movies
- Back before we had Laura we’d go watch movies in the theater.
- Once Laura was born, we’d wait until they came out on DVD.
- Now that we got our Tivo, we’ll end up waiting until the movie gets shown on TV. :-)
In belated praise of Once
It took me a while to get around to it, but last night Becky and I finally sat down to watch Once. I had a hard time finding it at the video store - I think they only stock maybe two copies on DVD. But it was worth the search.
Never heard of Once? It’s a rather obscure Irish film made back in 2006 for something less than $10,000. It’s a story about a guy who writes songs, who meets a girl on the street one day. She, too, is a musician, and over the course of a week they write and record several songs and along the way wrestle with ideas of love, commitment, family, and responsibility. It’s a musical of a sort; you get to hear seven or eight full-length songs sung during the movie, but they’re not in The Sound of Music-style musical narration - rather, they’re acoustic folk/rock songs (think Damien Rice for a comparison) that the pair is writing. And while the film started off obscure, don’t expect it to stay that way. It’s garnered quite an obsessive following due not in the least to the fantastic soundtrack. Oh, and that award from the Sundance film festival and that Oscar nomination won’t hurt it, either.
So why does this film work so well?
First, the actors aren’t experienced actors - the male lead (Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames) has only been in one picture before this, and this is the female lead (Marketa Irglova)’s first film. But they are musicians, and in my experience films about musicians that actually star musicians seem to do better. The fact that Hansard and Irglova teamed up to write all the original music for the movie amazes me even more.
Second, the story is real. We can all repeat the cliched chick-flick plot basically in our sleep, right? There’s the guy, and the girl, and her friend, and his friend. There’s the initial meeting, the I-think-I-love-you scene, the crisis where everything looks lost, and then the glowing finale. When you watch Once, forget the cliches. The guy writes songs which he sings on the streetcorner. He moved back in with his dad after his mom died and works at the family business fixing vacuum cleaners. She’s a Czech immigrant who cleans houses, and, without revealing too much, has family entanglements as well. They meet. They interact. They wrestle with their feelings. It feels right.
And the music is so good. The headline song (Falling Slowly) is nominated for an Oscar and certainly should be the favorite. The rest of the soundtrack is nearly equal in quality. The songs will stand by themselves even if you haven’t seen the movie… but watch the movie. It got an R-rating because of the Irish predilection of casually using the F-bomb as an adjective and interjection. Even that, though, is pretty much limited to a couple of scenes. The film as a whole, though, is a beautiful, beautiful work of art. You can have your Hollywood blockbusters. I’ll take this little Irish gem any day.
it's Monday...
…and I haven’t posted since last Wednesday, which means I’m a real slacker. I fall into this basic pattern of blogging where I show up on Monday, realize I’m a slacker, then because I have nothing more thoughtful to post, post a weekend update. Yawn. But since I’ve already fooled you into reading this far, here was my weekend:
Friday night Becky and I went and saw King Kong at the cheap theater. It was worth seeing on the big screen. It was pretty over-the-top; Peter Jackson would get you squirming, and then when you thought it should be about done, he’d make you squirm for another 10 seconds. The plot/story was OK, but pretty basic. The one part I really liked was the way the shots at the top of the Empire State Building were done; they had me fearing the heights even though I was safe in my seat. Well done that.
Saturday morning I headed over to Mount Vernon to accompany a young man from church who was trying out for a voice scholarship at Cornell College. It was fun to be on a college campus again, and even more fun to be on one that had good music facilities. If I were on campuses too often, I could definitely get bit by the college bug again and think about studying up enough that I could go back and teach. Sounds fun, but I think it’s unlikely.
Played a church league basketball game on Saturday and then headed home. Took Becky and Laura out for dinner and did a little shopping. Oh, and Becky’s mom headed home Saturday morning. It was great to have her visit, she was a big help to Becky, and she and Laura had soooo much fun.
Sunday led worship as usual at both services. We were without practice this week, which left us a little bit rough, but it turned out OK. That was about it for Sunday. Stayed home, just a lazy afternoon.
Now we’re to Monday and another week. It’s not too exciting so far. If it gets exciting, I’ll be sure to post about it.
Sahara
Last night we had a babysitter available and so we went to the cheap seats theater in town and watched Sahara. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Clive Cussler. Becky and I are both huge fans of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, so we were looking forward to seeing what they’d do with his novel in the movie.
It’s beyond me why they haven’t tried to translate more of the Dirk Pitt series onto the big screen; for swashbuckling adventure tales, they’re tops. (The one attempt thus far, Raise the Titanic! may have discouraged others from trying… it was horrible!) Perhaps it’s the slight lack of realism… but wait, we’re talking about Hollywood here. Part of what makes Cussler’s books so fun, IMHO, is that if the hero is on a quest to find some mysterious hidden treasure, he finds it. None of this “oh it didn’t really exist at all but at least you had a good adventure” type of ending for Mr. Cussler. Nosirree. The hero gets the girl, drives a cool old car, wisecracks with his trusty sidekick, saves the world, and finds his treasure to boot. Realism? Who needs realism?
I wasn’t so sure about the casting of Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn as Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino. Fortunately, they suprised me. McConaughey was excellent, and they captured the fun-loving spirit and wise-cracking nature of the two characters really well. They interacted as though they had been friends for their whole lives (which, in the books they have been). My only gripe was that Zahn’s character was too dumb most of the time. I realize Steve Zahn has made a career out of playing “hi, I’m a doofus” characters. I wish they could have made him just a bit more heroic; in the books Al Giordino is just as much a thinker as Pitt; just with a different personality. That didn’t come through so well in the movie.
At the end, Becky asked “where’s the Clive Cussler cameo?” If you’ve read any of the books, you know that Cussler writes himself in with a small cameo appearance in every book. (Becky likened this to Hitchcock’s appearances in each of his movies.) It’s another one of those things that makes Dirk Pitt novels so much fun - when is Cussler going to appear? It would have been a neat nod to the books if they had written it in somehow… but it was not to be. I guess they can only base so much on the book.
All in all, it was a fun night out. And it was only Thursday. That almost makes it feel like a longer weekend, if it just wasn’t for the fact that I’m working today… :-)
slowly getting more out of touch...
I have this “movies I’ve watched recently” link section on the side of the blog. I intended to list movies that I saw in the theater or on DVD. If you’re a regular reader, you will have noted that it hasn’t changed in quite some time.
I noted a progression yesterday while talking with Becky. We were thinking of renting Meet The Fockers, but decided to just watch something recorded on the Tivo instead. The progression goes something like this:
I will have to break this chain for some movies; obviously when the new Star Wars movie comes out I’ll be watching it in the theater. But as a whole, I feel myself slipping more and more into behind-the-times oblivion, at least as far as pop culture goes. Oh well. It’s not always bad to be out of touch. :-)