Sunday, June 24, 2012

Gheorghe Goes to the Movies

Joy is a powerful thing, and one of our favorite themes. A great many of the posts found in this festival of filler can be boiled down to our search for things that make us happy. It's within this context that I offer my wholehearted recommendation for the new Emmett Malloy film, Big Easy Express.

The movie chronicles an eight-day, six-city tour from Oakland, CA to New Orleans, LA undertaken by folk-pop-country bands Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The twist: the bands and their considerable road crews and entourages traveled the entire journey by rail on a vintage train.

Perhaps it was the uniqueness of the trip, or the bands' shared musical lineage. Maybe the romance of the circumstance or the near-universal dedication to musicianship. Or it could have been the rabid, passionate fans that showed up at each railstop concert venue. Whatever the manifold reasons, the camaraderie and almost awestruck glee of the participants dominated the film, as tangible and present as the massive thunderhead that serves as a visual backdrop to the Zeros' set in Marfa, Texas.


Big Easy Express Official Trailer from S2BN Films on Vimeo.

As you might imagine, music dominates the movie, with vivid and energetic live performances by each band and intimate trainboard jam sessions between and amongst the bands. Among my favorite moments is a scene where Zeros' violinist Nora Kirkpatrick sits in on a jam with Old Crow and learns the latter's song in a matter of moments, playing along as if she'd known it for years.

Concert video has been done to death, but the directors' use of multiple angles, speeds, and film styles bring something new to 'Express'. Old Crow do a killer version of 'Wagon Wheel', a song Bob Dylan started and they finished. The Mumfords' live version of their hit, 'The Cave' features the Stephen F. Austin High School Marching band in one of the movie's most affecting and moving scenes. And the finale, which features all three bands in an impossible spirited version of Woody Guthrie's 'This Train is Bound for Glory', is an all-timer. Hard not to leave the theater without a big ol' smile on your face.

I took my 10 year-old daughter to the show, which screened as part of the annual SilverDocs festival in Silver Spring, MD. To my slight surprise, she was by far the youngest person in the audience, which made me feel both like the coolest dad in the room, and the dumbest. But aside from the uncensored version of the Mumfords' 'Little Lion Man', everything about this movie is something I want my kids to see and feel - the joy of doing something you love with people you dig is what we should all get to experience.

15 comments:

  1. Pretty cool. Will have to check it out. Reminds me of the documentary Festival Express, which chronicled a train ride across Canada 40 years ago featuring the Dead, The Band, Janis Joplin, and others. Pretty cool as well.

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  2. Next week rob will take his kids to see Boogie Nights.

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  3. Or The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight viewing.

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  4. my first day of marathon training consisted of a 10-mile run followed a few hours later by daydrinking. i could get used to this.

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  5. Italy's keeper has a green jersey and englands is wearing red? Shouldnt it be the other way around?

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  6. This man suffered a mild heart attck today.

    Who is Alex Trebek?

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  7. zman, you all fired up for today's scotus decisions?

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  8. guess everybody's pretty engrossed by the arizona immigration ruling, huh?

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  9. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they write these opinions.

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  10. No special post to celebrate Danny Ferry's new job in Atlanta?

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  11. knock yourself out - we heart guesties

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  12. this movie sounds like more fun than the one i am working on . . . it's called "stalker" and it's a russian sci-fi film from the late seventies that is almost three hours long. so far, two hours in, nothing has happened.

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  13. and go italia. best game ever to watch in a bar at the start of summer vacation. overtime means extra drinking time.

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  14. Shlara guestie now posted...

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  15. Your use of joyful is so accurate! I saw Big Easy Express at Hot Docs in Toronto two months ago and it was easily my favorite film of the 8 docs that I saw. I was really taken by Alex Ebert so went to se Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros a few weeks later while in DC. Sadly, he admitted he was very tired and the live concert experience did not live up to the film.

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