Sammy-Jo Cervantes
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
melnar1
I am most disappointed in this Ben Webster video. For a professional video production that has actually been released, I think it must be one of the worst jazz videos ever made. It looks like it was shot by rank amateurs.At the beginning of the movie we are shown short film snippets of workers in a saxophone factory. We are not told who the manufacturer was but they are alleged to have produced eleven hundred saxophones PER MONTH! I refuse to believe that there were eleven hundred saxophone players on the entire planet who would be continually purchasing brand new saxophones per month from all the saxophone companies combined. But this is by the way.Next we are shown a few disjointed shots of Webster sans shoes sitting, walking, looking out of the window, playing piano (the best thing in the whole video) and practicing saxophone in his house.Then there are some unsuccessful shots with music playing in the background of musicians superimposed over (or under) a large expanse of rippling water which I took to be artistic expressions a la the recently deceased Bert Stern who directed Jazz On A Summer's Day. But in monochrome.We see who I took to be Webster's landlady talking to Webster in Dutch about tea and cake and telling him of her intending to take him to visit the zoo on the upcoming Sunday.You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned any footage of Webster actually playing in situ. Well, the fact is that in the whole of this video, not one complete performance of a number is shown – just a muddled jumping about from one tune to another in hops, skips and jumps, here, there and everywhere throughout the video.Among other uninteresting things we see Webster playing pool, making tea, animals at the zoo, riding in a train, and riding in a car.One scene is of Webster showing some home movies with his projector.This whole thing looks like one of those excruciating home movies.I hope one day I'll see a decent video of Ben Webster, perhaps a TV show or a concert.This one doesn't cut it.
