Recent Movies

A few weeks ago I actually saw two movies in one weekend, and I thought about whether I could blog about movies here. Then I saw another movie last night, and I decided that I would blog about movies here. I could go all meta and talk about the nature of reading, or of culture, or of criticism, but instead we'll just go with the fallback rationale: It's my blog and I can do what I want.

Festival Express - Being an old Deadhead from way back, I wanted to see this one as soon as I heard about it, and a few weeks ago I finally remembered that I wanted to see it when I was at the video store and could actually do something about it (video store? do we still call them video stores? movie stores? certainly not DVD stores!).

In the summer of 1970, the Grateful Dead, Janis, Buddy Guy, The Band, Ian and Sylvia and a bunch of other musicians took a train across Canada to play at a bunch of music festivals. A bunch of film was shot, but nobody did anything with it till recently when they cut it into a documentary. It's about four months before Janis died, and she is totally intense. Ian and Sylvia, whom I used to pretend were my parents when I was a kid, and I know you haven't heard of them, but you can google them yourself, were quite hip and Canadian, which was interesting because I always thought they were such folksingers, but here they were doing the rock and roll thing. Someday I'm going to write something about how incredibly unsexy the Grateful Dead are, and this footage confirmed that insight once again. The Band, though? Now THAT was a sexy band. The really interesting thing, musically, was that seeing all those musicians together, jamming on the train, in the summer of 1970, you realized (again) (I mean, duh) how profoundly traditional rock and roll, of that iteration, in fact was. Blues, bluegrass, folk: that's where it all came from, and then of course we can just say alt-country. Or not.

The OH in Ohio - I knew this one would come to the second-run movie theater around the corner, and sure enough it did, and one night when S was miraculously home, I just walked myself out and saw the 9:30 show. Nothing great, just silly entertainment with lots of laughs. Parker Posey is pretty brilliant as a successful businesswoman who is dysfunctional in, shall we say, the intimate realm. So she tries to do something about it. And succeeds, somewhat predictably, but still entertainingly. The scene at the big client presentation with the cellphone? Well, you just have to go see the movie.

Fever Pitch - This is another one which I kept seeing on the shelf at that place where we rent the DVDs which these days enable us to view movies in the privacy of our own homes. Suddenly yesterday I got the urge to watch it, so I did. I think perhaps the urge had to do with catching a glimpse of the San Diego-St. Louis game at a restaurant and remembering how different things were two years ago this month.

The movie was fine, but I think particularly enjoyable for a target audience of which I am certainly a member. Being a hardcore Drew fan from way back (can you say Poison Ivy? I can), plus, you know, there's that team for which I reserve my affections: how could I not like it? Basically it's kind of a lame romantic comedy, not nearly as good as 50 First Dates (Jimmy Fallon is no Adam Sandler), but thoroughly redeemed by the Red Sox. Drew running across the field at Fenway? Priceless. And the soundtrack has the Dropkick Murphys and Jonathan? Come on, aren't you melting already? And the closing montage with the victory parade down the Charles in the duck boats?! It was, indeed, the best of times.

Oh, and E and I watched about a half hour of Annie last night. Kind of scary in that there orphanage! E huddled behind my back and peeped over my shoulder (she really did), but she insisted that we keep watching (M, I'm sure, would have fled at the first appearance of the brilliant Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, but she was away at 5th grade camp, and E is made of sterner stuff). We might watch some more tonight, or I might persuade M to watch Fever Pitch, as part of my continued campaign to expand her filmic horizons.