Summary:

In his film "Lightning in a Bottle," director Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") miraculously pulls it off, making the blues seem right at home in Radio City.

The All-Star Salute to the Blues concert, a fund-raiser to kick off the nationwide Year of the Blues celebration in February 2003, featured a dream lineup of blues-related musicians. But what made the event work as a cinematic experience was the behind-the-scenes talent. In addition to Antoine Fuqua, who cut his teeth making hip-hop and soul music videos, the team included executive director Martin Scorsese, who served in the same capacity for "The Blues" documentary series on PBS last fall, as well as several members of Scorsese's technical crew.

The house band, under the direction of Steve Jordan of "Saturday Night Live" and World's Most Dangerous Band fame, was a dream team in itself. Guests such as pianist Dr. John, guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Keb Mo', harpist Kim Wilson and drummer Levon Helm move effortlessly from acoustic to jazz to soul to electric blues-rock as the music follows the chronological Africa to rural South to northern industrial migration.

Antoine Fuqua seamlessly integrates classic documentary footage of blues greats such as Son House, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters with concert segments as well as backstage and rehearsal snippets. There's an effective educational component to "Lightning in a Bottle," but the historical element never detracts from the entertainment value of the film.

The talent lineup is a bit heavy on female singers and folk-blues veterans, but it's hard to imagine fans of any blues subgenre coming away feeling shortchanged. And there are some truly effective pairings: James "Blood" Ulmer and Alison Krauss doing "Sittin' on Top of the World," Shemekia Copeland and Robert Cray ("I Pity the Fool"), Buddy Guy and Vernon Reid ("Red House"), David Johansen and Hubert Sumlin ("Killin' Floor") and Ruth Brown, Mavis Staples and Natalie Cole (singing "Men Are Like Streetcars" to an amused Bill Cosby).

There are also plenty of memorable solo performances, notably by B.B. King, Solomon Burke, John Fogerty, Gatemouth Brown and Macy Gray. Long-in-the-tooth rockers Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and rapper Chuck D. add little more than name recognition, but fortunately their ham-fisted segments are in the minority.

Antoine Fuqua avoided lighting the stage too brightly in an attempt to re-create the dark atmosphere of the juke. This gave the performers a warm and appealingly natural appearance, rather than the garish, cartoonlike look of most other concert films.

You can count the great concert movies on one hand, beginning with "Stop Making Sense," the Jonathan Demme movie about Talking Heads, and Scorsese's "The Last Waltz," the Band's farewell concert film. Antoine Fuqua's blues movie could earn a spot on this short list if it finds its audience despite its limited theatrical release. In any case, it brings many deserving artists who've labored in the shadows their entire careers out into the spotlight.