once
February 29th, 2008
last Saturday night (before the Oscars), we watched the movie “Once” on the recommendation of my buddy Lou. now if you know me well, you know that my feelings toward traditional musicals are not remotely charitable (OK, that’s underselling it. i flat out hate them. who just bursts randomly into song?!?). however, “Once” isn’t a traditional musical — yes, there’s music, but music is the point of the movie, not an alternative dialogue delivery mechanism.
the story is engaging and emotive and if even if you’re not a musician, you’re going to walk away wanting to start writing music immediately. oh, and to top it off: the night after we watched it, the lead actors beat out the atrocity that is Enchanted for the best original song Oscar. rent it now, i implore you.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:55
Dude, I have to disagree with you about this movie. For real.
Michelle & I rented it one night because it’s won or been nominated for a bunch of awards, and we only made it about 30 or so minutes in before turning the thing off; 5 more minutes and I would have taken a safety pin to my ear drum. The songs feel like they’re 20 minutes long, since the verses are long and the guy’s voice sounds like mine after a few tequila shots while singing backup to Like a Prayer. The dude is seriously like a bad kareoke performance, but with mediocre folk guitar thrown into the mix. The only thing that made it remotely tolerable was the ridiculously quirky female lead, but the movie was less about her and more aobut the whiny, sappy dude singing about how some chick broke his heart. What the movie really needed was Jet Li to come in and strangle the poor bastard by his E-string.
I will say that Michelle’s mom liked it, but she also watches that TV show on Fox with the lie detector, so I don’t know that her opinion should count when it comes to pop entertainment.