I have been a little delinquent with film reviews, but that is mostly because of the one's I've been seeing, which hardly bear mention. However, I did see a few that were semi interesting. One is Picture This, which is George Hinkenlooper's documentary about the making of the Last Picture Show. Peter Bogdanovich kind of drones on but Larry McMurtry, who wrote the book that the film is based on, is kind of an interesting guy. He was sort of the town nerd, and wrote his book about the thugs of his town. So the movie, Picture This, goes out of its way to depict the backwards locals as backwards locals. Which is always sort of irritating, because there is a kind of antropologist's arrogance to come to a small town with cameras and do your best to make everyone look like fools, which they do. But McMurtry is a nut, and, although they don't talk about this in the movie, he later bought up a bunch of buildings in Marfa, Texas, and filled them with used books, which is an interesting thing to do. Peter Bogdonovitch, although sort of boring in the movie, has also had a crazy life, where he was called a genius at 31, won a bunch of Oscars, then made some awful movies. He also married a woman who was killed or died somehow, which is bad, but then he married her twin sister, which is pretty weird. He's one of those guys everyone seems to think is capabable of something, even though he has churned out a bunch of pretty bad movies. I think he may have had commercial success with Paper Moon. Nowadays he's on The Sopranos, as a drunken psychologist. He also did more skeevy stuff with women, like every decade he marries a new blonde who is 18 and looks like his dead first wife. Plus he wears his collar up, which wasn't in style even back when everyone was doing it

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Then there was History Lessons, an experimental documentary by Barbara Hammer. She is a lesbian activist, and all her movies are about being a lesbian, or are about lesbians. This movie takes archival medical footage, newsreels, and even footage Thomas Edison shot of a hanging in 1898, and intercuts it with images of lesbians from antiquity. Like many experimental film makers, you get the idea she was going for after about five minutes and the cumulative effect is pretty much repetition of a single idea, but maybe I'm speaking from the bias of someone who likes a little narrative in my movies. If you just like slide shows of Eleanor Roosevelt chopped with blurry photos of Victorian women in bed together, this is the film for you. Actually, the best part, for me was when I went to the extras part of the DVD, which I never do, and watched the interview with the film maker, and she starts out the interview with a greeting, like "hello lesbians!We have to stick together!" which I liked, because momentarily I was included. On a related note: I did hear recently that some scholars recently wrote a book which made the case that Eleanor Roosevelt was not a lesbian, though I can't see how that matters too much, since I think she has become sort of a symbol to a generation of gay women.

Finally there was the Turnadot Project, which is a documentary following the trials of getting Puccini's opera staged in China. It makes for much more of a story than the other two documentaries I just mentioned, since there is a beggining, middle and end, and the drama is all capped off by the dramatic staging of an opera. Not to ruin it for you, the show went on in the end. Mostly it shows the frustrations of trying to work with a cast that big, deal with the Chinese authorities, and the squabbles between lighting designer, sound designer, etc. Plus the opera divas are kind of divas. But it actually tells a pretty dramatic story flatly, and relies heavily on Zubin Metha, who conducted, to fill in most narrative, and he devotes a lot of time to talking about how beautiful the costumes are. Which they are, but it doesn't make for much in the way of drama or edification and overall, you get the sense that Allan Miller, the director, is secretly yearning to just make a broadcast film of the opera, since at random points he just shows a full song or scene from the opera. But that was good. The best part is really the music, and there is that great phrase, made famous by Caruso and then later Pavorotti, which I could hum for you and you would recognize, but you'll just have to take my word for it, it is a stirring bit of melody.

Soon I will either go see Jim Carey's latest, Bruce Almighty or a documentary about migratory birds. I can't decide.