Janis

I will say up front that I am a fan of Janis Joplin and looked forward to seeing this (on the BBC) it details her life in chronological order from her days growing up in Port Arthur, Texas to her many incarnations with all of her bands including 'Big Brother and the Holding Company'.

There are interviews with friends, lovers and family. There is plenty of archive footage but only snippets of songs which includes the Monterey Pop appearance. Many songs are featured but the real reason here is to tell her story and her battles with drugs and alcohol and her of love of the blues, which she could sing so beautifully that even watching this I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

It is amazing how she managed to put so much emotion and passion into her music and it seems the people around it saw that in her too. Her firmament burnt for too short a time but while it did so it was also one of the brightest and most loved. I truly think this is a great tribute to Janis Joplin – not just the star but the person – highly recommended.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to get enough Janis. I have read a biography on her and watched other films, as well as attended the stage play "Love, Janis" and I'm always wanting for more.

I rated this a nine because a near perfect documentary about Janis would be at least four hours, imho. There could have been more interviews with her sister and brother and others who knew her intimately. It focused on her person and her heart more than other things I've seen. I was only ten years old when she died and my family was as straight laced as Janis' and Port Arthur, so I don't remember any fan fare regarding her. I didn't fully experience her music until I was eighteen and I fell hard as a Janis fan.

Interesting point to younger generations is that the media always focuses on the San Francisco scene when it talks about the 60's and the hippy era, when most of the rest of the world at the time was really closer to Port Arthur.

Strongly recommend this gem for any Janis fan. You won't be bored and you will find another little piece of her heart you may not have known about before. I imagined that she had a big heart for people in general, and this documentary solidified that belief.

A comment in the film about the level of emotion she reached in her singing was at a high price and that was a prefect summation of the art that was Janis Joplin.

Of course I know who Janis Joplin was, who doesn't, but I was never a huge fan of her work, so I did not know anything about her life story.

And what a great story it was, told by those who knew Janis the most, the Documentary was loaded with interviews from the people closet to her who were there for the ride that was her life. Mixed in with a lot of archive footage of Joplin as well as a touching voice over of letters Joplin wrote to her family back home being read during the film.

But most importantly, lots of music was played. I've seen docs and other movies about major rock icons where the music was not center stage simple because of legal rights. Does not feel like Little Girl Blue had that problem, and I'm thankful, cause as much as her life was interesting, it's all about the music.

It was funny, entertaining, and centered on the rock and roll as they told the story of one of the greatest icons in music history.

Amy Berg's documentary charting the course that blues and rock singer Janis Joplin took from her childhood hometown of Port Arthur, Texas to San Francisco and then Los Angeles in the 1960s is filled with great clips and fantastic music (particularly the performance of the lesser-known "Little Girl Blue" shown at the conclusion). However, there's nothing here--not even the reading of letters Janis wrote home to her family--that will surprise anyone who has followed Joplin's career since her untimely demise in October 1970. Although she lived a wild, scattered but full-blooded life in her 27 years, Joplin's recording career was extremely brief (two albums, one with her first band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by a solo album, released posthumously). Janis as a human being was anything but predictable, and yet the myriad of documentaries chronicling her life and stardom all seem to cover the same territory, the sex-drugs-and-rock and roll high-life. Berg insulates Joplin here, as Joplin was insulated by the yes-men in her life who were trying to steer her career. We do not hear about the books Janis read (she was a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan), the movies she saw, how she felt about the war in Vietnam or the hippie movement or her second-rate (for her) performance at Woodstock. She is, of course, a tragic figure in popular music, but fleshing out that figure--giving us some surprising, intimate insights into her quirky personality--has yet to be achieved. **1/2 from ****

It has not been a different life than the other 27's. It has not been a different life than other real stars. Filmin structure was not good. I guess they did it without much effort. He did not elaborate after Janis's death. No special music was made for the film. I did not like your director very much. The film has not succeeded in dramatic places as well. It was not nice without Janis. There was an air of sadness. Although a girl who was excluded in her childhood and adolescence was given a nice star, she had not been given any details when necessary.