But a movie this laconic needs a stronger center. Perhaps if someone besides Mellencamp had directed, the film (rated PG-13) wouldn’t seem so navel-gazing. The performance is all scruffy posturing. Since the movie is an attempt to chart Bud’s inner turmoil, it’s a definite drawback that Bud doesn’t appear to have any insides. Bob Dylan was a big zero on the screen in his appearance in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” and in his own acting-directing opus “Renaldo and Clara.” Mellencamp doesn’t open himself up to the camera (he also doesn’t do any singing here, although his songs are on the soundtrack). Many singers have made a triumphant transition to acting, including Willie Nelson and Levon Helm, who are roughly in Mellencamp’s territory. Mellencamp, however, is in almost every scene, and he doesn’t provide much ballast. She has that uneasy mixture of fortitude and helplessness that one can see in the jaw-set of celebrity wives. Playing Bud’s watchful, principled wife, Mariel Hemingway starts out dimly but works up to some real emotion. As the Parks clan’s 80-year-old grandpa, Dub Taylor is in riotous, crotchety good spirits. The small-town details, and a number of the performances, including those given by Akins, Lenz and Deirdre O'Connell as Bud’s sister, keep the film humming. He can’t quite believe that all of the tortuous, unresolved feelings he left behind-his suppressed rage toward his loutish, chicken-farm tycoon father (Claude Akins), his lingering love for his high-school flame (Kay Lenz)-remain with him, intact and still unresolved. Success alienates Bud from his family, and from himself. McMurtry is too honest to romanticize the homespun horrors of rural boredom the film is about how Bud Parks (Mellencamp) realizes he can’t go home again, and the realization rings true. The dialogue has an emotional subtext-an undertow of feeling. There’s a sharp, novelistic sense of observation in the way the characters bounce off each other’s time-worn hostilities. “Falling From Grace” (AMC Century 14) is an “original” script but it draws on many of the themes McMurtry has been fiddling with from the beginning. The anomie smacks of McMurtry: not just his novels but several of the movies that have been made from them, such as “Hud” and “The Last Picture Show,” which he co-wrote. Directed by Mellencamp from a script by Larry McMurtry, the result is a curious, wayward blend of small-town anomie and intrigue and hero-worshipping narcissism. Mellencamp is a member of the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame, a recipient of the John Steinbeck Award, ASCAP Foundation’s Champion Award, The Woody Guthrie Award, the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and most recently, the Founders Award, the top honor assigned by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.In “Falling From Grace,” John Mellencamp, one of the leading practitioners of “heartland rock,” stars as a phenomenally successful singer who returns to his Indiana hometown.
JOHN MELLENCAMP MOVIES FULL
The box set will include two CDs of newly remixed and remastered songs, previously unreleased bonus tracks and alternate versions, a booklet full of rare photographs, and all new liner notes by acclaimed author and music critic Anthony DeCurtis. See John Mellencamp perform LIVE at The Morris Performing Arts Center! Presented by longtime promoter AEG Presents and sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, the tour will see 76 shows beginning with two nights in Bloomington, Indiana on February 5 and 6 and concluding with two nights in South Bend, Indiana on June 23 and 24.Ī reissue of Mellencamp’s beloved eighth studio album, Scarecrow, is set for release on November 4 on Mercury/UME.
0 kommentar(er)
