Blur: To the End is a documentary that takes fans behind the scenes of Blur’s long-awaited return to the studio to record their first album in over a decade. The film captures the band’s journey, from their reunion in Hong Kong to the creative process of making new music, offering a mix of nostalgia, humour, and candid moments.
Those looking for a 101 on Blur’s history or surprise revelations of previously unknown secrets from the band’s past will have to look elsewhere. This movie is for lifelong fans. It’s not an introduction to Blur or the band members. It’s for fans who know the mythos and are excited to tune in for the latest chapter.
Though the documentary focused on the lead-up to the new tour and the creation of the new album, the audience gets a peak behind the scenes at the surprisingly calm creative process of talented people with a complicated history. A group of people who love the music and want to keep feeding that love, in whatever form it may take.
While the film gives little context as to how the band met or how they bounded, many nostalgia-filled stories are exchanged between the members as though they are catching up over a pint in a pub. Continuously rewarding the long-term fans of Blur, fans who will be excited to see welcomed along to this next chapter.
The film has a very intimate feel, even for a documentary. The audience is shown the band members’ homes, where the bandmates wear their comfort with each other casually. This does mean that the tone can lean oddly morbid at times. When they are philosophising about life and their relationships, it feels like an end-of-life reflection rather than an acknowledgement of a midpoint. The mid-50s might not be the prime rockstar age, but 50 is far from the end of their musical life.
Given the zeitgeists piqued interest in Brit-pop, with the oft-talked-about Oasis reunion on the horizon, it seems like a missed opportunity not to explore the musical impact Blur had in leading the British bands of the ’90s. Instead, the focus is where they are now, only looking forward.
Truly what you glean from this film is that it is hard to be in a band. It’s much like a family. You all love one thing, but personal dynamics can often get in the way.
To be this successful and this creative after a long and turbulent time together is no small feat. What we see is a group of people who have a genuine love for each other and the music. Gone are the glitz, the glamour, the tension of early rock and roll-dom. Here, you get to join some old mates catching up over Victoria Sponge.
The name “Grand Horizons” evokes an image of expansive possibilities, a bright future, and a world of untapped potential. It suggests a place where grand things await, a sense of hope and excitement about what lies ahead. In the context of the play, however, this promise is ironically deflated. The “Grand Horizon” is revealed to be not a metaphor for limitless opportunities but rather the confines of a retirement village.
From the very first curtain rise, director Jason Darlington expertly transports the audience into a space that is reminiscent of a sitcom, with musical tunes such as “Love and Marriage” from the TV show “Married with Children”, setting up the scene perfectly. The story is indeed about a married couple with children, only in this tale Nancy decides one day that she wants to divorce Bill, while their two grown up children come to the “rescue” by trying to stop the divorce from happening.
The children’s behaviour is somewhat sitcom-like, with over-the-top acting and facial expressions. Both are oblivious to their parents’ true nature: no matter how many times they ask what the reason for the divorce could possibly be, they never stop to actually let them answer and instead continue on their own trajectory.
It is deep into Act One when we finally hear from Nancy about her rather superficial marriage to Bill. Her confession of long-held desires for an old high school crush feels like a tipping point. It’s here, deep into Act One, that the play shifts gears from sitcom-style comedy to something more poignant, building toward a climactic moment where the walls of the retirement unit—quite literally—come crashing down. This marks the moment when “Grand Horizons” takes a profound turn, offering a raw and vulnerable exploration of the emotional truths that have been buried for decades.
Act Two is the standout, with Nancy’s meeting with Bill’s new girlfriend serving as an acting high point. The final confrontation between Bill and Nancy is both explosive and deeply revealing, a gut-wrenching moment where both characters come to realize how much they’ve actually known about each other’s desires all along.
In his directorial debut at the Castle Hill Pavilion, Darlington wisely lets the seasoned actors take centre stage, and it’s their performances that resonate most strongly. “Grand Horizons” blends comedy with pathos in a way that’s both funny and cringeworthy, ultimately leaving the audience with a bittersweet sense of reflection on life’s fleeting promises and the often-unspoken truths we carry with us.
This is a story about a very unsure, depressed, anxious young man who just happened to form the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
I’m a fan. I’ve been a fan of The Rolling Stones since I can remember. Like The Beatles, they’ve always been in my orbit. As a child of the 90s and 00s growing up with parents who were children of the 60s and 70s, their music was always in the atmosphere. I’ve watched the documentaries, read the authorised biographies, Keith’s immense book “Life”, and the unauthorised ones. I’ve screenshotted the photos for the fashion and bought the Stones t-shirts.
Mick and Keith were childhood friends who bumped into each other at a train station when they were teenagers. Keith was going to art school at the time, and Mick was studying at the London School of Economics. Keith spied a couple of records Mick had under his arm. A Muddy Waters LP and Chuck Berry’s greatest hits were all it took for the greatest rock and roll duos to come together. The glimmer twins were born.
Mick and Keith started hanging out at the jazz bars in London, where they met Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The boys formed a band. They advertised for a bass player, and Bill Wyman answered the call. And then the well-known dot points that go something like;
An English cover band for American Rhythm and Blues, hanging with the Beatles, Satisfaction, Marianne Faithful, drug busts, rock and roll circus, Sympathy for the Devil, Anita Pallenberg, Brian dies, Mick Taylor joins, Hyde Park, Hells Angels, exiled in France; Bianca Jagger, more drug busts, fashion, America, Keith arrested in Canada, rehabilitated, Ronnie Wood, stadium band, middle-aged rockers, Jerry Hall, older rockers, greatest hits albums, Sir Mick, Martin Scorsese, crossfire hurricane, 50th anniversary, tour tour tour, Charlie passes away. And here we are in the present.
Brian Jones has always been a dot point in music history.
For a band that’s been going on for as long as the stones have, 2024 coming up to 62 years – they’re official date of conception being 1962 – the interest in their story, music and the passion of their fans is a beautiful thing. They continue to be the soundtrack to countless generations, producing a best-selling studio album as recent as 2023, Hackney Diamonds. The Rolling Stones have always been relevant. It’s hard to think of them as new and up-and-coming. Especially with the inclusion of Bill Wyman in the documentary, now an old man in his 80s.
Brian Jones and the Stones is not an in-depth portrait compared to others, like “Crossfire Hurricane,” but it does give an intriguing look at Brian Jones.
I knew Brian was the catalyst in getting the stones together, and I knew he came up with the name after Muddy Water’s song “Rollin’ Stone” This was his vision for The Rolling Stones, being a cover band of Muddy Water, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson. It’s not a pop band performing their own compositions about Satisfaction or Jumping Jack Flash. Which is such a crazy notion for us fans. You can see why Mick and Keith and the rest of the band couldn’t see Brian’s blinkered view on this. The Stones were hit makers, no question about that. And I wouldn’t be so brash as to call Beggars Banquet or Between the Buttons ‘pop’. This is Rock, albeit popular rock.
Through this film, Brian’s complexities are explored in a melancholy way. Many friends and comrades describe him as a sweet guy, an immensely talented musician, and a gentleman. And then, as success grows, money comes in, opportunities for debauchery come, and his other side comes to the fore. He was a complicated guy before being a Rolling Stone.
His parents kicked him out as a young man for getting his girlfriend pregnant. And a pattern emerges. He charms his way into the homes and families of each new girlfriend he acquires before he is 25—five on the filmmaker’s count. Five children were born to five different women. The first is put up for adoption. The film takes the girls’ point of view as the narrators of Brian’s story, which is a great take, I think. The love he showed them mixed with the abandonment. He’d move in with the girlfriend’s family, get her pregnant and casually move on. Back on tour, back as a Rolling Stone.
One of his girlfriends describes him as a gentleman who would open doors for her and be loving. “When he met my mother, he kissed her hand. Who does that?” Well, most people would say a guy who knows how to play the field does that. A guy who was without a home or loving family and needed one to live with. Sadly.
One unhappy tale comes from Linda Lawrence, mother of his son Julian. Linda needed money from Brian, raising their son on her own, and Brian just laughed at her from his balcony. Brian was with Anita Pallenberg by this time. Perhaps not the best influence on a guy with crippling low self-esteem. Anita Pallenberg, who later went on to date and have children with Keith Richards, is no shrinking violet.
Humans all have the capability of good and evil, and Linda believes that Anita Pallenberg brought out Brian’s vicious side—teasing people and spiking their drinks. When you mix that with fame, money, every available drug in his system, and his band growing tired of his moods and unreliability, Brian’s fate feels like a foregone conclusion.
This is a documentary for the fans. Vintage Stones on the big screen. Their early, unpolished performances in black and white in little theatres across England and Europe, Mick Jagger becoming THE Mick Jagger, singing in a turtleneck jumper, well before the jumpsuits and lavish costumes. We’re taken back to London in the 60’s, a promised land that will always be rhapsodised and always looks cool to those of us who were never there.
Brian was a lost soul with a glimmer of hope to reach his full potential with the stones. A boy who longed for his parents’ approval, the parents who kicked him out before he was making money. When the drug busts were happening in 1967, Brian sent a note to his parents asking, “please don’t think badly of me”. Heartbreaking. Especially with the letter from his father found years after Brains death.
Brian needed to escape something: a pain, a deep insecurity, the five children he had but didn’t know, the girls he abandoned. And drugs were his way to do that. I came away feeling not in awe, just desperately sad for him. An interviewer asks him about his songwriting. You see Mick and Keith stop their pretend chatting in the background and shoot their gaze over to see what Brian was going to say. To Brian’s credit he says it’s not him who writes the hits, it’s Mick and Keith.
“What would you do differently now that you know how hard you have to work?” is the next question for Brian. “I’d do it all the same, 100 times over.”
Brian Jones. Gone but not forgotten.
The British Film Festival 2024 runs from Nov – Dec 8. To book tickets to this or other films click https://britishfilmfestival.com.au/ for session and venue details.
This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.
High-paced physical comedy and a wildly multi-talented cast carry this chaotic and hilarious staged version of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps at Cronulla Arts Theatre.
Director Cheryl Butler’s production is charming and deft. With a cast of four and a character list of more than 150, this production is a serious ask of its ensemble. The four actors switch accents, attitudes, and hats at pace throughout the play and manage to get both laughs and sympathetic groans from the crowd.
Gavin Leahy’s Richard Hannay is charming and moves almost like Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz film; his pratfalls and facial expressions add jokes to the already enjoyable script. He and Angela Gibson (who play the three key female characters who cross Hannay’s path) both have genuine chemistry and some of the most precise timed visual gags.
The two clowns, Gary Clark and Kathryn Bray have several sequences where the gags are layered as they switch characters and accents with simple movements or costume shifts. These two actors create the groundwork for the moments of romantic chemistry, always following them with a wink and a nudge.
Despite a reasonably long run time for a comedy, the show doesn’t lose your attention. The night we attended, the laughs only seemed to build as the night went along. Using a standalone door as a prop starts slightly funny and grows to be consistently hilarious. The suits are sharp, the staging is mostly minimal, and that’s also worked into the comedy of the thing. The prop work, especially from Kathryn Bray, is excellent.
Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation takes a loving and goofy approach to the source material. The iconic plane chase appears in shadow puppet relief, and there’s a dramatic and hilarious action sequence on a train that both pays tribute to and pokes fun at the original.
If you’re looking for a faithful Hitchcock adaptation, this is not the play for you, but some passing knowledge of the film will deepen the experience of the show and add a few jokes that might go over the head of someone going in cold. The energy required to convincingly carry off a clowning play is immense, and Cronulla Arts Theatre’s production of The 39 Steps has it and then some. I would thoroughly recommend it.
The season runs from 25 October to 30 November, with Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees on 27 October and 3, 17, and 24 November at 2 p.m.
Photographer: Dan Binger, Graham West, Jeffrey Gall, Mark Phillips, Peter Gale
This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.
