Ballad of the Skeletons
Ballad of the Skeletons
| 20 June 1997 (USA)
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Ballad of the Skeletons Trailers

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg performs his Ballad of the Skeletons accompanied by music written by Paul McCartney and Philip Glass.

Reviews
Orla Zuniga

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

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Clarissa Mora

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

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Tayyab Torres

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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Philippa

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)

This roughly four-minute long short-film was shot by Academy-Award nominated director Gus van Sant shortly before famous poet Allen Ginsberg died. It's Ginsberg reciting a poem which included all kinds of American demographics summarized in one sentence for each group. It's more funny than meaningful obviously, but still there's a certain truth behind it most of the time. Also it looked like Ginsberg was having a great time. At the same time, we see images of people (Clinton, Gingrich etc.) and events with certain historic significance, mostly from American history, but also from abroad.It's an entertaining little piece and I think it's worth the watch. It may have started to drag if it had been 2-3 minutes longer, but this way it was just perfectly fine.

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nealvelgos

Having just seen this approximately four minute film on the big screen, I am awash in admiration. A close-up of Allen Ginsberg reciting his "skeletons" poem is bluescreened and dissolved against archival film and video clips, and backed by musicians to create a sort of song that becomes an American anthem. These clips predominantly feature images of the Dole/Clinton presidential campaign, but also include familiar and disturbing 1960s civil rights conflicts. The immediacy of Ginsberg looking and speaking full-on into the camera, to us, is striking and impossible to forget.What does it mean? I wish I could watch it again and decide. Surely Ginsberg and Van Sant have produced more meaningful work separately, but the combination with the music makes a brilliant whole. This is an extension of Van Sant's 1991 filmic version of William S. Burroughs' Thanksgiving poem, and the two short films are weird and poignant tributes to these great writers.

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