Coming Distractions July 29th, 2008

New next Tuesday:

Band's Visit
Doomsday
Surfwise
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Rolling Stones: Shine a Light

If after watching Shine a Light you wish to know more intimately what it would have been like to adore Mick Jagger in person, rather than from afar, I suggest you find a copy of Jerry Hall's Tall Tales. While not necessarily a well-written book, I justify my plug on this movie-oriented blog for the book because this dishy piece of mid-80's memorabilia also contains an anecdote about the ill-fated attempt to film Jagger in the Amazon for Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.



Speaking of Werner Herzog, the man has directed some laudable movies, several stunning documentaries (try Grizzly Man for a quirky and tragic tale of one man's incurable love for grizzly bears or Land of Silence and Darkness for intense and unforgettable stories of several incredible people who are both deaf and blind), and Herzog has even eaten his own shoe - he was following through on a promise he made to consume his footwear if Errol Morris were to ever finish his first film, the documentary Gates of Heaven.


But if you don't want to watch any of Herzog's documentary, or even any of those by Errol Morris, you might consider renting any of these variously eccentric, funny, fascinating, moving true stories:

Home Movie
Rats
King of Kong
How to Draw a Bunny
Pumping Iron & Pumping Iron 2: The Women
I Like Killing Flies
The Staircase
Tarnation
Benjamin Smoke

Or if you don't want to see any of those, you could just rent Spaced because it's the best thing from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to be released on DVD in America since Hot Fuzz (which is to say, it was the next thing to be released from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost since Hot Fuzz.)