Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood: Live From Madison Square Garden
Benefit for Mike Montoya, with no-host bar. Admission by donation to help Mike Montoya with treatment for ALS.

Long-time friends and former band mates Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood team up for a once-in-a-lifetime reunion concert in Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood: Live From Madison Square Garden. The special telecast captures Clapton and Winwood at New York's Madison Square Garden performing songs from their short-lived Blind Faith collaboration, including "Presence of the Lord," "Can't Find My Way Home," "Well All Right," along with hits from their respective solo careers. "I was 15 or 16 and he was 18 or 19, and he definitely looked after me," Winwood recounts of his blossoming friendship with Clapton, at the top of the telecast. "[We] played records and talked about music. From very early on, he took on a brotherly [role]." As their friendship solidified, Clapton and Winwood — with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Ric Grech — formed Blind Faith. They disbanded in 1969 after releasing only one chart-topping, self-titled album. The spotlight, however, hasn't dimmed on either Clapton or Winwood's careers — Clapton has won 18 Grammy Awards and honored with 3 different inductions into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame; Winwood has won Grammy Awards for record of the year and best male vocal performance for his work on "Higher Love." As for the decision to play a reunion concert, Clapton wanted to recreate "the romance and beauty of [the music] played in the past."

The pair take viewers back to rock's glory days as they perform songs by Jimi Hendrix (Little Wing), Clapton's catalogue (Forever Man), and tracks from Winwood's band Traffic (Pearly Queen) — rounding off the performance with hits from their Blind Faith album — which, for fans old and new, is an evening not to be forgotten. Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood: Live From Madison Square Garden also features Willie Weeks on bass, Chris Stainton on keyboard, and Ian Thomas on drums.

Review by By Kevin Thomas of the LA Times: With the quiet, understated A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Wayne Wang has come full circle, returning to the small, intimate films like Chan Is Missing, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart and Eat a Bowl of Tea that established the Hong Kong-born Chinese American writer-director, best known for his deft screen adaptation of The Joy Luck Club. When recently widowed Mr. Shi (Henry O), a dignified, slightly stooped older man from Beijing, arrives in Spokane he tells his attractive daughter Yilan (Faye Yu), whom he has not seen in 12 years, that she looks exactly the same. That she is brusquely dismissive of her father's remark proves revealing: She is not really glad to see him and it does not occur to him that she has been changed by life in the U.S. Mr. Shi immediately starts behaving like a traditional Chinese father, wanting to know everything Yilan does and where she goes, imposing upon her his conservative views of women that clash with the liberated, independent, self-reliant woman she has become. Yilan's resentment, however, bespeaks of older grievances and Wang's staging of the inevitable climactic scene is inspired. As Mr. Shi, who could not be more well meaning, pours out his heart to Yilan, sitting in his bedroom, Yilan is in her living room. We hope that she is hearing him through an open door, but we cannot be certain.

In adapting A Thousand Years of Good Prayers from a Yiyun Li short story, Wang shows us America through the experiences of Mr. Li and Yilan — and also the enduring effects upon the individual life in China under six decades of communist rule. For Mr. Shi, the U.S. piques his boundless curiosity but alarms him with its dismissive attitudes toward the elderly. For Yilan, it is the land of freedom and opportunity; she feels more comfortable expressing herself in English, saying, "If you grew up in a language in which you never learned how to express your feelings it would be easier to talk in a new language. It makes you a new person."

• Official website     • Trailer     • Wikipedia