migoe44 Reviews

Hotel California: LA from The Byrds to The Eagles (2007 TV Movie)

Good film - pity about the subject matter

[2/10 · 9 January 2009]

My God this is dreadful. Not the production,cinematography etc. As a documentary it's commendable. But the subject matter is just dire. I loved the sixties and the San Fran sound of Jefferson Airplane and the fantastic folk/rock psychedelia both in England and the US. I'm Irish but spent a good part of 1970 in the states trying to find hippy - but I was a year too late. Instead I attended a series of rock festivals where the grass was good but most of the music pure crap. The big thing of that summer was this incredibly dreary , utterly tedious simpleton called James Taylor. Around that time an outrageously overrated LP of suicide-inducing blandness Tapestry from a James Taylor fellow traveler Carol King topped the charts for over a year !! Crosby Stills & Nash looked cool but sang similarly bland tripe. It all culminated with the the kings of mindfrying blandness and mellow crassness the Eagles. A guy called Jackson Brown also contributed his "look at me - I have long hair, write my own lyrics , can strum a guitar soul-lessly ad infinitum ,am trying to find myself" to the general dullness of what apparently was the LA canyon "sound". Worst of all was the freaky sounding Joni Mitchell , a girl with the most unlovely smile and the the weirdest shoulders atop an almost hunchback spine. She is an incredibly awful singer. But the biggest prat of all is the moody shriek himself - Neil Young. If you watch this documentary I dare you to suppress laughter as this idiot self-consciously , pretentiously and with much hair-flicking and dandruff itching informs us that he might be willing to reveal his thoughts in song (if we behave ? ).

I usually love music documentaries and I love rock but the people who inhabit this film made such really bad music that it's pure torture to watch it.

Love in a Cold Climate (2001)

The Joy of watching Rosamund Pike

[10/10 · 29 July 2008]

This is generally brilliant entertainment even if the political bits are clichéd and pointless esp the Spanish War scenes. But Rosamund Pike (as Fanny) is utterly spellbinding . You'll rarely encounter such photogenic beauty on film. The camera adores her and so do I. Some may find this comment lacking in gravitas or even frivolous. But forgive me - I'm in love !!

Of course "Love in a Cold Climate" has more going for it. It's a superb insight into the foibles and eccentricities of that most fortunate of social groupings - the English aristocracy of the inter-war period where fascism masqueraded as inherited privilege.

And the whole period is lavishly recreated and technically superb. Alan Bates is great fun as the sewer hating head of house who makes ingenious use of a bureau drawer to soothe his volatile temper.

But all else matters not a jot. What stands this costume piece apart is the astonishing radiance of the exquisite Rosamund Pike. I wholeheartedly recommend this study of happy English whimsy.