{"id":5050,"date":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/elvis-presley-documentary-review\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:00:00","slug":"elvis-presley-documentary-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/elvis-presley-documentary-review\/","title":{"rendered":"New Elvis Doc Showcases the Musicianship Behind the King"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/EPiC-Elvis-Presley-in-Concert_Still_01.jpeg\" width=\"1290\" height=\"680\" alt=\"From 'EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert' courtesy of TIFF.\"><\/figure>\n<p>Baz Luhrmann\u2019s <em>EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert<\/em>, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and has a handful of public screenings through Sept. 14, needs a subtitle, like \u201cWhy Elvis Was The King.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Elvis busts, Elvis impersonators, velvet Elvis, Elvis weddings, gaudy Graceland interior d\u00e9cor, later-life health struggles, pill dependency, and how he died, found in his bathroom at age 42, has overshadowed a simple indisputable fact: Elvis was one-of-a-kind, extraordinarily handsome, cool, charismatic, funny, and an amazing singer, arranger and song interpreter from gospels to the Beatles and Simon &amp; Garfunkel.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/babymetal-is-bringing-kawaii-metal-to-the-masses\/\">BABYMETAL Is Bringing Kawaii Metal to the Masses<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/at-home-with-sebastian-bach\/\">AT HOME WITH SEBASTIAN BACH<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/09\/serj-tankian-chris-deburgh\/\">Serj Tankian Turns Balladeer On Chris de Burgh Cover<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No Elvis impersonator, not even Austin Butler, who was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his immersive performance in Luhrmann\u2019s 2022 biopic, <em>Elvis<\/em>, comes close. Sorry.\u00a0 <em>EPiC<\/em> is that reminder.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 96-minute film, which does not yet have distribution, is culled from 59 hours of never-before-seen footage found in the vaults of the Strataca salt mines, including band rehearsals and onstage performances for his wildly successful Las Vegas residency at the International Hotel, where he played seven days a week, two shows a day, for seven and a half years (1969-1976) \u2014 it was supposed to be only a three week stint.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To provide context, there are cuts of enamoured girls to accusations his swoon-inducing hip-swivelling and electrifying rock \u2018n roll was contributing to juvenile delinquency to his two-year stint in the army and starring movie roles in mostly music-based romances. But, in his own words, he wanted to return to the stage. Hence the Vegas residency.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1290\" height=\"861\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-1290x861.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-472109\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-1290x861.jpg 1290w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-340x227.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-498x332.jpg 498w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452-1668x1113.jpg 1668w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233417452.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1290px) 100vw, 1290px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Director Baz Luhrmann shows off his belt as he attends the premiere for his film <em>EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert<\/em> during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 6, 2025. (Credit: Cole BURSTON \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On hand to introduce the film, the Australian director, who first came to TIFF over 30 years ago with <em>Strictly Ballroom<\/em> and went on to make other grand productions, such as <em>Romeo + Juliet,<\/em> <em>Moulin Rouge<\/em>, and <em>The Great Gatsby<\/em>, told the sold-out room that he does not view <em>EPiC<\/em> as a concert film or a documentary, rather \u201ckind of a tone poem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Elvis, the person, telling you about his life through song and through words,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The film proved so electrifying in places, the audience erupted into applause and some even stood up and danced.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After the screening, Luhrmann returned to the stage with co-creator Jonathan Redmond and talked for about 15 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was 59 hours\u2019 worth of film that we had scanned back in 2018, 2019 for research purposes on the movie [<em>Elvis<\/em>], but it\u2019s 59 hours of film, which had no sound at all,\u201d said Redmond. \u201cNow, we have the music performances. So, we knew we were going to be okay there, but it was not synced up at all. So it took two years at Warner Brothers to sync up the picture to the music performances.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Added Luhrmann, \u201cOne thing I will tell you in a world of AI and Auto-Tune, that man sings like that. We heard that voice with nothing around it. It doesn\u2019t matter what\u2019s going on out there. It doesn\u2019t matter what condition he\u2019s in. He is <em>never<\/em> out of tune and he is always spiritual when he sings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The director also revealed that there is a possibility of \u201ca sequel,\u201d based on the sheer volume of footage they uncovered, including the whole 1972 Hampton Roads Coliseum concert in Virginia and 45 minutes \u201cunbroken on tape,\u201d in which, \u201che just talked about his life [to his bandmates] and he was so unguarded.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luhrmann is clearly on a mission to replace our image of the hokey Elvis with the reason he became such an icon: magnetism and musicianship.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baz Luhrmann\u2019s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and has a handful of public screenings through Sept. 14, needs a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3661,906,24,88,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baz-luhrman","category-elvis-presley","category-pushly","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}