{"id":8895,"date":"2026-02-18T11:24:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T11:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/epic-elvis-presley-in-concert-a-purely-heroic-presentation-153264\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T11:24:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T11:24:40","slug":"epic-elvis-presley-in-concert-a-purely-heroic-presentation-153264","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/epic-elvis-presley-in-concert-a-purely-heroic-presentation-153264\/","title":{"rendered":"EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert \u2013 a purely heroic presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Baz Luhrmann\u2019s 2022 biopic of Elvis played fast and loose with facts, but nevertheless understood the convulsive excitement of its hero\u2019s explosive arrival in the 1950s. The film culminated with Presley\u2019s final performance, in 1977, during which its star Austin Butler morphed into real archive footage of Presley. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Baz Luhrmann\u2019s 2022 biopic of Elvis played fast and loose with facts, but nevertheless understood the convulsive excitement of its hero\u2019s explosive arrival in the 1950s. The film culminated with Presley\u2019s final performance, in 1977, during which its star Austin Butler morphed into real archive footage of Presley. <\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert<\/em> continues where those final minutes left off, using 59 hours of unseen footage from the live films Elvis: That\u2019s The Way It Is<\/em> (1970) and Elvis On Tour<\/em> (1972) unearthed during the filmmaker\u2019s research for the biopic, and combining it with radically reimagined audio to produce an IMAX-ready, contemporary Elvis show. Elvis\u2019s life and music is meanwhile explained in his own words, drawn from press conferences and onstage chat. <\/p>\n

Peter Jackson\u2019s technical team applied the restorative miracles pioneered on Get Back<\/em>, to which Luhrmann\u2019s crew add their own intensive work. Like Giles Martin\u2019s Beatles remasters, the sound is boosted for 21st-century ears, while footage now resembles the sensory overload of Brett Morgen\u2019s immersive Bowie doc Moonage Daydream<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s intent to remake and remodel goes still further. \u201cWhat if in a world where AI can make all sorts of illusions,\u201d he\u2019s explained, \u201cthe illusions were made from authentic and original material and restored with meticulous human craft?\u201d <\/p>\n

Little is truly revelatory. The performance-heavy 2000 re-edit of Elvis: That\u2019s The Way It Is<\/em> revealed the singer\u2019s majesty and musical command during the early Vegas shows, while Presley\u2019s thoughts are equally familiar from countless concert boxsets. The thunderous, bass-heavy mix meanwhile leaves some tracks with little light and shade. This does, though, suit the maximalist nature of Elvis\u2019s \u201870s show, from his \u201cAlso Sprach Zarathustra\u201d intro music to the panoramic \u201cAn American Trilogy\u201d, which Luhrmann splices into a single grand prelude here. <\/p>\n

This is billed as \u2018Baz Luhrmann\u2019s EPiC\u2019, and as Elvis\u2019s \u201950s flit by in five minutes, with his infamously jiggling hips sped up and slowed, the director\u2019s own jittery tics seems set to overwhelm his subject. Still, precious glimpses of pre-Army Elvis\u2019s snake-hipped looseness and grease-stiff quiff convey his outrageous arrival. \u201cWhat about the rumour that you shot your mother?\u201d an interviewer asks. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve done anything wrong,\u201d young Elvis smoulders. <\/p>\n

This is followed by a bravura, Pop Art mash-up of 20 Elvis movies which is worth the price of admission on its own. Blazing Technicolor, interchangeable Elvises spiral around an acid trip reimagining of the forgotten 1968 track \u201cEdge Of Reality\u201d as he talks to a dog, in a cheeky psychedelic version of his blandest decade. <\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s hyperactivity pauses with Elvis behind the curtain at the Las Vegas International Hotel. In the dark backstage, he glides forward, his quiff preceding him like a ship\u2019s prow. There is light, screams and the concert begins. \u201cI just do whatever I feel on stage,\u201d he says, and whether singing with a fan-tossed black bra on his head or lying on the floor with legs casually crossed (\u201cI\u2019ll get up in a minute. Just hang loose\u2026\u201d), he operates by his own improvised rules. <\/p>\n

Key songs are presented as AI-smoothed composites, resulting in an especially filthy \u201cPolk Salad Annie\u201d (\u201cI wanna eat your fanny,\u201d the supposedly wholesome singer mutters), and you can feel the stage\u2019s red heat as outtake footage gets us close to the star. <\/p>\n

Scorsese helped edit Elvis On Tour<\/em> and it shows. EPiC<\/em>\u2019s closing section drawn from its footage of the singer\u2019s 1972 journey into America is thrilling. Now dressed as a bat-caped superhero, he confronts vast arenas of fans and moves between phalanxes of motorcycle cops. \u201cELVIS OUR KING\u201d a placard says, and he looks energised among his people. The grubbier reality and decline glimpsed in the original film is excised. This is a purely heroic presentation of Elvis, sonically and visually blown up to monumental size, commensurate with the performer Luhrmann looks at with love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert \u2013 a purely heroic presentation<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Baz Luhrmann\u2019s 2022 biopic of Elvis played fast and loose with facts, but nevertheless understood the convulsive excitement of its hero\u2019s explosive arrival in the 1950s. The film culminated with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5441,906,87,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baz-luhrmann","category-elvis-presley","category-film","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895","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=8895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}