Awesome!

So, no gigs this week, but I still got to watch some live music yesterday. Well, sort of live. Thanks to Time Out I went to see a preview screening of Awesome! I Fuckin' Shot That! , the new Beastie Boys movie (out in the UK on 7 July I think).

It was a bit of an unusual experience. If I tell you it's the first time I've walked out of a cinema during a film, that would be misleading. I never walk out – not even during the bloody Da Vinci Code! However, the pains in my stomach which started earlier in the day, were getting to the point where I just needed to get home. And it's almost half an hour on the tube from Islington to my house. So I left.

It was a shame because the movie was pretty good. However, if you're at all adverse to shaky hand-held camera work, this is not for you, even if you a are a huge Beasties fan. I thought I was immune to cinematic shakes, having sat through more than my fair share of Dogme films and low-budget indies, but this is something else.

If you don't already know, Awesome... is a comprised of edited footage shot by 50 fans at the Beastie Boys' 2004 Madison Square Garden gig who were given cameras by the fab three and just told to shoot from where they were. The result is a concert movie with a difference. Not much in the way of long panning shots, no overhead pics, and very little zooming in on stars' faces. This movie features the crowd almost as much as the group, and this is its major strength – it's a fan's eye view of a gig. So sometimes, you can't see the stage for upraised arms, sometimes someone passes in front of the view – just like a real gig. There's loads of footage of people jumping around, dancing and singing (or should that be rapping) along – and even buying drinks from the bar and going to the loo.

And the music? It's mighty fine. With Mixmaster Mike's huge beats, and the crowd going mad it feels a bit weird to be sitting still in your seat in the cinema. However, cinema is the place to see it. I wouldn't normally say that (I've always thought that documentaries and music films are probably best viewed on DVD at home) but with the big screen and the sound blasting out of the multiplex soundsystem, it's exactly the right place, and much more like being there than it would be on my small TV screen and its tinny speakers. In fact, this might be even better than being there – this way you don't have to put up with that annoying guy in front, get elbowed in the head by an over-exuberant dancer and have some idiot spill beer on your shoes. So thumbs up for as much as I saw, and that's even without witnessing the inevitable hysteria that would no doubt have accompanied the into to Intergalatic.

Download: The Beastie Boys – Intergalatic
Download: The Beastie Boys – Root Down
Download: The Beastie Boys – Sabotage
Download: The Beastie Boys – Body Movin'
Download: The Beastie Boys - An Open Letter to NYC

btw, the current issue of the ever-excellent Little White Lies has Awesome... as it's main feature movie. Ch-check it out...