrast, in a staged interview Zappa gives comments on music. This film seeks to reveal the sensetivities of Zappa's personality and character also beyond narrative content.
The year is 1981, the German New Wave is at the peak. Harry, otherwise Sparkasse trainee, wants to make it big as a manager of the band of his friends, Apollo Schwabing. He has booked the band as the opening act for a concert where the group DAF are the headliners.
Mother and daughter bicker over everything -- what Anna wears, whom she likes and what she wants to do when she's older. In turn, Anna detests Tess's fiancé. When a magical fortune cookie switches their personalities, they each get a peek at how the other person feels, thinks and lives.
Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
In the 1980s, a drummer is abandoned by his band just before they become rock superstars. Twenty years later, the drummer sees his second chance at stardom arise when he is asked to perform with his teenage nephew's high school rock band.
A young bride escapes her wedding ceremony with a stranger and together they set off on an epic journey though increasingly bizarre lands. They encounter talking animals and mournful exhibitionists, converse with a discoursing rock, journey through a surrealist's psychedelic hotel, instigate a prison riot, escape from naked cannibals living in a tree and battle a wind-up midget dictator!
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich and packed with rare concert footage and home movies, this documentary explores the history of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, including Petty's famous collaborations and notorious clashes with the record industry. Interviews with musical luminaries including Jackson Browne, George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Roger McGuinn, Jeff Lynne, Dave Stewart and Petty himself shed some revelatory vision.
Since the early 1970's, England's Electric Light Orchestra has combined intricate, full orchestration with an underlying pop skeleton, becoming one of the most popular and influential "prog-rock" bands in history. After a long hiatus from touring the United States, ELO--led by Jeff Lynne--is filmed in a return to the American stage. Filmed at Los Angeles's CBS Television City, ZOOM TOUR LIVE has the group performing tracks like "State of Mind" and "10538 Overture" with their typical theatrics.
Duran Duran: Unstaged is a multimedia event that takes the audience on a cinematic journey with one of the most successful acts in the world during their performance at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles.
Guns, God and Government is a concert film chronicling the band Marilyn Manson during their Guns, God and Government tour. It was released on October 29, 2002 on the formats VHS, DVD and UMD. The DVD contains live tracks and performances that switch between visuals of various shows from United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe while maintaining a single consistent music track.
Halloween, New York City, 1981 Live at The Palladium with Ray White, Steve Vai, Bobby Martin, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Scott Thunes, Chad Wackerman
Live show filmed during the Death Metal Massacre tour on February 16, 2000 at the Rave in Milwaukee, WI. One of the most extreme heavy metal bands ever, Cannibal Corpse acknowledge no boundaries of speed, power, or "good taste" in this full-on concert video. Cannibal Corpse: Live Cannibalism features interviews with the members of the band and their loyal fans in between numbers, in which they tear through a range of classic tunes.
An overview of the early years--late 1970s, early 1980s--of San Francisco punk band Dead Kennedys, with clips from some of their live concerts and footage of landmark San Francisco locations of the punk music scene. Jello Biafra and The Dead Kennedys show why they're the kings of satire in 9 live early performances.
The band Fugazi is documented over a period of more than ten years (1987-1998) through performance footage and interviews with the band and their fans. Director Jem Cohen's relationship with band member Ian MacKaye extends back to the 1970s when the two met in high school in Washington, D.C.. The film takes its title from the Fugazi song of the same name, from their 1993 album, In on the Kill Taker. Editing of the film was done by both Cohen and the members of the band over the course of five years. It was shot from 1987 through 1998 on super 8, 16mm and video and is composed mainly of footage of concerts, interviews with the band members, practices, tours and time spent in the studio recording their 1995 album, Red Medicine. The film also includes portraits of fans as well as interviews with them at various Fugazi shows around the United States throughout the years.
A hilarious collection of animated television commercials that were rejected because of their creator's failing grip on sanity.
The story begins with tired eyed freak rocker Danny Feedback facing upheaval: His life’s work, including priceless family heirloom instruments, like his one of a kind transparent luminescent guitar, have disappeared via an overnight heist. Unlike a typical breaking and entering, this crime is fueled by a personal vendetta which is evident by the ransacked music studio, and shrapnel from a couple destroyed artifacts that were obviously left behind to “send a message”.
A Yorkshire coal mine is threatened with closure and the only hope is for the men to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win.