Martin Scorsese's movie about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light, has opened the Berlin Film Festival, marking "the first time a major film festival has dared to open with a non-fiction movie." Scorsese has been auditioning for this job for a long time. He worked on as an editor on such earlier rock docs as Woodstock, The Medicine Ball Caravan, and Elvis on Tour long before redefining the use of rock music in narrative movies in Mean Streets (where Robert De Niro's crazy badass Johnny Boy makes a show-boating entrance gliding into a bar to the tune of "Jumpin' Jack Flash") and perfecting the concert-documentary form with the 1978 The Last Waltz. As for the Stones, this project represents something of a return to one of their old habits — linking up with a name filmmaker to perhaps capture the "definitive" Rolling Stones experience on film — that for most of the past several years has been sublimated by Pay-Per-View TV gigs.
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