Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! Movie Review

I guess the Beastie Boys are still cool, right? I mean, my kid brother was into them when he was 12, and that was around 1987. But "Brass Monkey" never gets old, really.To maintain relevance, I suppose, the Beasties put together a concert video with a gimmick: They gave 50 fans digital video cameras, instructions to "never stop shooting," and set them loose in Madison Square Garden. Director Adam Yauch (as Nathanial Hörnblowér) cut the ensuing footage into a single movie, and the results are... well, they're a lot like you'd expect.I guess the theory here is that if you give a million monkeys a typewriter one of them will come up with Hamlet, but 50 doesn't seem to do the trick. The film ends up with some nice musical numbers (though at 88 minutes, not too many of them), backed up with video that's about as low-grade as it gets. Standard shots of the band from the crowd and from the stage are intercut with scenes shot with cheeseball special effects -- filter after filter showing the Beasties tinted black and white, yellow, blue and red, or pixilated into oblivion. Goofy stunts are used to break up the monotony: One camera user runs to be bathroom and records a urination. Clever? You could get the same effect by watching Cable Access and listening to a Beastie Boys greatest hits album.The DVD release is made worse by the (well-meaning) use of the angle feature: You can get the film as it was intended or flip over to a version of the film that has all 50 videos running in a multi-camera grid. You can't actually make out what's happening in any of the grids, and the whole feature is pretty useless. But during the regular feature, many DVD players will perpetually display an angle icon with "1/2" next to it... for the entire film!If you're a Beastie Boys fan (or if you were one of the 50 camera operators), you'll probably want to check out this movie. But frankly, the Boys' videos are far more entertaining.Additional DVD extras include an a cappella vocal track, a "detour" feature that branches off with other camera operators, a commentary from the band, and a "mock" short film about the director.Aka Awesome; I ... Shot That.