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 enlarge | Director: Julian Temple
Actor: Joe Strummer
Studio: Sony Legacy
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $8.90
You Save: $11.08 (55%)
New (35) Used (8) from $8.90
Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 2912
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Explicit Lyrics, Hifi Sound, Surround Sound, Thx, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: SMVD731784D
UPC: 886973178492
EAN: 0886973178492
ASIN: B0017WI5W0
Theatrical Release Date: July 8, 2008
Release Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 16
 Brillian Ode to a Brilliant Soul August 10, 2008
Robert Strickland (Chicago, IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Got this in the mail and popped it in the DVD player almost immediately. What a fantastic tribute to such a remarkable man. Joe's been just about my biggest hero for a long time and I was moved to tears when I had heard that he'd died. Temple's documentary brought out the man in all of his complexity and doesn't shy away from presenting him as both a flawed and yet truly inspiring person. By the time I'd finished the movie I'd been brought to tears again contemplating our having lost such a decent and humane artist. Musicians, artists and people the world over, but particularly in America, could learn a lot by viewing this film and taking a cue from Joe Strummer. Thank you Mr. Temple for making such a wonderful movie and recognizing such a wonderful man.
 Love it, but... August 16, 2008
Annie Mehlhoff (Salt Lake City, UT)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a huge Joe Strummer fan, so naturally I grab anything I can that's in any way related to him. As far as this movie's concerned, I came away feeling good, but not really with a sense that I understood Joe any more. Of course it was biased--the interviews were with people who were friends with Joe, so why would it be negative?--but I was pleased with the honesty presented. Friends expressed dismay about Joe's sudden change from rockabilly Woody Mellor to punk rock Joe Strummer and the subsequent attitude change; the film painted him as a social activist, but with womanizing tendencies; and it showed how all of it was an act. However, a great deal of the time it felt like it was more about, "Hey, look what famous person I got to interview for this movie who had no association with Joe Strummer whatsoever!" Johnny Depp? C'mon...at least Steve Buscemi and John Cusack were actual fans who'd interacted with Joe, but a great deal of the celebrities featured in the film seemed to be there for show, not for any real attempt to understand Joe.
In the end I liked the movie. I wish it would have covered more of his early years, his own philosophies and perhaps more interviews with family members. The focus was mainly on the Clash, which as a fan I don't mind too much--it just makes it a bit more difficult to separate Joe from his successful band, which I had really hoped the film would accomplish.
IT'S A ROCKIN WORLD September 1, 2008
Michael J. Odum (Snellville, GA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's a rockin' world make no mistake about it. These are the words of one Joe Strummer. But in my opinion and as this doc will attest the world is a not as rockin' as it was when Mr. Strummer was still with us. The story of the man, his bands and his influence on the world regardless of whether or not they could understand him. As pointed out in the DVD by one fan, "you guys are great but I can't understand the words." Joe replys simply. " That's ashame because the words are really great."
The Two Joe Strummers December 11, 2008
Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My favorite part of this documentary is finding out about Joe Strummer's youth and how living in a number of foreign countries fostered in him a love of all kinds of music. However this is not an homage to Strummer or The Clash but rather a kind of behind-the-scenes expose of both Strummer and his band. Clash fans might be turned off by much of this, they will certainly be dismayed to find that The Clash was the brainchild not of Strummer but of a Malcolm McLaren-like manager named Bernie who introduced Strummer to Jones and Simenon. In the unwritten history of English music there is Before the Sex Pistols (BSP) and After the Sex Pistols (ASP) and Strummer lived on both sides of this cultural divide. On the one hand Strummer was an art school hippie with folksie roots (early on he called himself "Woody") and on the other he was a conniving opportunist and commercial strategist who valued fame more than friendship (when punk and Bernie's offer to be a part of it came along he abandoned his hippie community). So Strummer is a man divided from the beginning and the difficulties that he had both within The Clash and afterwards stem from an inability to resolve this identity clash. No one doubts that Strummer was an important musical voice (maybe The Voice of 1977) but those early Clash songs like "White Riot" are the product of both the folksy freedom fighter and the ambitious commercial strategist and the balance between these two Joes was always precarious at best. Once the ambitious strategist lost touch with the freedom fighter The Clash was doomed. Even though the Joe Strummer-Mick Jones battle was played out in public it seems that the real battle being fought on Combat Rock was a battle between the two Joes: the one who wanted to speak to the world and the one who found that once the world started listening he had very little left to say or reason for saying it.
After The Clash disbanded it took Strummer many years to rediscover his folksy roots and self. But the last chapter of the Joe Strummer story is a relatively satisfying one as rock bios go as he did finally find a way to reconnect those two warring halves when he formed The Mescaleros. In that band he could be both Joe the folksy hippie world musician and Joe the punk rock star.
Julien Temple's exquisite selection and arrangment of period footage and data makes this a visually, psychologically, and culturally rich experience and the inclusion of tapes from Joe Strummer's radio show in which Joe offers commentary on the artists and songs that he plays is rich and informative. But the inclusion of Johnny Depp (with ridiculous eyeliner and braided beard and head wrap) was a bad idea. Johnny the actor is fine but Johhny the actor as wannabe rocker is the opposite of folk and punk and all things authentic.
Death is a Star August 17, 2008
Ed Schneider (Berkeley, CA USA)
Excellent overview of Joe Strummer's much too short existence. Old friends sitting around a campfire and animations of Joe's drawings were great structural touches. Too bad Paul Simonon opted out.
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