A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.
20 Feet from
Stardom celebrates some of the unsung heroes of pop music, especially in
the early decades. These are the background singers whose voices we hear in
early girl groups and songs by artists as disparate as Sting, The Rolling
Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, and on and on.
Their vocal stylings helped fill out the music of the
rock-and-roll generation. We sang along to their parts on the records and they
were rarely, if ever, credited. Let’s keep in mind that instrumentalists find
themselves in similar situations, adding guitars, keyboards, or drum tracks to
songs without so much as a “thank you.” They are studio musicians and that’s
what they’re paid for. But in the early 60s some of these women were the actual
singing voices behind the more stylish and sexy figure that the record
companies preferred for TV and album covers.
