Burns, Ric

The Concert for New York City

On October 20, 2001, this now-historic concert took place at Madison Square Garden, a mere six weeks after the horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Thousands of firefighters, police officers, survivors, families, and fans witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime event as, in the space of nearly six hours, many legendary musical performers donated their time and their talent to one of the greatest causes ever, in the process giving their audience an unforgettable burst of pure emotion.

Organized by Sir Paul McCartney, the Concert for New York City was an overwhelming experience that deserves to be saved for posterity. The two-CD audio recording is crammed with dozens of superb performances but doesn't give a sense of the whole show that this two-DVD set certainly does. Not only can we relive such seminal performers from that evening as the Who, David Bowie, John Mellencamp, and Sir Paul himself, we can see the charming and personal short films made for the occasion by such New York filmmakers as Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, or the dozens of celebrities and unsung firefighters and police officers who immortalized that day with their stories and musical introductions.

There is one quibble: the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," one of the blues standards Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy played, and McCartney's "From a Lover to a Friend" and "Lonely Road" are all missing, which seems curious, considering that the entire show could have easily fit onto two DVDs. So don't erase that videotape you made of the concert the night it aired, because that remains the definitive version. But this DVD (with very good Dolby 5.1 surround sound) comes close. --Kevin Filipski

The American Experience: The Donner Party

American Experience - Coney Island

The emergence of American mass culture is intimately connected to the history of Coney Island. From the mid-1800s New York's Coney Island emerged as a playland where the fabulous and fantastic met. Coney Island is Ric Burns' loving documentary about a unique time and place in American history where both the hot dog and the roller coaster were invented. The largest herd of show elephants a miniature village of hundreds of midgets and many fantastic sideshows were all the unique properties of this resort district. An elegant documentary Coney Island tells the story of the rise and eventual decline of a slice of modern life. ~ Cara Saposnik All Movie GuideFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. UPC: 841887050562 Manufacturer No: 705056

Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film

Ric Burns' Andy Warhol is a four-hour pop-culture extravaganza that will retool what you think you know about the famed and oft-parodied soup-can painter. Delving deep into Andy's impoverished upbringing in Pittsburgh, the greatest success of Burns' film is its ability to delve deep behind the façade of Andy Warhol, Pop Celebrity. Featuring interviews with an array of confidants from art dealers to artists (but, alas, no Lou Reed), Burns' film portrays an extremely insecure man who lived with his mother through much of the Factory years and constantly seeked a measure of fame akin to the Hollywood starlets whose photographs he tore out of the pages of Depression-era movie mags. Andy Warhol succeeded in achieving that fame, and along the way redefined how we think of art and culture. This film may very well redefine what you think of the man. -- Kristian St. Clair

He was the most American of artists and the most artistic of Americans one man later said so American in fact that he is almost invisible to us. ANDY WARHOL a riveting and often deeply moving film portrait of the most famous and famously controversial artist of the second half of the twentieth century is the first to explore the complete spectrum of Warhol's astonishing artistic output stretching across five decades from the late 1940's to his untimely death in 1987. Combining powerful on-camera interviews and rare still and motion picture footage it is also the first to put Warhol himself his humble family background and formative experiences in Pittsburgh and his crucial apprenticeship as a commercial artist in New York back into the presentation of his life.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 841887051828 Manufacturer No: 705182

American Experience: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams - A Documentary Film

Ric Burns's documentary for the American Experience series winningly persuades one to think of Ansel Adams as not only the greatest American photographer of the 20th century, but also one of its most treasured artists. Using the familiar formula of New York (and his brother Ken's documentaries), Burns vividly brings Adams's world to life. Narrator David Ogden Stiers is used minimally after the initial set-up, leaving the words to curators, authors, and family members who knew Adams's life and art best (Adams's own letters are also voiced). The film, sponsored by the Sierra Club to mark the 100th anniversary of the photographer's birth, makes a passionate plea for this man "who helped transfer the meaning of wilderness and what people thought about it." There is plenty of time for his magnificent pictures to be shown, often nicely accompanied by modern-day color films of the area. It's a must-see for any fan of Adams. --Doug Thomas

Written, directed and produced by Ric Burns and timed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ansel Adams's birth, Ansel Adams is an elegant, moving and lyrical portrait of one of the most eloquent and quintessentially American photographers. At the heart of the film are the themes that absorbed Adams throughout his career: the beauty and fragility of "the American earth," the inseparable bond between man and nature and the moral obligations that the present owes to the future. Ansel Adams was co-produced by the Sierra Club and attracted 5 million broadcast viewers upon its initial airing on PBS.

American Experience - The Way West: How the West Was Lost & Won, 1845-1893

Between 1845 and 1893, the American West was lost and won - wound with ribbons of iron and wire and brought within the dominion of the United States - while, along the way, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were violently disrupted and all but destroyed. This mesmerizing six-hour documentary series from acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns (The Civil War, Coney Island, New York), chronicles the final astonishing decades of the American frontier from the time of the Gold Rush until after the last gasp of the Indian wars at Wounded Knee.

American Experience - The Donner Party

While brother Ken Burns was redefining mammoth entertainment with his public television events, brother Ric was creating tighter, more definitive documentaries such as The Donner Party, whose tragic subject has seemed more a punch line than a historical event. Yes, members of the Donner party ate human flesh when they were caught snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas just 150 miles away from the end of their 2,500-mile trip across the United States in 1846. But there's more to the story, and Burns uses the customary array of old pictures, current landscapes, and readings of historic dispatches and letters by actors (including Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Eli Wallach) to create a vivid portrayal of the pioneers' tough life. The heartbreaking circumstances of and miscues by the Donner party turned a common migration into one that is remembered as a landlocked Titanic tragedy. What if the snow had come one day later? What if the winter was not the worst on record? And most importantly, what if Lansford Hastings had not advertised a "shorter" West Coast route that he had never seen? Other details bring to light the human achievement of the survivors, including the intriguing fact that the women and children survived in greater number than the men. Anchored by the eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti's "Dark Spanish Symphony," the film constructs the fate of the Donner party as the gloomy side of the American dream. --Doug Thomas

Of all the 19th-century pioneer stories, none exerts such a powerful hold on the American imagination as the tale of the Donner Party in the high Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1846. The excursion became a terrifying tale of misery, death, madness, and cannibalism. Through family journals, newspaper accounts, and interviews with historians and descendants of the party, the program re-creates the Donner Party's now legendary journey.

American Experience: New York: The Center of the World

The Donner Party

While brother Ken Burns was redefining mammoth entertainment with his public television events, brother Ric was creating tighter, more definitive documentaries such as The Donner Party, whose tragic subject has seemed more a punch line than a historical event. Yes, members of the Donner party ate human flesh when they were caught snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas just 150 miles away from the end of their 2,500-mile trip across the United States in 1846. But there's more to the story, and Burns uses the customary array of old pictures, current landscapes, and readings of historic dispatches and letters by actors (including Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, and Eli Wallach) to create a vivid portrayal of the pioneers' tough life. The heartbreaking circumstances of and miscues by the Donner party turned a common migration into one that is remembered as a landlocked Titanic tragedy. What if the snow had come one day later? What if the winter was not the worst on record? And most importantly, what if Lansford Hastings had not advertised a "shorter" West Coast route that he had never seen? Other details bring to light the human achievement of the survivors, including the intriguing fact that the women and children survived in greater number than the men. Anchored by the eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti's "Dark Spanish Symphony," the film constructs the fate of the Donner party as the gloomy side of the American dream. --Doug Thomas