Merry Elvismas!

I realize that this post is a day late, and that Elvis Presley's birthday is actually January 8th, but I trust that the King will accept my apologies. Turner Classic Movies, one of my favorite channels, has many things to recommend it. But one of my favorite things about it is their tendency to pay cinematic tribute when tribute is due. Their theme programming is excellent anyway, but you can always count on TCM to fill the void with choice titles when a Hollywood great passes on, or to help you celebrate a favorite star or director's birthday. To call Elvis movies "classic" is more than a bit of a stretch most of the time, but Elvis was a true movie star, no matter what kind of ridiculous crap he was in. So to help us all celebrate Elvismas, TCM regularly programs a block of crappy Elvis movies during the day every January 8th. Yesterday's buffet featured seven Elvis movie musicals back to back: King Creole, G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii, Girls!Girls!Girls!,Fun in Acapulco, and Roustabout. But in classic form, TCM saved the best for last. If you could sit through all of those contrived musicals, you were rewarded with the underrated Elvis On Tour, a split screen concert film shot during Elvis' 1972 US tour. This film (Not currently available on DVD) is worth checking out for a number of reasons. First of all, the filmmaking on display here is really extraordinary. The directors, Robert Abel and Pierre Adidge, film everything in a very fluid, cinema verite style, which appears effortless but had to have been anything but. They also use the split screen to great effect throughout the movie, giving us a full rendering of what it was like to be a part of that tour. None other than Martin Scorsese (fresh off of editing "Woodstock") is credited as montage supervisor. Elvis on Tour also captures Presley at the height of his powers as an entertainer, jumpsuits and all, before he began his sad descent into drugs and self-parody. Five years after this movie was released, Elvis was dead. Catch a glimpse of him rehearsing with his band in the outtake below: