Amazing Grace Is A Streamlined But Powerful Music Documentary

Some films are ultra-tricky to describe, they're such intricately detailed creations that it can be difficult to figure out how to boil them down to a single paragraph. Other times, movies like Amazing Grace are relatively to explain, which isn't a reflection on its quality for better or for worse but rather a reflection on how it's rather to-the-point. Amazing Grace is a concert documentary capturing Aretha Franklin performing a variety of gospel tunes over the course of two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. While brief stories told during the event illuminate on how singing these songs in her father's church was a formative experience for Franklin, this is not a documentary about Franklin's past, it is about her present circa. 1972.

In Laman's Terms: Get Shorty: A Plea For More Theatrical Films To Be Preceded By Short Films

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

As a kid, I was always transfixed by the short films that would play before PIXAR movies. None of the other movies I had on VHS tapes had little short films paying before them, making the likes of Geri's Game and Luxo Jr. all the more special than they already were. As I got older,  I realized PIXAR was an anomaly in the world of American cinema in that they were the only production company or studio to put short films on all their releases (once PIXAR head honcho John Lasseter took the reins on Walt Disney Animation Studios, features from that studio also always carried short films) as everyone else in Hollywood seemed to consider the artform of short films a frivolous affair and a pointless business expense.