A few days ago I happened to go to Blockbuster looking for a particular movie (which they did not have) when I spotted this one on the shelf. I didn’t pick it up, but noted the title and put it in my Netflix queue.
It arrived the other day and I popped it into the DVD player. Off and on over the course of the morning I watched it. I’ve spent some time thinking about it and I’m still now sure what to say.
I loved it….and I only liked it.

Okay. The movies is set in the late 1960’s and tells the story of a poor young man who travels from Liverpool, England, to New York to find his biological father. Once here he falls in love with a rich girl who gets involved with the anti-war movement. On that “love story” level it’s fairly predictable:
1. meet and fall in love
2. have a falling out
3. end the movie with a lover’s reunion
Again, the film is set in the era of the Vietnam war protests. Having lived through that time I’m still not sure how I feel about it all. I’m not going to make any political commentary here, but the movie does make the kids seem like a bunch of overly idealistic college kids. Then the movie goes off into a psychedelic segment. Here’s where we find Bono as Dr. Robert:

It’s here that the movies features a lot of CGI and psychedelic imagery:

For the Benefit of Mr Kite

Henry the Horse

Where the movie really shines is the music. Yep, it’s a musical. It’s all Beatles music.
In the 2 hour 11 minute movie there is only about 30 minutes of spoken dialog. The rest is the actors singing Beatles songs. The song lyrics are the rest of the dialog which works extremely well. I would suggest that if you’re not familiar with Beatles songs – turn on the subtitles. On this level I found it to be an amazing experience.

One last note – the characters in the movie are named for the names of people in Beatles songs; i.e., Jude (Hey Jude), Lucy (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), Max (Maxwell’s Silver Hammer), Prudence (Dear Prudence), Sadie (Sexy Sadie).

I think the fortune cookie manufacturer had a slight typo on a fortune cookie I got the other day. It read:

May the warm winds of heaven blow softly upon your sprint.

If you happened to try to access this site recently you probably noticed that there was a problem. Only the header image was coming up. However, I could log in to the dashboard and even FTP with no problem. I contacted the hosting company and they said there was a problem with the actual WordPress script. Somehow it had become corrupted. So, with the help of #2 son we took down the old content and upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. I uploaded all the old content and everything is back in shipshape order.

I am not normally a New Year Resolution kind of person, but I have some things I want to tackle this next year.

First – watch more tv. Okay, what I mean is get caught up on the programs I am behind on and take the time to watch some of the shows I have on DVD that I have not had time to view.

Second – I would like to develop some kind of podcast that could be used as a source of income.

I guess that’s about it. See, I told you I wasn’t much of a resolution making person.

But speaking of tv I have been slowly working my way through the first season of Supernatural. There are several things I like about it so far.
I like their car and the music used in the episodes; the songs reflect events and themes of the episodes. Plus – it’s ROCK N ROLL!
At this point in the series it’s a lot of “freak of the week”. And other than the brothers trying to find their father (which they don’t seem to be putting a lot of effort into), there doesn’t seem to be much of an over-arcing theme.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get more blogging done this coming year.