Latest Movie Rental: Once
February 29, 2008
It’s 10:45 PM on Friday night, but I’m staying up to write this blog post because I liked the movie I just saw that much.  The movie is entitled Once and stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.  You may recognize the name because it won an Oscar the other night for best original song, beating out three songs from that stupid Enchanted movie (thank goodness).  When Marketa’s acceptance speech was cut off by the “Oscar music”, John Stewart had her come back out after the commercial break and do her speech.  It was a nice moment.
Frankly the likability of the two stars in their acceptance speeches is what drove me to see the movie.  In this day and age, I’ve grown incredibly tired of the same old Hollywood bull crap.  It was nice to see two humble people up on that stage.  It was nice to see something different.  So tonight at Blockbuster, my wife picked up Once, and I wholeheartedly agreed on the rental choice, a rare occasion.
Once is the story of a struggling Dublin street musician and a poor Czech immigrant that make a connection through their music.  In some ways it was reminiscent of Lost in Translation in that it was a story of two people that find something in each other that they’re missing alone.  In contrast to Lost in Translation, however, the main characters in Once have much more in common than did Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson.  On the other hand, the two movies ended in a very similar fashion.
The movie is one of the best films I’ve seen in awhile.  I suggest you get your butt over to Blockbuster and rent it if you haven’t already.
March 4, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Are you going soft on us? Perhaps you should change the caption in your blog to read “A mid-twenties, panty-wearing (the one’s his mother laid out for him) white collar dude’s take on everything.” Seriously though, I may check out Once; there are some very good foreign films out there and this sounds like one of them. And speaking of Scarlett Johannson, don’t let your wife talk you into seeing “The Other Boleyn Girl”-not that I would know……