Writer: Martin Daniel
In Theaters
Ours is a strange culture that has the uncanny ability to lionize individuals for a moment or two, then dispose of them with such sudden effectiveness they all but disappear from the national memory.
That certainly seems to have been the case with Tiny Tim, the stringy-haired, fluttery-voiced, ukulele-playing singer who was arguably the biggest name in show business for a solid year or so beginning in 1968.
Documentarian Johan von Sydow’s nostalgic, funny, tuneful, and ultimately tragic biography of Tim real name Herbert Khaury is as much a portrait of Americans’ fickle fancies as it is an account of the performer’s lifetime of undulating fortunes. Certainly, the naive, waif-like singer who stubbornly resisted hewing to musical norms of the time comes off a lot better here than the rest of us do.
Rolling Stone ‘Tiny Tim: King for a Day’ Gives the 1960s Musical Eccentric the Royal Treatment
A look back at the falsetto-voiced singer who turned ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ into an Age of Aquarius hit
By NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
No matter the topic, the finest docs make you realize how much we needed a film on a particular subject. And that rule couldn’t apply more to
Tiny Tim: King for a Day, director Johan von Sydow’s overview of the otherworldly life and times of one of the most WTF pop celebrities of the last century. (It hits theaters on April 30th.)
CHAOS WALKING: 2 STARS On paper “Chaos Walking,” a new dystopian movie starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland and now on PVOD, seems like a can’t fail for sci-fi fans. In execution, however, the story of a world where men’s thoughts are manifested for all to see, is a letdown. Based on “The Knife of Never Letting Go,” the first book of the Patrick Ness “Chaos Walking” trilogy, the story takes place in the year 2557 in a place called Prentisstown on the planet New World. Colonized by refugees from Earth, New World’s original inhabitants, the Spackle, fought back, slaughtering many of the male settlers and all the women. The surviving men contracted something called “The Noise.”
Plus a varied collection of others, all on this list.
Secrets of the Whales: 4½ stars
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The United States vs. Billie Holiday: 3½
Tiny Tim: King For a Day: 3
The Marijuana Conspiracy: 2
Bloodthirsty: 3
SECRETS OF THE WHALES: Disney’s annual Earth Day contribution is again special. Anybody out here on the West Coast will enjoy this and maybe be moved by it. Whales are part of the sea world out here, often sighted off ferries or even in protected harbours. Much of the anti-pipeline protest has been about whales; how all that increased tanker traffic will affect these vulnerable animals. Maybe you saw them at the aquarium and this will help you understand why they’re no longer allowed to be in captivity there. This four-part series states several times that they are immensely intelligent and illustrates intimately what
Joel Selvin April 21, 2021Updated: April 21, 2021, 7:46 pm
American singer and musical archivist Tiny Tim in Los Angeles, 1968. The late American singer is the subject of Johan von Sydow’s documentary “Tiny Tim: King for a Day.” Photo: Baron Wolman / Iconic Images
For anyone who has never heard him before, nothing can prepare you for the opening scene of “Tiny Tim: King for a Day,” where the long-haired, hook-nosed singer applies his freaky falsetto to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”
No more unlikely entertainer has ever captured the pop zeitgeist than the one-of-a-kind Tiny Tim born Herbert Khaury in New York City in 1932 who managed to squeeze his 1968 debut album in the top 10 charts between Cream and Jimi Hendrix, and whose marriage to his first wife, Miss Vicki, on “The Tonight Show” was the highest-rated episode in Johnny Carson’s history.