Twenty Feet from Stardom

2013 Best Documentary winner

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A documentary about the colored girls going do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do dooooooo.

This documentary's fine and all, and I would recommend it to any music fan, but there's no way it should have won for Best Documentary Feature over The Act of Killing. I did learn a few things from watching this though. Phil Spector, for example, is kind of an asshole. Did you know that? Or would you have ever thought that a guy like Ike Turner would think of his backup singers as hos? No way! I did enjoy some of the individual stories from this and especially enjoyed hearing the work of Lisa Fischer who sang with the Rolling Stones and Sting and others. Sting described her as "transcendent" and "ghostly" with a singing style where she "puts her whole self into it," and hearing her do her thing was a magical experience. Merry Clayton, Tata Vega, Claudia Lennear, and Darlene Love get their stories brought to the forefront in this, and it's good to know about them and how their voices helped shape some of the most memorable pop and rock 'n' roll music of all time. Some of this was pretty emotional, the story of Darlene Love vs. Phil Specter, for example, and the story of Love hearing her "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" song on the radio while she was in the bathroom of a house she was cleaning. I also liked the story of the back-up singer who did studio work with the Rolling Stones while wearing curlers and pajamas. I wish there had been a little more about the idea of "ghosting," a strategy that sounds a lot like what producers did with Milli Vanilli. Or maybe exactly what they did. I'd also like to see a full list of everything The Blossoms were involved with because it seems like they did vocals on nearly everything from that time period. What really aggravated me was that this started to feel a lot like a commercial for some female vocalist named Judith Hill at the end. There was a lot of time devoted to her, and I started to wonder if her parents put this whole thing together after a while.