Latest news with #It'sNeverOver
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gone too soon, an unsettled life finds focus in 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley'
Short, pained lives marked by achievement and promise and then abruptly gone leave a restless afterglow. Youth is supposed to fade away, not become one's permanent state. And regarding the late musician Jeff Buckley — a roiling romantic with piercing good looks whose singing could rattle bones and raise hairs — that loss in 1997, at the age of 30 from drowning, burns anew with every revisiting of his sparse legacy of recorded material. Lives are more complicated than what your busted heart may want to read from a voice that conjured heaven and the abyss. So one of the appealing takeaways from the biodoc 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' is a repudiating of the typical narrative of inescapable fate, instead pursuing the richness of a gifted artist's ups and downs. Director Amy Berg would rather us see Buckley as he was in the world instead of some conveniently doom-laden figure. The result is loving, spirited and honest: an opportunity for us to get to know the talented, turbulent Buckley through the people who genuinely knew him and cared about him. But also, in clips, copious writings and snatches of voice recordings, we meet someone empathetic yet evasive, ambitious yet self-critical, a son and his own man, especially when sudden stardom proved to be the wrong prism through which to find answers. Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles With archival material often superimposed over a faint, scratchy-film background, we feel the sensitivity and chaos of Buckley's single-mom upbringing in Anaheim, the devastating distance of his absentee dad, folk-poet icon Tim Buckley (you'll never forget the matchbook Jeff saved), and the creative blossoming that happened in New York's East Village. There, his long-standing influences, from Nina Simone and Edith Piaf to Led Zeppelin and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, coalesced into a post-grunge emotionalism anchored by those unbelievable pipes. Even after Buckley's record-label discovery leads to the usual music-doc trappings — tour montages, media coverage, performance morsels — Berg wisely keeps the contours of his interior life in the foreground, intimately related by key figures, most prominently Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, romantic confidantes such as artist Rebecca Moore and musician Joan Wasser, and bandmates like Michael Tighe. Berg keeps these interviewees close to her camera, too, so we can appreciate their memories as personal gifts, still raw after so many years. Fans might yearn for more granular unpacking of the music, but it somehow doesn't feel like an oversight when so much ink on it already exists and so little else has been colored in. The same goes for the blessed absence of boilerplate A-list praise. The global acclaim for his sole album, 1994's "Grace," which includes his all-timer rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah,' certainly put admiring superstars (Dylan, Bowie, McCartney) in Buckley's path, including one of his idols, Robert Plant. But Berg stays true to a viewpoint rooted in Buckley's conflicting feelings about the pressures and absurdities of fame, and why it ultimately drove him to Memphis to seek the solace to start a second album that was never completed. The last chapter is thoughtfully handled. Berg makes sure that we understand that his loved ones view his death as an accident, not a suicide, and the movie's details are convincing. That doesn't make the circumstances any less heartbreaking, of course. As warmer spotlights go, 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' may never fully expunge what maddens and mystifies about the untimely end of troubled souls. But it candidly dimensionalizes a one-album wonder, virtually ensuring the kind of relistening likely to deepen those echoes. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Gone too soon, an unsettled life finds focus in ‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley'
Short, pained lives marked by achievement and promise and then abruptly gone leave a restless afterglow. Youth is supposed to fade away, not become one's permanent state. And regarding the late musician Jeff Buckley — a roiling romantic with piercing good looks whose singing could rattle bones and raise hairs — that loss in 1997, at the age of 30 from drowning, burns anew with every revisiting of his sparse legacy of recorded material. Lives are more complicated than what your busted heart may want to read from a voice that conjured heaven and the abyss. So one of the appealing takeaways from the biodoc 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' is a repudiating of the typical narrative of inescapable fate, instead pursuing the richness of a gifted artist's ups and downs. Director Amy Berg would rather us see Buckley as he was in the world instead of some conveniently doom-laden figure. The result is loving, spirited and honest: an opportunity for us to get to know the talented, turbulent Buckley through the people who genuinely knew him and cared about him. But also, in clips, copious writings and snatches of voice recordings, we meet someone empathetic yet evasive, ambitious yet self-critical, a son and his own man, especially when sudden stardom proved to be the wrong prism through which to find answers. With archival material often superimposed over a faint, scratchy-film background, we feel the sensitivity and chaos of Buckley's single-mom upbringing in Anaheim, the devastating distance of his absentee dad, folk-poet icon Tim Buckley (you'll never forget the matchbook Jeff saved), and the creative blossoming that happened in New York's East Village. There, his long-standing influences, from Nina Simone and Edith Piaf to Led Zeppelin and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, coalesced into a post-grunge emotionalism anchored by those unbelievable pipes. Even after Buckley's record-label discovery leads to the usual music-doc trappings — tour montages, media coverage, performance morsels — Berg wisely keeps the contours of his interior life in the foreground, intimately related by key figures, most prominently Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, romantic confidantes such as artist Rebecca Moore and musician Joan Wasser, and bandmates like Michael Tighe. Berg keeps these interviewees close to her camera, too, so we can appreciate their memories as personal gifts, still raw after so many years. Fans might yearn for more granular unpacking of the music, but it somehow doesn't feel like an oversight when so much ink on it already exists and so little else has been colored in. The same goes for the blessed absence of boilerplate A-list praise. The global acclaim for his sole album, 1994's 'Grace,' which includes his all-timer rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah,' certainly put admiring superstars (Dylan, Bowie, McCartney) in Buckley's path, including one of his idols, Robert Plant. But Berg stays true to a viewpoint rooted in Buckley's conflicting feelings about the pressures and absurdities of fame, and why it ultimately drove him to Memphis to seek the solace to start a second album that was never completed. The last chapter is thoughtfully handled. Berg makes sure that we understand that his loved ones view his death as an accident, not a suicide, and the movie's details are convincing. That doesn't make the circumstances any less heartbreaking, of course. As warmer spotlights go, 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' may never fully expunge what maddens and mystifies about the untimely end of troubled souls. But it candidly dimensionalizes a one-album wonder, virtually ensuring the kind of relistening likely to deepen those echoes.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' spotlights a brief, beautiful career
If you buy into the legend of Jeff Buckley as a second-generation genius doomed by fate to die, like his father, far too young, Amy Berg's documentary 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' will be your cup of tears. But I'm pretty sure Buckley himself might have some choice words to say about it.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley': How new documentary captures musician's time in Memphis
In 1995, musician Jeff Buckley — whose angelic voice was matched by a similarly seraphic, even pre-Raphaelite visage — found himself at No. 12 on People magazine's list of the '50 Most Beautiful People in the World.' His only studio LP, the now revered 'Grace,' released a year earlier, had peaked at No. 149 on the Billboard album chart. Such metrical disconnects and misplaced emphases, irrelevant to art, were frustrating to the singer-songwriter, whose musical idols included Nina Simone, a poetic political activist, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Sufi mystic. Discouraged by music-industry expectations and the stress of touring and encouraged by his friendship with members of the Grifters, the arguable éminences grises of the local postpunk scene, Buckley moved to Memphis in 1997, in search of anonymity, inspiration and rejuvenation. In Memphis, he 'felt safe,' according to Buckley's girlfriend at the time, New England musician Joan Wasser. But on the evening of May 29, Buckley disappeared after entering the Wolf River Harbor, near Mud Island, for a swim. His drowned body was discovered June 4, 'at the foot of Beale Street' — a music-themed morbid irony that television and newspaper reporters found irresistible. He was 30 years old. MEMPHIS ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: Venice Film Festival lineup includes made-in-Memphis 'Newport & the Great Folk Dream' Buckley's Memphis residency occupies most of the final half hour of director Amy Berg's years-in-the-making 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley,' a documentary feature film that opens Aug. 8 in 128 theaters nationwide, including the Malco Ridgeway Four in Memphis. The 7 p.m. Aug. 8 show at the Ridgeway will be followed by a discussion and question-and-answer session featuring 'It's Never Over' editor Stacy Goldate, a Los Angeles-based veteran filmmaker and former Memphian. (It's easy for Goldate to return here: Her parents, Craig and Kathy Goldate, live in Germantown.) The moderator will be Memphis author-filmmaker Robert Gordon, who was acquainted with Buckley. With a title that alludes to the singer-songwriter's posthumous influence, 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' offers further evidence that Buckley's popularity and celebrity have escalated almost exponentially since his accidental death. More evidence: One of the movie's executive producers is actor Brad Pitt (who previously had hoped to portray Buckley in a biopic). A Memphis Magazine story referred to Buckley as "a budding superstar." Since 1997, the bud has bloomed. 'Grace' has now sold more than 2 million copies. Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' has been streamed close to 405 million times. Sony/Columbia has released more than 20 Buckley compilations, expanded reissues and live albums. Peers and critics also are enamored. In the documentary, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann calls Buckley 'literally the best singer that I've ever heard.' A 1990 graduate of St. Mary's Episcopal School whose family moved from Philadelphia to Memphis ("which I do consider my hometown") when she was 12, Goldate is one of two credited editors on "It's Never Over." The other is Brian A. Kates, who had to leave the project before it was finished to work on "Kiss of the Spider Woman," with Jennifer Lopez. Both editors spent months on the movie with the director, Amy Berg, crafting the final 107-minute cut from countless hours of archival content (performance video, phone machine messages, and so on); new material (including footage of the house Buckley rented at 93 N. Rembert in Midtown, which is now an Airbnb, and a site of pilgrimage for fans from around the world); vivid animation (Buckley's journal entries come to hallucinatory life); and interviews with significant figures in Buckley's life. Some of these include his mother, Mary Guibert (who required some 20 years of convincing before she approved the project); girlfriends Wasser and actress/musician Rebecca Moore; and, in Memphis, Dave Shouse of the Grifters and his wife, Tammy Shouse. The story is roughly chronological, from Buckley's childhood in Orange County, California, to his slow ascent to recognition, in New York, as a distinctive singer-songwriter with an ethereal yet soulful voice. 'My main music influences? Love, anger, depression, joy — and Zeppelin," he says, in a vintage interview in the film. Conspicuously absent in that list of influences is Buckley's father, acclaimed singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who abandoned the family before Jeff was born and died nine years later, at 28, of a heroin-morphine-ethanol overdose. In another vintage sound bite, Jeff Buckley says thoughts of his father fill him with "pain and anger," but also "love and compassion." Certainly, Berg is no stranger to such strong, challenging emotions. The director's previous documentaries include "Janis: Little Girl Blue" (2015), about Janis Joplin, and "Deliver Us from Evil" (2006), which explored sex-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Memphis also was not unfamiliar territory: Her 2012 documentary "West of Memphis," produced by the "Lord of the Rings" Oscar-winner Peter Jackson, examined the case of the "West Memphis Three." NEW MOVIES: 'Sovereign' based on West Memphis tragedy: A look at the new movie and the story behind it With Berg at the helm and Goldate and Iceland-born animator Sara Gunnarsdóttir as major contributors, "It's Never Over" is a movie largely built by women. In addition, the film opens with interviews with women: Guibert (also an executive producer), Moore, Wasser, and also Mann and singer Alanis Morissette. Goldate said this strategy was intentional, not only because 'the women in his life were so important to him' but because Buckley's art offered a contrast to the 'aggressive voices' of so many male artists in the 1990s. 'Here was this man who could channel Nina Simone, and who had this beautiful voice,' said Goldate, 52. "My feeling is that he transcended binaries in general. Music spoke to him on such a high frequency, such a high level, that it was above all the categories that people place themselves in. "There was such a sweetness in him," she added. "When I was deep in the edit, I kept saying over and over again, 'He is such a sweetheart!'' Goldate — a veteran editor with degrees from Vanderbilt University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — said her Memphis history and love of indie rock music ("I used to try to sneak into the Antenna club with a fake ID when I was 16 years") helped her connect with Buckley, who performed regularly at Barrister's, a Downtown dive that was a successor to the punk-era club, Antenna. However, "Somehow, I missed 'Grace' when it came out," Goldate admitted. "So I didn't come into this from a place of fandom." But by the time she "locked" her final edit into place, "I was madly in love with him. Now I'm obsessed with Jeff Buckley." She said she hopes the documentary — distributed in theaters by Magnolia Pictures, and set to air on HBO later this year — will have the same effect on those who watch it. 'One of my biggest hopes for this film is that people will come to appreciate his music. There's so much more than 'Hallelujah.'' 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' Opens Aug. 8 at the Malco Ridgeway Four The 7 p.m. Aug. 8 screening will be followed by a public discussion and question-and-answer session with Stacy Goldate, the movie's co-editor, and author/filmmaker Robert Gordon. For tickets and more information, visit For more about the movie, visit This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: New Jeff Buckley documentary opens in Memphis: What to expect Solve the daily Crossword
Time Out
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Ironies – both intimate and enormous – imbue It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley with much of its thematic weight. So it's only apt that they also contribute to its artistic buoyancy. For the most part this does feel like a straightforward musical biography, with copious and well-chosen footage of the late singer-songwriter both onstage and off. But though his life and art were influenced most visibly by men, director Amy Berg (West of Memphis) chooses to tell his story in large part through women. We hear emotional memories and thoughtful insights from his single mother, Mary Guibert, his good friend Aimee Mann, his former girlfriend Rebecca Moore, and his fiancée Joan Wasser (the musician known as Joan as Police Woman). We're also witness to his own broken heart, cleaved both by the parent who abandoned him and the world that wouldn't allow him to move on. Even as Jeff was trying to understand what it meant to be the son of celebrated singer Tim Buckley, he despised the way everyone else wanted to understand it, too. And there's another paradox as well, one that's likely to remain with viewers every time they hear his music from here on. As his admirers already know, and Berg shows us at length, he put tremendous effort into crafting his own work. He also pushed back hard against a commercial mindset that coldly exploited creativity. Fans will fiercely argue that Buckley has so much more to offer than Hallelujah Buckley became increasingly disenchanted by the business side of music, and we can see hints of a path that's become sadly familiar in stories of sensitive young artists (including, it must be said, his father): towards emotional instability or mental illness, perhaps exacerbated by substance use. But as it happens, the punk angel with the four-octave range also had a rare and remarkable mimetic gift – which made him an unusually skilled interpreter of other artists, from Nina Simone to MC5 to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And today, he is arguably best known for his elegiac cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, a rendition that's moved millions even while corporate media has come to rely on it as an easy emotional touchstone. Fans, of course, will fiercely argue that Buckley has so much more to offer. And in the strongest compliment to Berg's affectionate portrait, she makes a similarly convincing case, with ample and tender grace. .
