Gimme Shelter
Tags: tragedy, violence, murder

Plot synopsis:
Agnes "Apple" Bailey (Vanessa Hudgens) has never had an easy life. She's been in and out of foster care for years, and her mother June (Rosario Dawson) is an abusive addict who only wants her for the welfare money she provides. She decides to run away and go in search of her absent father Tom Fitzpatrick (Brendan Fraser), whom she discovers is now a wealthy Wall Street broker with a family. He agrees to take her in, but she's quickly forced out again when he and his wife learn she's pregnant and don't agree with her decision to keep the baby.
When a pimp forces her into his vehicle to discuss "business", Apple jumps into the driver's seat, speeds away and crashes the car. Apple awakes in a hospital where a priest, Father McCarthy (James Earl Jones), is waiting to speak with her. After gaining her trust Father McCarthy arranges for her to stay in a home for pregnant teenage girls. The shelter is run by a formerly homeless woman named Kathy (Ann Dowd). June is informed that Apple will be staying there and goes to the shelter in an attempt to take her to her home, but is forced to leave after she gets violent.
Apple bonds with the other girls at the shelter, beginning to open up and trust them. She gives birth to a baby girl and names her Hope. Tom comes to visit and the two reconcile. He offers to let Apple and Hope come live with him, but as they're leaving Apple realizes she's already made a home for herself at the shelter and decides to stay.

Review: The Stones were possibly the biggest band in the world at the time, so by today's standards it seems unbelievable they'd put on a free concert where the venue was changed at the last minute, the set was still being constructed as the 300,000 very fried looking hippies turned up, and there was no security for their satanic majesties except for the San Francisco Hell's Angels who were paid in beer and brought along pool cues with lead weights at the end for added security - as well as the standard knives and baseball bats.
At the time many people really did believe that they could change the world and looked to bands like the Stones as leaders of the counterculture, and you really get the impression things like this mattered a hell of a lot more, but after Altamont, well...
Certainly not a filmed concert, this important documentary describes, in a very sensitive and powerful way, the incredible human bestiary that rushed towards the 1969 free Rolling Stones show located on Altamont speedway, California.
The Rolling Stones were on their US tour when they stopped to play a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in San Francisco.
The film mixes concert footage of the Rolling Stones, footage of the night at Altamont, as well as the band watching and reflecting on that terrible night.
Thus we have a scenario that is nerve racking to witness unfold and we are then filled with immense anxiety and dread as the situation grows into the tragedy it morphed into by the end of the night.Of course, what makes Gimme Shelter more than just a simple reflection on the tragedy at Altamont Speedway is the footage of the Rolling Stones watching the Altamont footage and reflecting on it all.
There's sort of two documentaries here: one shows the actual concert in Altamont, and the other shows the Rolling Stones watching the footage to see where everything went wrong.
The strength is what exactly this one is showing, namely the death of 60's innocence at a sleazy unorganized concert packed with drugged-out hippies watching the world's greatest rock and roll band.
Even with the parking, when they are talking about how they have room for only a (relatively) small number of cars when they need room for many times more, the answer simply is a suggestion to ask the landowner next door to use his land to park cars and hope for the best, and that's that.There probably is no better film where you can get that certain "feel" for the late 60's hippie-rock crowd and scene.
Truth is, Altamont never actually changed anything much; instead, it was a wakeup call for those who still for whatever reason, refused to acknowledge that the times have already been changing indeed.The footage at Madison Square Garden is actually the best concert footage in the film, interesting seeing how the house lights were on all the time and how the band played on stage without any props or effects (KISS was still 5 years away).
A free concert given by rock group The Rolling Stones in 1969 at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco reaches a fever pitch when the rowdy crowd clashes with the Hell's Angels, who were enlisted in place of actual security--ultimately resulting in tragedy.
With the Stones themselves, the Maysles brothers look back over the concert in regards the performances and the wider impact the event had.Although not quite as good as I had hoped it would be, this film was still pretty interesting as it captures "the end of the sixties" in the Altamont concert murder and the performances of the Stones in their prime.
When I saw the new version,with the new footage added,I was hoping for more footage from Altamont.Instead,we get only more footage of the Stones in the studio,and more performance footage of their show at Madison Square Garden.I've always wanted a version ,that was strictly about Altamont,because,ultimately,that's what the main focus of the documentary is,in the first place.Show more footage of the other acts that played(Or,tried to play,only to have their sets interrupted,by Hell's Angels attacking fans,that they thought were out of control).There has to be more footage of the Flying Burritos,Santana,C,S,N,&Y,Jefferson Airplane,etc,and there certainly has to be more footage of Angel assaults on innocent people in the crowd.Make it about 3 hours long,like "Woodstock".It would give us a much better view, of what that ugly,horrible day,was really like..
It wasn't one of the Rolling Stones' smarter ideas to hire the Hells Angels as security for their Woodstock cash-in at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969.
Hmm, let's see - $500 in beer ought to do it.David and Albert Maysles' notorious documentary-cum-snuff movie captures the madness - and murder - that ensued, as a young, black Meredith Hunter is stabbed to death by the Angels live on camera, while the Stones' frontman whimpers from the stage: "Who's fighting and what for?
Altamont was an event that should never have happened, but because of the greed and arrogance of the Rolling Stones it turned out to be one of the darkest chapters in not only rock and roll history, but of society in general.One reason I blame the Stones for what happened is the fact that originally the concert was going to be held in Golden Gate park featuring The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and the Stones were going to show up at the end unannounced.
Most of the rest of the movie is incomprehensible and dull, between trying to decipher the Stones' thick accents and no use to subtitles to indicate what is going on, the whole thing seems rather confusing.As everyone knows, the films chronicled the horribly disfunctional Altamont concert of '69, which was an interesting counterpoint to the peace and love Woodstock.
This was mostly because of some very poor decisions made by the Stones and promoters, for example having a stage little more than a foot off the ground for 300,000 people?Just for the record, apparently the Grateful Dead used the Hells Angels as security all the time for their concerts in the 60's, it was common practice.
This film is about the tragic free Rolling Stones concert in Altamont 1969, where Hell's Angels was in charge of security and there one person was killed.
Great capture of rock's darkest day.A documentary on the Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour and the tragic events that concluded it.
During the Stones' set, Meredith Hunter, high on methamphetamine and armed with a gun, makes a lunge for the stage and is stabbed to death by the Hells Angels.
First of all, it all starts to become more interesting the moment things are starting to come together for the 'Altamont Free Concert', which was supposed to be a sort of response to 'Woodstock' but things are starting to become even more interesting when things are starting to hit the fan, during the concert.I think that everybody is already very familiar with all of the events that went down but this documentary actually shows you how it all happened and things started to go from bad to worse.
It even shows you the fatal stabbing and some of the other brutalities, committed by the Hell Angel's, who were brought in by by the management of The Rolling Stones, as security during the concert.
The film is now infamous for rock fans for it's depiction of the doomed Altamont speedway concert, where amidst a higher-than-usual pitch of angry vibes in the audience a Hell's Angel killed a man after seeing him pull out a gun.
The rest of the film leading up to that is just as watchable (or, I don't know if that moment, free-framed near the end, is what could be called as 'watchable') for fans of the Stones, showcasing some of their best songs live including Jumping Jack Flash, Satisfaction, Love in Lain, and Sympathy for the Devil.
But then, of course, comes the Altamont concert, which gets an appropriate build up as the promoters and lawyers figure out the concert, which was to be the west-coast throwback to the legendary Woodstock concert that occurred earlier that year - in fact, many have called Gimme Shelter the 'anti-Woodstock' for its aspect of rock and roll tragedy, however they each have their own senses of the beauty and disillusionment that went with the era.
Granted,The Woodstock Music & Art Fair had it's share of downers & bummers than the starry-eyed,stoned out audience members would admit to (there were several drug overdoses,a tragic death of a sleeping audience member by being run over by a tractor in a field next door to Max Yasgur's farm,and there was Abbie Hoffman being kicked off the stage by a surly Pete Townsend of The Who,who was in a foul mood that day),but hands down,The Altamont Free Concert holds all of the cards for perhaps what had to be one of the biggest downers of the end of the 1960's,as far as concerts go.
It's a pretty amazing movie.It's interesting, the documentary makes the event seem like the first rock concert ever done.
I've been to a lot of concerts and the whole thing seem unorganized in comparison to present day concerts, but that's the magic of the whole thing, The Rolling Stones were doing something fresh and unique at the time (Or at least somewhat, Just before this, I saw Ron Howard's documentary on the Beatles playing Shea Stadium, which was more organized and predates this event, but once again, that adds to the magic, as The Fab Four are too squeaky clean to have Hell's Angels as body guards).My favorite part was these inter cuts with the Stones watching the documentary being edited, including the infamous scene when the Hell's Angel stabs a man to death, which became one of those moments in Rock and Roll History that became legendary.
Gimme Shelter (1970)**** (out of 4) The Maysles' landmark documentary covering The Rolling Stones 1969 tour of the United States, which was to end with a free concert in San Fransisco at the Altamont Speedway.
While the band and everyone else had great hopes for the free show, it turned into a disaster as concert goers went up against the Hell's Angels who were working as security.A lot of films get the reputation as being the "greatest" of something.
Finally, the film works brilliantly as a thriller.Yes, GIMME SHELTER works perfectly as a thriller because most people are going to come into the movie knowing what happened at that free concert.
A documentary crew tails the Rolling Stones for a leg of their 1969 North American tour and unwittingly captures one of the nastiest, bloodiest all-day concerts in music history - the infamous Altamont Speedway show.
Gimme Shelter is still a compellingly made documentary about a free Rolling Stones concert that ends in tragedy.
This film, Gimme Shelter, is both enjoyable for the performances of The Rolling Stones and others like Ike and Tina Turner, Jefferson Airplane, and The Flying Burrito Brothers, and upsetting for all those scenes of those Hell's Angels constantly beating up on several audience members not to mention some of the musicians like Airplane's Marty Balin.
The great thing about "Gimme Shelter" is the way this documentary works as a dramatical film with acts, thrills, and when you watch how things were at the Altamont Festival you see how difficult things were that it looks like a Hollywood film where everything happens because it was written this way in order to be appealing to audiences.
The now infamous concert seems to fated from the moment where managers wanted a place to do the show until the deaths of four people during the whole thing, being the murder of Meredith Hunter as the worst presented (and the only displayed and mentioned in the film, during the Rolling Stones performance of "Under My Thumb").
Reasons for being a failure are countless: Security issues concerning that the police almost wasn't present and the Hell's Angels were the ones contracted to do the job, pushing people around and hitting Jefferson' Airplane's member Marty Balin on the face (act denounced by the band members while performing which almost caused a big clash between band and the motorcycle members); the place where the concert was made with a enormous number of people (this is the drama I was talking about, since this place was the third selected for such event, sounds like a play with three acts of tension, the third place where everything happened, things like that).
Everything was a mess, but you can see some happiness, some smiles in crowd, it wasn't so bad but it could have been a better event to be remembered as a nice thing.Future viewers pay attention to Rolling Stones performance in the final minutes of the film where the most gripping and shocking part appears.
And despite all the planning we see Mel Belli and managers doing throughout the documentary one must wonder what happened there."Gimme Shelter" captures the 1970's hippie movement, the rock n'roll as a powerful art in that social scenery, and of course the music is great.
You can't keep your eyes off the audience at Altamont; the filmmakers showed some very memorable shots, such as the girl who was enjoying the concert yet at the same time crying, the guy who gave Jagger a pleading look, the Hell's Angel giving Jagger a menacing glare for some reason.
The film showed all the great music and the horror, but I also liked watching band members' reaction to the chaos: Paul Kantner chastising the Angels for knocking out Marty Balin, Grace Slick saying that bodies should not be on top of each other unless love is intended, Keith Richards threatening not to play and Mick Jagger trying in vain to stop the violence.
Instead, as is the basic scenario behind any of the greatest film documentaries, what began as one thing (in this case, a concert film) slowly spun off into a completely unexpected territory (in this case, proof of an era's demise), and the true gift comes from what can be made of it all.In retrospect it seems obvious that using California's Hell's Angels for crowd control would prove to be a bad idea, and likely fatal.
Apart from archiving a musical milestone onto celluloid, the film chronicles with nail-biting tension the progression and difficulties of staging a free concert for an audience of 300,000 and how the end of the flower-power era of love and peace was heralded with the stabbing of an audience member by Hells Angels security guards.
The camera spends almost no time on any of the Stones other than Mick Jagger, and nearly all of the Altamont footage is shot from behind the band to feature the audience, which, as it turns out, is the stroke of genius that makes this movie so special.The audience is the true "star" of the film.
The Altamont concert moved actually at a the last moment from the Golden Gate Park to a smaller location started with ambitions to be a West Coast version of Woodstock but ended in chaos and with the loss of the lives of four people.The documentary catches live some of the events of that night, but it is not extremely revealing or innovative in what it is showing.
The film shows Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the screening room right after the ill-fated concert, watching the footage in shock, and then the documentary flashes back to a slightly happier time (the Madison Square Garden concert, where Ike and Tina Turner opened).
There are images in this film (Tina Turner's clearly troubled performance; a wasted Keith Richard, bopping his boot to Wild Horses; the Hell's Angels member, casting a downright threatening look at Mick; the stabbing) that will stay with viewers for a long time, and will stay with rock and roll fans forever..
masterpiece documentary, "Gimme Shelter."The film deals remarkably with the careless, optimistic attitude of the Rolling Stones towards life that was crushed by a free concert they gave in December of 1969.
The audience is left with moral and ethical questions to ponder, as well as a twisted, and phenomenal new view of the "greatest rock and roll band in history."Dick's Altamont Speedway Rolling Stones Free Concert: The day the 60's died..
As a concert film, the Stones are at their best--the footage is excellent, Mick Jagger is young and vibrant and they perform their best songs.
As originally planned, Gimme Shelter was to be a celebratory document of The Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of the U.S. that began with the Thanksgiving show at Madison Square Garden which opens the film, and ended with the free concert given at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco.
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time: The Rolling Stones decide to hold a free concert at Altamont Speedway in San Francisco, California in which the Hell's Angels were hired as security.
The film does have the footage of a murder by the Stones hired Hells Angels Security, along with some clubbing.
Certainly not a filmed concert, this important documentary describes, in a very sensitive and powerful way, the incredible human bestiary that rushed towards the 1969 free Rolling Stones show located on Altamont speedway, California.Complete disorganization, brutal security staff, drug abuse will turn this rock party to an awful black celebration that will lead to more than a human sacrifice : the destruction of a new kind of innocence.Often shocking and disturbing, sometimes dreadful, "Gimme shelter" brings to us not only the pictures of a riot.
The film is made up of footage from the concert itself, including the violence that ensued and Mick Jagger trying to calm things down on stage, some of the point of view from drugged up and dancing spectators, and The Rolling Stones watching it all back and reflecting.