Having been summoned by my hateful bank to sign something thanks to the new laws about credit lines, I found myself in Ramat Aviv. Yes, I am getting revved up to move bank accounts, but the stars are not quite aligned properly yet. So what to do after The Signing but trot over to the Mall to check out the movie situation. Sure enough, Prairie Home Companion was just about to start, so in I went. I hadn't read any reviews of it, and I still haven't, so it was a "pure" first-hand experience.
Any movie with Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lili Tomlin, and Garrison Keeler, can't be terrible, no matter who's directing and what the script is. Especially when it turns out that three of them (Kevin doesn't get a chance) can sing. Director Robert Altman seemed to have a taken a dose of Woody Allen on downers, so I could never be sure whether the film was a spoof, a dark comedy, or just a romp. The plot lurched along from musical number to musical number, the way Broadway musicals used to do in the 1950's, and kind of the way the radio show of the same name did back in the 1980's. I give it three stars out of a possible five: entertaining, but not memorable.
*(Update)
I just found my diary from age 10. This week at age 10 I went to the movies and saw "The Perils of Pauline" with Betty Hutton (no, not the silent one). After school this week I went to a Girl Scout meeting, two Halloween parties, the dentist, and a sewing lesson. I think I walked to these events. The sewing lessons came with my Mom's new Singer. I was making myself a dress. With bound buttonholes.
7 comments:
Wow. I've also saved my diaries from when I was a kid. But I'm thinking about burning mine, heh. It doesn't sound like you were an imbecile from yours! How very very neat. (Did you finish the dress with bound button-holes?)
Yes, I finished the dress. Of course. This is me, the finisher! (Usually...I do have a needlepoint project still in progress from 25 years ago.)
Thats so cool to find a diary from when you were 10. I wish I had stuff from school that Mom saved.
Tell us more - what's in it?
Well, I think Prairie Home is worth a lot more than a 3, maybe not quite a 5 but a lot more than a 3.
I came away from it thinking, "most people are not going to understand this... and the screen actor's guild doesn't have an Oscar category for something like this."
Garrison Keillor is a genius and an American treasure... even with the Norwegian part :) But a better director would have helped.
Dan C.
Fred, I posted a photo of the diary just for you. I'll quote more from it if I can find anything interesting or amusing in addition to Girl Scout meetings and sewing lessons.
Sage, Garrison Keillor gets a 5, and so does his radio show. I think I understood the movie, but if I did, can my standards be too high? It felt kind of dusty and claustrophobic.
savtadotty, I think "dusty and claustrophobic" is a very good desription. You are right. Okay, a 4 then.
Sage, OK, 3 1/2. That's my final offer.
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