Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

TxMike I found this documentary on Netflix streaming. Janis Joplin and I are contemporaries, she grew up in a conservative home in Port Arthur, Texas. At that same time I often visited my aunt in Port Arthur. Janis and I could have run into each other as kids, but we probably didn't.When you see some of the interviews with Janis you can only conclude that she was very smart and had a gift for analyzing things and presenting her ideas. Most very gifted artists, musicians, singers are very intelligent, it is part of the package. But Janis was a mediocre student in high school and was a misfit of sorts, a kind soul who couldn't or didn't want to conform. But all she ever wanted was to be accepted and loved.Perhaps her lowest point was when she went to U of Texas and she was not only nominated for the prank contest "Ugliest Man on Campus" she was voted the winner. Shortly after she left Texas and ended up in San Francisco where she found people like her. She really had no idea at first that her singing was very special but she soon became famous and things were written like "The most important new voice since Aretha Franklin." In truth I never cared for Janis Joplin's singing, too raspy and too much shouting. But there is no doubt she moved audiences and when she was in the mood had a very lovely and soft lyrical style. Her demise was a result of having absolutely no clue what to do with herself when not recording or performing. It was her life and it was just one more heroin fix in her room after a performance that cut her short in 1970 at the young age of 27.This is a superb documentary, one of the very best I have ever watched. There is much footage of Janis herself, and close-ups during performances almost bring you into her intimate world. It also has input from her brother and sister, some old friends, and some old band mates.The film is narrated by actress Cat Power who often reads from letters Janis ad written to others and it is almost like hearing Janis herself.

l_rawjalaurence JANIS JOPLIN: LITTLE GIRL BLUE follows a familiar narrative (also employed in 2015's AMY) of the exceptionally talented female star catapulted into the limelight, who could not handle it, and eventually killed herself accidentally of a heroin overdose at the age of 28.All the familiar ingredients were there; the middle-class upbringing In Port Arthur, Texas, where Joplin became something of a rebel against her rather insular family, and expressed her rebellion by acting in increasingly mannish ways. Although she believed herself to be accepted into a largely male society, she found herself victim of a series of reversals, including being elected the "ugliest man" in a group of people in Austin, Texas.Eventually she decamped to San Francisco, where she joined a band (Big Brother) and eventually acquired the recognition she had craved ever since childhood. The narrative followed a predictable live: in the end she became too big for her band, branched out on her own, enjoyed some major successes both in the United States as well as abroad, founded a new band, consolidated her stardom and was just about to embark on exciting new possibilities when death eventually struck her.Accompanied by reminiscences from those closest to her, as well as members of her own family, JANIS JOPLIN: LITTLE GIRL BLUE told the story of a phenomenally talented person unable to reconcile personal with professional lives. She could not stand being alone when offstage; and tried to find solace in heroin. It seemed that for all their love of the singer (some of the interviewees started crying as they recalled the tragic sides of her life), no one actively lifted a finger to help her psychologically.Accompanied by extensive footage of her in performance, together with readings from her private letters, Amy J. Berg's documentary had a certain fascination for anyone interested in her music. But for the uninitiated viewer it seemed to be wearyingly predictable.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Nostalgia has no limit, no limits, absolutely none. It is in fact the frontier to dreams and the future, no matter how you look at it. With no nostalgia there is no imagination – nothing new under the sun except new assembly of old, eternal, ever present emotions.And emotional you have to be and get with this invocation of Janis Joplin.It was the dense and tumultuous time of "Fritz the Cat" (1972) and "Zabriskie Point" (1970). Three great artists and performers among the most innovative minds of their time, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Janis Joplin (1943-1970) and Otis Redding (1941-1967) died, two of an overdose and one in a plane crash. What a loss.The only woman in that triad, who was not the first woman in rock-and- roll in spite of what is said in the film, was the direct white heiress of blues, jazz and black music, all represented by Aretha Franklin (1942-and still living and kicking, and even making Obama wax sentimental in public) who was a black woman in this field before Janis Joplin. The film does mention her and the fact she was the model, the inspirational muse of Janis Joplin, which made Janis Joplin second in this music, even if she was the first white woman.What did Janis Joplin contribute to the world of modern amplified polyrhythmic music? A lot, indeed a lot, even more than just a plain lot.She had very hard, realistic and powerful lyrics that exposed society the way it was felt and suffered by young people in the 1960s and early 1970s. She had a singing style and voice that were unique at the time among women and first of all white women singers. She was possessed in her music by hope for sure, but with the conscious certainty that this hope would be betrayed, and it was of course, naturally and without any failure. We can always count on one thing from this rotten world we live in: it will betray our hope, our hopes and even our plain submissive obedient and subservient wishes. And betrayal is the major master word of this hell of a life we have to live through. In spite of the flashes of bliss from time to time when an emotion is responded to emotionally, when our love is received and shared with pure love and not short term greed or lust.It was betrayed by the use of drugs that made the hopeful forget the world cannot change in the proper direction, in the direction of human freedom, if you exit it by artificial means into virtual dreams of psychedelic freedom that turned into nightmares, like in the film "More" (1969) or those I have already quoted. That means the world can only change in the proper direction if you remain conscious and united towards that objective that you in no way control but onto the outcome of which you can weigh and even be of some influence by making your collective parameter heavier in front of the millions of other parameters that dictate history. Janis Joplin could be one of those who mobilized millions of individuals into pushing history in the right direction, which did not mean left or right, but right and not wrong. In the countries where they twinned up right with left and not wrong, they were made the slaves of decisions taken by others and of cosmic phenomena beyond any human control.Betrayed it was by the use of violence and here the film is silent about the Black Panthers and their being systematically killed by the dozens in Chicago or other places. And that's what one should only care about in that period: the systematic repression of any protest around and after 1968. No allusion to the assassination of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. No mention of the Vietnam War and the millions of people killed or maimed over there in the name of democracy and freedom for – and only for – the Americans and maybe here and there the West reduced to its anticommunism of Mathuselah's ancient times. And that was then "Good Morning Vietnam" (1987) that will take twenty years or so to come out of its Pandora's box of napalm and other green berets' adventures, capers, brutality and barbarity.Betrayed by all sorts of crooked, more or less crooked, rather more than less crooked, politicians from A.B. Johnson to Richard Nixon, via Spiro Agnew; and Ronald Reagan was just in the near future. There the worst part is that this systematically warped democracy enables the majority of those who want tranquility and no disruption in their everyday life and comfort, be they favorable to change or not, to always have the last word. The last reform of importance was the 26th amendment lowering voting age from 21 to 18, ratified in 1971, though not the lowering of drinking age and a few other age limits of that type, like being able to enter the music "saloons" or music bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and many other places where the best music was performed. It did not change anything in the logic of the political system, hence the social dependence we all cling to. And Nixon was reelected in 1972 by all these young 18, 19 and 20 year old voters. The debate was raging about this lowering of voting age from what I remember when Janis Joplin was at the highest point of her stardom just when she "decided" to OD in a motel room, alone.You can make a star out of a person but that person's solitude is even greater than before because stars are NOT dancing together. And what's more these stars are black stars and we all know what happens to black stars that could be starry star-like black holes.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

jdesando The recent documentary Amy, depicting singer Amy Winehouse's rise and fall at about the same age as Janis Joplin reminds me that all rockers are not the same, especially females. Janis: Little Girl Blue depicts Joplin as much more focused than Amy and much more in control of her own life. Except for in death, where both succumb to substance abuse, even the relatively more stable Amy.This Janis doc does an effective job showing the arc of her brief life, from a country girl in Texas to the rocker who led the way for women in the industry and eventually the world. Why the eventual failure given her great fame and fortune? It's simple, really: She wanted to be loved, and not always finding that devotion, she could turn to music and drugs for support and fulfillment.Along the way, the doc gives insight into what makes this blues mama run: In her own words she says ambition is the desire to be loved. She's not a "Cry Baby" about not getting the love she wanted from some of her friends and family; actually family members talk to us and appear to have supported her through it all.Her straight-laced parents couldn't be expected to wholly embrace the counter-culture queen, who began innocently singing folk tunes in her early teens and ended singing blues that reminded one critic of "desperate mating calls." Professionally she gets plenty of love from the likes of Khris Kristofferson, whose Me & Bobby Magee was her best-selling single ever and band mate David Goetz, who observed that she turned into a caricature of the blues mama that the media had helped to create. Dick Cavett interviews her with an unusual affection different from his usually detached persona. At one point he can't remember if they were intimate—a nice touch of amnesia that doesn't belie a bit his attachment to her.Janis: Little Girl Blue informs about Joplin's career from folk to hard blues, gives insight into the driving emotions of her ambition, and amply shows her singing talents that made her a child of Aretha Franklin and her own person.A greatly satisfying bio of a great singer.