Letters to the Editor
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About PHC
I have read so many favorable reviews of this movie and I have to wonder if anyone -- including the late and much-lamented Mr. Altman -- really ever listened to the radio show, which does not unfold in some "makeshift" or "lackadaisical" way. It is a highly-polished radio show featuring musicians who are at or near the top of their form in their chosen musical idiom/style. Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly et al. should be ashamed to stand up there and imagine that their amateurish warbling comes anywhere close to the hard-won professionalism heard weekly on PHC (the radio show). I dearly love Garrison Keillor and can only imagine that, blinded by the chance to be in a movie, he let the egos and whimsies of others turn out this ridiculous mess of a movie.
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Time
"We need more time, a commodity that's in short supply for almost everyone I know, to be able to catch at least some of these movies on the fly and define for ourselves which ones really matter."
I don't buy this line of thinking at all. We've always had the same amount of time. It's up to you to choose what to spend it on. I'm glad we have the choices we do today in movies and other forms of entertainment. It's nothing to bitch about.
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Trying too hard to find hidden treasure
Idlewild?
IDLEWILD ?!
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Not to be contrary...
... but one of the much-lamented features of the curiously now-ballyhooed "Studio System Era" was the fact that hundreds or even thousands of movies were released in a year. You could see your favorite star in two or even three new films in a single year. (Life sure was easier back before "on-location" was assumed by default.) Of course, per Sturgeon's Law, 90% of them were crap... much like today.
So why does it feel like so many more movies are released now? Well, there is the indie path. But more importantly, the forgettable movies -- the 1940s equivalent of Superman Returns or Snakes on a Plane -- the forgettable movies are, well, forgotten. Much as it will be for this year, and last year, and next year.
It's the same thing that makes everyone think everyone living with Beethoven was a genius, or that all Elizabethans could write as well as Shakespeare: That which is worthwhile survives, and we tend to forget the junk.
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PHC ala Guy Noir
I am a PHC fan and semi-regular listener, and I still really enjoyed the film, though I wouldn't have recommended it to anyone was not already a fan. To me, there was something very intriguing about Kevin Kline's character, Guy Noir, breaking through that barrier and becoming a "real" character working as security on the show-- behind the scenes, rather than as his usual character in a play within the show. Perhaps that's why the film show seemed like something of a noir version of the radio show.
A film version of the actual radio show-- all polished and professional-- would not have been much more than a televised version of one, which has already been done. Instead, someone-- Keillor or Altman?-- decided to go in another direction. And that direction seemed both likely and unlikely, likely because eventually it all does have to end (and greed as a cause is as likely as anything else), but unlikely because it's hard to imagine Keillor letting it devolve like that without just ending it himself.
Rightly or wrongly, I did attribute some of the "malaise" to intense political fatigue after 6 years of GOP-induced surreality. And, perhaps it's my own age, but I was all too aware (even at the time) of its being about the mortality of the show and the people who make it all up for us every week. That last scene with Virginia Madsen as the Angel of Death going into the diner where the show's one-time regulars were having a meal together was a bit spooky.
(Disclosure: The news is filled with way too many stories for my own comfort of people dying who have less than a decade on me.)
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"V For Vendetta"
>Sometimes movies are defended vigorously by fans for a week or so after their opening, and yet two or three months later, almost no one remembers them -- "V for Vendetta," for example.<
It's hardly fair or accurate to dismiss V FOR VENDETTA as just fanboy bait. It garnered any number of great reviews--and, even more to the point, did a better job of dissecting Bush's rule and the tactics that kept him in power than most of the real-life mainstream media. For its skill--and nerve--in speaking truth to power alone, it was one of the best movies of last year.
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Don't Forget...
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE!!
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Various observations
"Marie Antoinette", to put it plainly, sucks. It has no plot. You spend have the movie waiting for them to consummate their marriage. I can understand the political significance of the act (since it is repeatedly, pedantically explained), but it does not make for exciting cinema.
"Prairie Home Companion" is just OK.
I haven't seen "Casino Royale", but I don't see how the a James Bond movie can "matter" this late in the franchise, unless it inspires someone to cure cancer.
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Not to be ignored!
How can you not mention Ed Norton`s "The Illusionist?"
A beautifully made and acted film that was the highlight of our movie-going experience this year. Granted, we like a movie with a real storyline, spectacular photography,dramatic tension, and actors of Paul Giammatti`s caliber.
Please correct your list. This is a movie that ought to be enjoyed by many.
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It just dawned on me...
...as I looked at the list of 2006's best movies....
I haven't seen *any* of them.
Oh, well. There's always DVD (which I also don't have time for.)
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Bad
Stephanie, what is wrong with you? Robert Altman made a lot of bad and mediocre movies, and A Prarie Home Companion is right there. Meryl Streep's performance was luminescent, but that's it. Also, how can you complain about 'quality' movies not being good and then not mention The Last King of Scotland which was very good?
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Still somewhat savory
Sure, we may have more movies released than there is interest to see them all, and yes, films do often come and go faster than I, for one, can find a babysitter so as to get a night out to see them.
Yet we get something now that was never available during the golden age of Hollywood -- video, DVDs, streaming downloads. We're enjoying a time in which even the smallest films could be found by the most far-flung cinematic gourmand, thanks to Netflix and others. And it's not hard to assume that downloading films will make such distribution even easier. So even if you can't see Pan's Labyrinth in the theater, it can still be savored post-theatrical mortem. That way, such gotta-see-it-twice classics like Donnie Darko and others have survived.
Sure, that way, we miss out on that group-experience in the theater or the big-screen vision of the directors, but it's a trade that Americans have been happy to make.