I’m a big fan of family movies. Family history movies, that is.
For me it goes back to “Citizen Kane,” the Orson Welles epic about the life of a newspaper mogul told in a retrospective style as investigators try to solve the one lingering mystery of The Great Man’s final cryptic words: Who (or what) was Rosebud?
As I wrote before, I think the Tim Burton film, “Big Fish,” is the ultimate father-son movie. Although I try to watch this film every June, somehow it eluded me this year.
Now come a couple new must-sees in this genre: “Young at Heart” and “Google Me: The Movie.”
“Young at Heart” has been playing locally recently as fellow blogger Jann Freed notes. This story about a singing group of some thirty 80-somethings who cover everyone from The Clash to Coldplay, will be available on DVD in mid-September. I find it perfectly natural that music transcends the ages. It was a 20-something Paul Simon, after all, who wrote the memorable line “How terribly strange to be 70” in his poetic tribute to senior citizens, “Old Friends,” on Simon & Garfunkel’s classic “Bookends” album.
“Google Me” is a quirky extension of the practice of Googling one’s own name. Come on, everybody does it – a quick check of one’s cyberspace status. When Jim Killeen did it, he found 24 other Jim Killeens scattered around the planet. He tracked down as many as he could and six of them participated in this documentary, which is now available on DVD.
The best family movies, of course, are those of your own family. Now would be a good time to dig them out of their hiding place and give them a proper viewing. If you’re a generation or two behind the technology (film or videotape, for example), you might want to bring them up to date before the equipment necessary to play them disappears forever.
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
Flickr photo courtesy of Firstposter.com Movie Posters Wall.
Comments