Friday, September 11, 2009

Dear dairy...

First off, this looks to be another Saturday Random Ten week. Patience.

Second, the reason for that is that I saw a movie at my friend Mark's place. He asked me earlier for a recommendation for movie night, and it hit me: Comfort and Joy. Well, going to Netflix for the movie only led him to an unfortunate-looking Lifetime movie with Nancy McKeon and Dixie Carter. That... perhaps made him worry about me.

He did find the right film almost by accident through the local independent video store (Acme Video on Brook St.) It apparently hasn't made the transition to DVD* so we watched on VHS. C&J, which was director Bill Forsyth's follow-up to Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, more than lived up to my somewhat distant memories of it. And it turned out to be a big hit with the other four guys watching it, which was a pleasant surprise.

Low key and whimsical comedy that sometimes erupts into violence, but not to the point where anyone actually gets hurt. Although tragically some car upholstery does. Here's a taste.


* Actually since there's clean footage on YouTube, it probably is out on DVD, somewhere.

4 comments:

susan said...

I can see the new version with the same name leaves much to be desired. I tried looking for them on DVD too but no luck - at least not yet. Another of his movies I really enjoyed was 'Housekeeping'.

I don't know why some of the best stuff has been allowed to disappear except that's the way things go with media transitions.

susan said...

ps: another reason I'll never buy a 'Kindle'. It seems ominous they named it after a way to start a fire.

Ben said...

As to the Kindle, there's a New England news story I read a couple of weeks ago. Some big Mass. prep school is getting rid of all--ALL--the books in its library. All textbooks are now going to be e-books, and all students will be supplied with Kindles. This story made me literally too ill to blog about it. Not so much because of the march of technology as because of the march of bullshit and snake oil. Oh yeah, I'm sure the principal won't get a cushy job at Amazon after he's done at the school.

But I remember Housekeeping and I enjoyed it a lot too. The actress who played the aunt has been pretty busy, and she was a regular on the TV show Chicago Hope. She usually doesn't get a chance to exhibit that kind of charm, though.

susan said...

Jerry read me big chunks of a book called 'Double Fold' by Nicholson Baker a couple of years ago about this very issue. It was ironic seeing that Amazon has it on Kindle.