It's January 1972, Aretha Franklin is already a number one selling artist and she decides to record her next album live at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles over two days with the Southern California Community Choir.
It will be called 'Amazing Grace' and would become her biggest selling album and the greatest gospel record of all time, winning a Grammy.
- Blinded By The Light is all rock'n'roll and all Bruce Springsteen
- Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood pure unbridled joy
Warner Bros. at the time thought to themselves, this would make a wonderful film, let's get our cameras into that church.
Forty-seven years later, Amazing Grace the film is finally released, and what a journey.
Shot by Oscar-winner Sydney Pollack, he would never release it.
Major sound issues created an unsolvable audio-synching nightmare of such great magnitude that the entire project was shelved, the footage sent to gather dust for close to 40 years in the Warner Bros. vaults.
With the current technology now at our disposal and two years in the editing booth, the result is an electrifying, remarkable, glorious, life-affirming musical time capsule which must be experienced in a cinema with the best sound you can find.
This is Aretha in all her gifted magnificence and how special this feels to sit back and watch her and listen to her, transported back in time as if by the magic of her voice alone.
Please don't miss this.
Five stars.
Newshub.
