In my holiday writeup I mentioned I’d watched Factory Girl whilst I was away. As my viewing time is currently largely taken up with the World Cup, I thought I’d better write something about Factory Girl before I forget.
30th May – Factory Girl – Factory girl tells the story of Edie Sedgwick, but also of Andy Warhol, and a mysterious character called “The Musician” (more about him later). It’s a biopic, which as far as I can tell does a fairly good job of portraying the late 60s, and which I certainly found enjoyable enough. I watched this on holiday, and so didn’t do my normal trick of seeing who was in the film, and what else they had been in. When I got to the credits I was a little surprised (in a good way) to see Guy Pearce (as Andy Warhol) and Hayden Christiansen (as “The Musician”) listed, as I’d not recognised either of them (which I always regard as a good thing). I was also not at all surprised to read the disclaimer that whilst this was a biopic, some characters and scenarios might be made up. The character of “The Musician” was very obviously meant to be Bob Dylan, and I think the only think I would change about this film is to soundtrack it with Dylan’s music (and also the music of the Velvet Underground who feature to a lesser extent). It’s a pity Dylan didn’t want his name associated with this film, because it’s actually well worth watching and made me want to tap into his back catalogue again (which I did as soon as I got home). I have no idea how accurate some of the scenes in the film were, but as a story it really works, and it was certainly more thought provoking than the sort of thing I usually watch on holiday.
Which brings me on to…
8th June – Avengers Assemble – A lot has already been said about this film, and I don’t have much to add. It does what is says on the tin, and was a couple of hours of mindless enjoyment on a Sunday afternoon. I suspect I should have watched a few other films in the series before this one, but I’m glad I did it this way round because I now have a better idea of which characters I want to explore further (Captain America, The Hulk) and which ones leave me cold (Iron Man, Thor, pretty much everyone else). I suspect several people I know really love this film, but I also suspect the same people would balk at a lot of films I really value. I don’t see this as a bad thing though, as it’s good to be surrounded by people with diverse tastes as it ensures that I’m exposed to a much wider range of things I may never have discovered otherwise.
I was also toying with a couple more projects this morning. The idea of trying to watch (live or pre-recorded) every single match of the World Cup sort of appeals, as does writing something around the Blue Note channel on Spotify, which has a huge catalogue of old jazz records that I’ve never heard and really want to explore properly at some point. I’ve created Evernote notes for both of these, so something may happen at some point.