Ray Pride

Documenting the year in the birth and life of a Steinway concert grand piano, Ben Niles' "Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037" is a beauty. Tracking the process of crafting a single piano, from its origins as Alaskan lumber to finished $100,000 artifact, Niles' film never grows mundane, and the appreciations by noted pianists in the Steinway showroom in Queens add to the genial luster. Many of the more compelling documentaries of recent years that depict men at work or the stages of process have been about frightening or deleterious things, such as Nikolaus Weyerhauser's "Our Daily Bread." Even for those not predisposed to appreciations of classical music, this is a lovely adventure. The New Republic's 91-year-old film critic Stanely Kauffmann averred that "Beethoven would have been pleased." Me, too. With Harry Connick, Jr., Helene Grimaud, Hank Jones, Marcus Roberts and Lang Lang. 85m.

"Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037" opens Friday at Siskel. (2008-01-15)

Also by Ray Pride

The Chemo Brothers
With "The Bucket List," Rob Reiner does something almost unthinkable: he makes Jack Nicholson painful to watch
(2008-01-08)

Tip of the Week
He's all there. In "The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-65," filmmaker Murray Lerner compiles footage both familiar (from his own little-seen "Festival") and unfamiliar (about seventy percent of the doc) of Dylan in his appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, capturing a man and a myth in the making in a deeply thrilling fashion
(2008-01-08)

Butts Out
A lifetime second-hand smoker bellies up to the bar of Rainbo Club. You're a smoker, the woman beside him reassures him, "You smoke as much as anyone in here including that beat-up leather jacket. The buzz won't be the same, I guarantee you"
(2008-01-08)

The Fugitive Kin
While film festivals make their own brave attempts at categorizing the dozens of hundreds of documentaries being made, each in its own fashion, the Siskel Film Center's annual January survey, "Stranger than Fiction," is a valuable taster, with ten titles, several with Chicago connections
(2007-12-31)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-31)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-31)

Eagle-Eyed
(2007-12-26)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-26)

Holiday Movie Preview
(2007-12-18)

Savage Grace
(2007-12-18)

Tip of the Week
(2007-12-18)

$128 Million Later
(2007-12-11)

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