Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir notes that Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That is "pretty much the state of the art in concert films," while The Reeler cranks it one notch higher: "[P]ossibly the greatest concert film ever made."

In the Boston Phoenix, Chris Fujiwara reviews the film and has a long talk with Adam Yauch: "Were the results of the footage what Yauch had in mind? 'Very much so. I had seen this clip that somebody had shot on their camera phone and then had uploaded on our Web site, and I thought it looked really cool. That’s where I got the idea to document a concert this way. And definitely the footage we got gets that kind of feel, that kind of energy.'"

Kyle Ryan interviews all three Beasties for the AV Club, where Nathan Rabin reviews the film.

For Cheryl Eddy, writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, it's a "Bronx-cheer pop Rashomon."

Updated through 4/1.

In the Voice, Laura Sinagra finds "something late-seeming about it," what with "the explosion of online video, from stalker cams to the stuff on various curatorial vlogs... That said, the concert comes off like a blast."

Jürgen Fauth: "The method of Awesome amounts to cubist filmmaking: like omnipresent gods, we are everywhere at once."

Updates, 3/31: Steve Appleford's cover story for the LA CityBeat stretches from the movie back to cruising Sunset Boulevard with Mike D back in 1989.

Kurt at Twitch: "AIFST may look like a frappé of Sergei Eisenstein, Andy Warhol, Billy Van and Gerry Todd, but there is an intelligent design to the visual trickery."

Nathan Lee in the New York Times: "How much awesomeness can be achieved by a group of 40-something millionaires bouncing around in green tracksuits and gray hair as they bid the kids at Madison Square Garden to 'Shake Your Rump'?"

Bill White in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "For the most part, the film is a chaotic blur of disconnected movement that re-creates the feeling of an unforgettably bad concert experience."

Collin Souter at Hollywood Bitchslap: "As an overall experience, I found little to enjoy."

Sylvie Simmons in the Guardian: "While the overexposed white-outs, weird close-ups, and loud, throbbing bass may get a bit migrainous, the film's overall effect is one of freshness, energy and humor." But there's more to this piece than that, too; she meets the Beastie Boys, gets them to talk about their back story, Bush, etc.

Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post: "Awesome is one of those rare films that actually live up to every single word of their titles."

Looker: "It's fuckin' awesome."

Update, 4/1: An online listening tip. Cinematical's Karina Longworth talks with The Boys.

Posted by dwhudson at March 30, 2006 1:43 PM