film review (Netflix): Miss Sharon Jones!

Director: Barbara Kopple

Featuring: Sharon Jones, The Dap Kings

ChinoKino score: A-

Review by Allan Tong

Originally released before her death last November, Miss Sharon Jones! now serves as a memoriam to the late, great soul singer. This heartwrenching film by renown documentarian, Barbara Kopple (Harlan Country, U.S.A.), and just released on Netflix, chronicles Jones' battle against pancreatic cancer for seven months in 2013 after her diagnosis. It's not your typical glossy music doc, but a war movie.

First of all, Jones was an anomaly in the youthful world of music. She struggled for many years signing in wedding bands and even working as a corrections officer at Rikers Island before gaining fame in her fifties. As she recounts in the film, record execs told her she was too black, too fat and too short to make it big. Thankfully, she proved them wrong.

11 Tips to Survive NXNE 2015

by Allan Tong

It's June in Toronto which means that NXNE is here. The five-day music festival (Northby for you hipsters) showcases rock acts from across the world to fill clubs, large and small, across downtown Toronto. There are also record and comic book fairs, live comedy and film screenings including the Canadian premiere of the outstanding biodoc Amy (review here).

The $49 pass gets you into all the small clubs while the $60 pass gets you into virtually everything. (Read the fine print here). Meanwhile, The New Pornographers (above), Shad and legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins (top) are throwing free shows at Yonge-Dundas Square, but go early because it will be packed (see below for more Northby tips).

Also free is a wonderful display of gig concerts at the NXNE festival hub at 120 Spadina Avenue just north of Queen Street West and within spitting distance of the Horseshoe Tavern and Cameron House.

NXNE presents Canadian premiere of Amy biodoc

by Allan Tong

From live bands to comedy, NXNE offers a wide array of things of hear and see from June 17-21, but one highlight is the Canadian premiere of Amy.

Directed by Asif Kapadia, Amy, is a powerful documentary covering the life and demise of Amy Winehouse, the London soul and jazz singer who died of alcoholism after a brief, but stunning career. There have been several TV documentaries that have sensationalized Winehouse's well-known battles with booze and heroin, but Kapadia's actually cuts deep and presents the whole story.

The film is largely told by Winehouse on screen using candid home movies and audio interviews, and through childhood friends and associates such as her bodyguard, drug counsellor and ex-lovers. Mitch Winehouse, her father, comes off as exploitive, as does her last manager, but the true villain is Amy herself who self-destructed in a slow suicide.