Not Fade Away [HD]

It's all about the music
"Not Fade Away" (2012 release; 112 min.) is the debut feature film from writer-director David "The Sopranos" Chase. The story is very loosely based on Chase's days of growing up in New Jersey in the early 1960s, with Douglas (played by John Magaro) standing in for Chase. The movie starts with a retelling of the infamous meeting between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train in the early 60s, and not long thereafter we see the Stones appear on TV and Douglas and his friends want to start a band "like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles". The voice over is from Douglas' sister, informing us she is going to tell "the story of this band nobody has ever heard off". There are many side stories and characters in the movie, none more so than Douglas' dad, played by James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini, which in my opinion was very risky: how can you see this man play yet another Italian patriach with an anger problem and not think Tony Soprano?

But in the end the story line is...

No happy endings here but truth is told
I had high, very high, expectations for this movie, depicting the rise and fall of a Rolling Stones-influenced garage band from New Jersey. David Chase are I are both Jersey kids; are more-or-less the same age (he is 67; I am 63) and had some of the same experiences. I sat down to watch this flick, expecting to be pulled through an earlier part of my life.

The beginning of the film set the stage in a fabulous manner, with the imagined meeting of Mick and Keith on a train heading to school. (As a side note: when in the world will someone film a similar event of Lennon and McCartney?) A voice-over by the sister of the stories protagonist informs us that while almost everyone knows how that story goes; a similar one involving her brother Doug is known to virtually no one. The very obvious implication here is that her brother's band was not a success.

With that thought in mind we are allowed to observe the life of the band for the rest of its existence. Through this...

A love letter to 1962-68 pop/rock music. Only the Blu-ray has the 41 minutes of bonuses.
I saw this film on the big screen last year at the Philadelphia Film Festival and was looking forward to seeing it on home video and to see what bonus features would be added. There's so much music - both played by the actors as characters in the film, and as snippets of licensed music from the 1962-68 time period, that I sometimes lost track of the story while concentrating on the great music - selected, by the way, by Executive Producer Steven Van Zandt (of the E Street Band). (When I saw in the theater I kept asking myself what the licensing fees must have been to release this film.)

As you will learn from the Bonus features on the Blu-ray (no bonuses on the standard DVD) this film was germinating in the mind of writer/director David Chase from the moment his HBO series "The Sopranos" ended. It took a while for him to say what he wanted. Not to give any "spoilers" (but I think you will find it helpful), Chase chose ACTORS , not musicians, to play the roles of members of...

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