Recently in Entertainment Category

Today my wife and I went to the Lowell Folk Festival in Lowell, MA. Over the course of the afternoon, we saw four bands perform:

• Bua—a Traditional Irish Music band


• Jeff Little Trio—a Blue Ridge piano trio


• Hot Club of Cowtown—a Western Swing band


• Beat Ya Feet Kings (featuring Black Alley)—a DC Urban dance and Go-Go band

Here's a video clip I shot of Hot Club of Cowtown on stage. They were by far our favorite performers of the show, although I have to give props to Jeff Little for his piano-only rendition of both the piano and saxophone parts of Dave Brubeck's classic Take 5.

We also enjoyed Bua's performance of classic Irish and Scottish songs. We were intrigued but not as enthusiastic about Beat Ya Feet Kings. While they are very talented performers, I think I would say that DC urban and Go-Go music is not really our thing.

I posted a few photos on my Picasa web album:

2010 Lowell Folk Festival

To escape the 90+ degree temperatures and smothering humidity that have been smothering New England today, Melissa and I went to see the new movie, Julie & Julia. Bottomline: We thoroughly enjoyed it!

The movie tells two stories in parallel: the first of Julia Child's journey from bored diplomatic housewife to creator of the most popular cookbook of all time, and the second of Julie Powell, a frustrated wannabe writer who decides to cook her way through Child's cookbook over the course of a year and blog about the experience to overcome her writer's block.

Take a look at the trailer for the new Amelia Earhart biopic, starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, and Ewan McGregor:

Based on the trailer and the powerhouse cast, I'm looking forward to this film when it comes out in October. Let's hope that it doesn't prove the sentiment of a quote from Earhart that I found on her somewhat dated official web site:

"Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization."

I just saw the trailer below for what looks like an incredible movie, The Hurt Locker:

It opens in select theaters on June 26th and I'm hoping to see it.

Hollywood hasn't impressed me much this year, however there are two movies coming out that have me excited: the new Harry Potter movie in July and the long overdue, live-action version of one of my childhood favorites, Maurice Sendak's classic, Where The Wild Things Are.

This movie is being directed by Spike Jonz. For those of you who aren't familiar with the name, Jonz directed Being John Malkovich, the wonderfully dark and surreal movie which starred John Cusack as a puppeteer who discovers a portal into the brain of John Malkovich. Jonz also directed Adaptation, another brilliant, but more neurotic movie with Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). I thoroughly enjoyed both of these films. One down side of Jonz was his involvement in MTV's Jackass movies, to which I readily acknowledge (and am proud) that I am not part of their target demographic. My hope is that Jonz did those for the money so he could continue making high caliber artsy films. Speaking of demographics, any movie of this classic Sendack work will automatically have a large family demographic. I read in interviews that, like me, Jonz read the book as a kid, and will want to share it with his own kids. Now given his track record with the dark, artsy films and hoping that he has the sense not to incorporate any elements from the Jackass series, I'm still a bit anxious about the final product. That said, another potential positive factor for this film is that the screenplay was written by Dave Eggers, the creative mind behind McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Eggers is co-founder of a program called 826 National, which promotes writing skills in kids ages 6-18 at seven centers across the U.S. Given that level of interaction with kids, I think there's very good reason to be hopeful that the script Jonz started with was in tune with younger audiences.

I just heard that the 80s classic movie Heathers is being made into a musical. I'm not much for musical theater, the last show we saw being Spamalot! a few years ago, but I have to say that if this show comes to Boston and is getting halfway decent reviews, then I'm going!

Here's some of my favorite lines from that movie that I hope make it into the lyrics (warning: adult language):

• "Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87."
• "This is Ohio. If you don't have a brewski in your hand you might as well be wearing a dress."
• "Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?"
• "I like it. It's got that what-a-cruel-world-let's-toss-ourselves-in-the-abyss type ambience."
• "Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count."
• "Well, f*ck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?"
• "Tomorrow, I'll be kissing her aerobicized ass, but tonight, let me dream of a world without Heather, a world where I am free."

The Wife Whisperer.

For the record, Melissa thought it was funny.

I found a link to this video on Francesco Marciuliano's site, Medium Large:

I recently discovered an interesting site called Medium Large. Its author is cartoonist, Francesco Marciuliano, who is more widely known for the syndicated, but relatively sedate strip, Sally Forth.

I think one of the more interesting series on this site is called Teenage Girl President. Marciuliano describes it as answering the question, "What if My So Called Life had nuclear strike capabilities?"

If you grew up reading Peanuts in the comics as a kid like I did, then you'll also get a hearty, but sick laugh out of Marciuliano's tribute to Charles Schulz in his Peanuts Gallery.