not much high art of late i’m afraid. we watched “shrek 2” a few nights ago and last night we watched “friday night lights”. “shrek 2” is entertaining enough–jennifer saunders and rupert everett are great, as are eddie murphy (of course) and antonio banderas. i find it funny that even in animation voiceover the black guy still plays the sidekick. but there’s not much else to say about this. don’t do what i did and watch “faraway idol” with simon cowell on the dvd extras.
we thought “friday night lights” was really quite good. it is a genre film through and through, and towards the end the conventions take over to a large extent but it is fairly affecting stuff–much closer to “hoop dreams” than to something like “varsity blues”. there’s some weird stuff with race towards the end and in general the film skips over dealing with the question of race in a small texas town in the late 80s but still worth a watch. the dvd extra interviews with the actual now grown-up players (this is very closely based on real events, or rather a non-fiction book about real events) are quite moving in parts, as you see what became of the guy who when the movie starts out seems destined for nfl stardom.