Aurora Borealis: A Truly Terrible Movie

In addition to watching the handful of new shows I posted about here, I've been using my Netflix queue a fair bit lately. One of the themes in my queue is Josh Jackson. I've been working my way through his back catalog, not because it's excellent but because I simply enjoy watching him on screen. Americano was surprisingly good, with Dennis Hopper playing an intriguing and more than a little crazy ex-pat who Josh's character meets when he goes to Spain to run with the bulls. Shadows in the Sun matched up Josh's character with a reclusive ex-pat writer played by the ever-brilliant Harvey Keitel. And then, last night I watched Aurora Borealis in which Donald Sutherland played Josh's ailing grandfather (who was a bit of a recluse, though not an ex-pat). Yes, there seems to be a theme here. Put Josh on screen with a talented, distinguished actor and the two of them have a nice time growing Josh's character up for 2 hours. But in each of these movies there also has to be a love interest for Josh's character (of course) who also helps him grow up. In Americano and Shadows, the women were delightful, believable if unremarkable actresses who seemed to have a little chemistry with Josh. Last night, the woman was Juliette Lewis and I thought she was awful! I don't know if it was her voice or something about her mannerisms, but I thought she was the most annoying "leading lady" I've seen on screen in ages. And there was absolutely no chemistry between Josh and Juliette. During the scenes with Donald Sutherland and the talented Louise Fletcher (who played Josh's grandmother), I cared about the characters and enjoyed watching. Whenever Juliette showed up on screen, I thought about turning the darn thing off (and I have a very high tolerance for annoying TV).

The writing was excellent and the story was compelling and I kept thinking how one terrible casting decision could spoil a whole movie. The words were coming out of Juliette's mouth, and they sounded like she was reading the lines that were actually designed for someone else! (I think Keri Russell or Rachel McAdams would have been my choice for the recast, but any number of women would have worked...)

Anyway, this is one you can leave off the Netflix queue!

A Happy Little Moment

Watching a rerun of Dawson's Creek the other night, I had a fun little moment . . . and no one to share it with. So here it is: the Capeside crowd was in the college bar that they hung out in, having some typical Dawson's-style discussion and, for some reason, I happened to hear the music playing way in the background (as if on the bar's jukebox). Now, I'm really not a music person, as many readers of this blog will attest. I've got no ear for it, and usually it just blends into the background for me when I watch TV. But on this one occassion, you see, the jukebox was playing "Here We Go" by Dispatch. Once upon a time, Dispatch was called One Fell Swoop (and even before that they were the Wood River Bandits, fondly known by their friends as the Cloud Forest Bunnies), and they played concerts in the dorm lounges at Middlebury and lived on the same hall as my friend Tyler. This summer, they will play three sold out shows at Madison Square Garden as a fundraiser for Zimbabwe. This despite the fact that the band has been broken up for 3 years! In any case, it was really fun to hear their music on an old episode of Dawson's. I sure wish I had tickets to one of their NYC shows this summer, but it seems like a somewhat inappropriate method of bar study.