Film Review - A Prairie Home Companion

If you decided to stay in tonight and watch some TV... you probably noticed that there was not much on. That's how I felt earlier on anyway, when I did a quick flick through the schedule.... and pretty much gave up. But... I had missed a little gem hidden away, as often happens.

I'd been busy researching some stuff and didn't get round to supper till late. When I settled down to enjoy my late dinner, I had another flick through, as you do, and came across this great film hidden away late on BBC2.... and was immediately drawn into... 'A Prairie Home Companion'.

For starters, the film has an incredible cast... Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Lindsay Lohan, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen plus a few other well known names and faces! How's that for a cast?

Robert Altman (directs) and Garrison Keillor (who wrote the screenplay and plays a fictional version of himself) combine reality and fantasy in this smooth, ebullient take on the long-running Prairie Home Companion (PHC) radio show.

In a review over at Amazon, Doug Thomas saves me the trouble and explains the film perfectly:

Set during the show's fictitious last broadcast, the host station has been bought, the film has plenty of elements from the real PHC radiocasts, including a live audience and the sensational Shoe band.

The onstage program is mostly music numbers, a beguiling mix of standards and old-style country, with Streep once more showing her amazing range of talents, here singing as well as she did in 'Mama Mia', as does Lily Tomlin.

However, the show's usual comedy sketches are never presented, save for the commercial parodies. This may be a PHC show, but Lake Wobegon Days (also a book by Garrison Keillor) is never mentioned. Instead, the sketches are played out as backstage banter that features the Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), a harried stage hand (Maya Rudolph), a former listener turned angel (Virginia Madsen) and Keillor himself (a crusty alter-ego named simply G.K.).

A few characters from the real PHC are given life: the singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty and gumshoe Guy Noir are embodied by Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, and Kevin Kline, respectively. Old flames are fanned, stories are spun, new talents are found (Lindsay Lohan has a chance to shine as Streep's daughter) and everyone wonders if G.K. will do something to ebb the tide of cancellation, personified by Tommy Lee Jones as the corporate Axeman.

All of the actors do right as singers, and seem to be having the time of their life. Keillor's screenplay is perfect fodder for Altman's usual brand of storytelling, as characters babble on with the camera picking them up often in mid-thought.

The film originally appeared a few months after Altman received an honorary Oscar, and the director is still at the top of his game, creating this smile-inducing, song-filled time, ending with an ethereal last musical number.

I thoroughly enjoyed it... and I hope you do too... during one of these slow nights on telly!

Gibraltar in popular culture

I've been trawling around the net recently, looking for any Gibraltar Blogs I may have missed. Disappointingly, it seems I haven't missed much. If you're interested, I have linked any I have found on my sidebar... those of any note anyhow. If you run or write a blog related to Gibraltar... then let me know!

However, whilst surfing about, I revisited a favourite page about Gibraltar on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which includes loads of information about the politics, economy, history and culture of Gibraltar.

Poking about, I came across some interesting notes on Gibraltar... in popular culture and I thought I would share them with you.

Film

* The film The Silent Enemy was filmed on location in Gibraltar in 1958. It is a dramatisation of the period during the Second World War when Lionel "Buster" Crabb served as a mine and disposal officer in Gibraltar while frogmen of the Italian Navy's Tenth Light Flotilla were sinking vital shipping.

* The opening scene of the film The Living Daylights (from the James Bond film series) takes place in Gibraltar.

* In the German-language film Das Boot, a German U-boat struggles in its attempt to get past the British Royal Navy in Gibraltar to relocate to a base in the Mediterranean sea.

Literature

* Anthony Burgess's novel A Vision of Battlements (1965), chronicling the troubled love-life of the British soldier Richard Ennis, is set in Gibraltar.

* The satirical novel Gil Braltar by Jules Verne (1887) describes an almost successful attack by our famous apes on the fortress of Gibraltar.

* 'The Day of an American Journalist in 2889', an 1889 Jules Verne short story, also mentions Gibraltar as the last territory of a British Empire that has lost the British Isles themselves.

* Raffles' Crime in Gibraltar by Barry Perowne, a Sexton Blake story, is set in Gibraltar in 1937 (U.S. title: They Hang Them in Gibraltar).

* Scruffy by Paul Gallico is set on Gibraltar during World War II. It follows the steady decline in the size of the Barbary Macaque (our apes or monkeys) colony and the possible fulfillment of the superstition or legendary prophecy that Gibraltar will fall to the enemy if they disappear.

* As Molly Bloom is a native Gibraltarian, references to Gibraltar appear throughout James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). A sculpture of Molly Bloom as imagined by local artist Jon Searle is on display in the Alameda Gardens.

* Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Fountains of Paradise mentions the 'Gibraltar Bridge', a novel infrastructure connecting Europe and Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. This is no longer so far fetched as plans are currently being looked at to build such a bridge.

* John Masters book The Rock is a collection of short stories set in Gibraltar: These range from a story set in prehistoric times to one suggesting a possible future for the Rock.

* In Maud Hart Lovelace's book Betsy and the Great World, the heroine goes on a cruise to Europe and makes a stop at Gibraltar, where she learns about its history and legends, and goes shopping.

Music

* In 1782 Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed a fragment for voice and piano to celebrate the Great Siege of Gibraltar titled Bardengesang auf Gibraltar: O Calpe! Dir donnert's am Fusse.

* The Beatles' song The Ballad of John & Yoko identifies Gibraltar as the place where John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married.

* In 1952 American country singer Frankie Lane had a song called The Rock of Gibraltar, which made it to #20 in the US Top 40

Notable or famous Gibraltarians

Notable or famous Gibraltarians include:

* William George Penney was a physicist responsible for the development of British nuclear technology following World War II.

* John Galliano is a four time British fashion designer of the year.

* Albert Hammond is an international singer, songwriter and producer.

* Henry Francis Cary (1772 - 1844) was a translator and poet.

* Thomas William Bowlby (1818 - 1860) was a correspondent for The Times in Germany and China. He was captured and imprisoned by the Tartar General Sengge Rinchen whilst on correspondence duties in Tongzhou, Beijing.

* Frederick Stanley Maude (1864 - 1917) was a General who led the successful campaign in World War I to capture Baghdad over the winter of 1917.

* John Beikie (1766 - 1839) was a merchant and political figure in Upper Canada.

* Don Pacifico (1784 - 1854) was a Gibraltar-born Portuguese Jew, most famous for the Pacifico incident, as described in the book Don Pacifico: The Acceptable Face of Gunboat Diplomacy.

* John Montresor (1736 - 1799) – Gibraltar-born military engineer in the British service active in North America, his amorous exploits inspired the best-selling novel Charlotte Temple.

* Gustavo Bacarisas (1873 - 1971) was a Painter.

You can find more books, music, films and other items of popular culture related to Gibraltar by visiting our Gibraltar Online Book and Film Store or exploring the graphic links on the right sidebar here.