SVS: “20 Feet from Stardom”

This year’s Oscar-winning documentary, Citizenfour, is not currently available for streaming. At least not legally. Yet. Unless you’ve got HBOGo.

A couple of the others — Last Days in Vietnam and Finding Vivian Maier — can be rented from Amazon Instant. And Virunga belongs to Netflix, so it’s available. But the winner? Nope. No can do.

So if you (like me) enjoy hunting down the various winners as they become available, you’ll have to put that on hold for a bit. But as an Oscar-winner-check-box-ticking alternative, I offer you last year’s winner — 20 Feet from Stardom — on NETFLIX INSTANT. And AMAZON INSTANT($), YOUTUBE($), and VUDU($).

And it’s pretty fantastic.

Backup singers live in a world that lies just beyond the spotlight. Their voices bring harmony to the biggest bands in popular music, but we’ve had no idea who these singers are or what lives they lead, until now.

Heck, this one might be worth recommending based on the soundtrack alone. But I’m not doing that. Even if I could. Because there’s lots (and lots) more here to love.

Like all the little recording details (and larger-than-life divas). And the impact these women have had on a vast swath of massively popular, incredibly influential music. Just astonishing. The latter  stuff (including some stunning revelations on the anonymity of that impact) is why I found the elder stateswomen in the film so much more interesting than the youngster(s). They’d influenced so much that I’ve heard and loved for years, but that I realize I’ve never really heard ’til now.

At times, I struggled to escape the feeling that the film isn’t quite sure if it it’s decrying the failures, the discrimination, and the impossible obstacles or praising the perseverance and the successes. No, those two categories aren’t opposed to one another, but it’s easier to combine those things when you’re focusing on a person (or two) rather than a fairly large group. Still, that’s not something to worry about too much, really. I’m not even entirely sure it’s a criticism. Just something that made it feel like it was “moving around a bit” on me as I was watching it.

Besides, I’d forgive it that and more (and easily) for Lisa Fischer alone.

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