Emily and I went to see Once at the Vinegar Hill Theater in Charlottesville last Friday night. An independent film dubbed by many as a new kind of modern-day musical and featuring rave reviews (including winning the audience prize at the Sundance Film Festival), I was looking forward to seeing this movie.
Once is a film set in Ireland about an unnamed Irish busker (played by Glen Hansard of the rock band The Frames and one-time film actor from The Commitments), and an unamed Czech immigrant (played by the classically trained Czech vocalist and pianist Markéta Irglová).
The director uses very simple, documentary-style camera work and cinematography, but it is very fitting for the simple story and true-to-life emotion and performances in the film.
The difference between this film and traditional musicals is that all of the songs here arise very naturally out of the circumstances. It is all very realistic: they play their own instruments, and there are no dance numbers. As a result of this and the talent of the two performers, the music is powerful (and pretty rockin’…I’m listening to the soundtrack right now which I ordered just after seeing the movie).
This is a fantastic movie and I encourage you to go see it. It is especially enjoyable in that it offers something different from the big summer blockbusters that are out now.
Been listening to this one a lot, pretty much the whole way through.
This novel was published after the Chilean-Mexican author's death, and I'm not even sure if it was entirely finished or not. It is broken up into five parts which, while connected, stand pretty much on there own. I have not yet made it to the grim part about the murders of hundreds of women in Mexico, so I have so far found it enjoyable and even funny despite some dark underpinnings. It's had a ton of critical praise, and I like it much more than my last foray into the violent novel genre: Blood Meridian.
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I’m glad to see you liked it – it’s next on my list. They’re playing it at Parkside right now, and I want to catch it before it stops running. My dad mentioned it to me back in May when the WSJ ran a very favorable review of it. Obviously, Syracuse was not so much a place to catch high-quality, low-distribution movies, so I was thrilled to see it is still in Atlanta theaters…
It was only released in Charlottesville at the very end of July. I guess there is only one screen in town that plays these “high-quality, low-distribution” movies so they can’t always release them all right when they come out. You will have to let me know if you see it, Kathleen. I went back a second time to take some friends who were visiting from out of town.
yo, it just opened up at Tara today.