Had a wonderful time with new Bridget Jones yesterday; did not expect it to be so emotional! Less fun with Becoming Led Zeppelin, which was an incredible, sanitised drag.
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Coming back to this to add, I love music docs, even (especially?) middle-of-the-road boomer-ass/hippie-era rock docs. I'm very forgiving of them. And even for me, I found the Led Zep doc so infuriatingly tasteless. No sense of the band as people, nothing about their notorious hedonism. SO boring.
Don't get me wrong, I hardly expected an exposé of them being awful to groupies. (Those stories are hair-raising....) But this exec-produced-by-the-band thing is a total disease in this instance. A few moments of thrill simply from Robert Plant being Robert Plant onstage, but that was...not enough!
Anyway: go see Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. You will laugh, you will cry your little eyes out, you will see many shirtless men, you will see Hugh Grant supervise the making of several cocktails & being a huge slut. Now that's cinema!
I knew it was silly to expect the docs to be a warts and all tale a la that documentary on The Eagles but the moment I saw the teasers I knew this was going to make a Behind the Music episode look like hard hitting television.
Genuinely. Saw it on a whim at the local cinema cause we have one of those 'limitless' monthly passes, thinking it would be fun w/ a beer. Was genuinely so annoyed & bored when it was done. Have you seen that recent Yacht Rock doc though? That is the antithesis of this, joyful & funny & self-aware.
I like when the focus is more on the music (I think it’s genuinely interesting in digging into how Page and Jones’ session work in particular primed them to know exactly what they wanted and how to produce it, but the b-roll footage of contemporary events is laughable and the stories sanded down
I tried to appreciate the fact it zeroed in on the granular musical stuff - and some of it was interesting - but I didn't really feel like it told me much in terms of their song-writing *really*? It felt so cold and technical without any of the human element, other than Page's shrewdness & knowhow.
You’re never going to get them to sit down and open up about the mud shark incident or Page’s horrific teen relationship but by the same token it’s like, embarrassing to let Plant speak about casually cheating on his pregnant wife like it’s just some wistful hippie trip, man
I just kept thinking about the story of them putting a groupie in a hotel bathtub with a live electric eel for a laugh, and leaving her there for hours.
Ah. I didn't actually know about the mud shark thing, googled it, and wonder if the story I heard was a version of this story or something. Either way: fucking gross ffs now I wish I hadn't looked it up
Music cues were kinda on the nose and told you "this is a goofy, silly scene" or "this is a tender, emotional scene" but yeah. Didn't expect to cry, like, 3 times at a Bridget Jones movie on my TV. The balloons! I am not made of stone, over here!
Sure, it's not perfect. But it really had me by the throat nonetheless. Zellwegger is worth her weight in gold, just a real 1930s-style ballsy goofy romantic heroine.
yes! She's so essentially **root-able-for** and lights up the screen just by the things playing across her face that all those other concerns become secondary.
But still! If it were just a little better directed, with less of a spoon-feeding manner, it would have been GREAT.
Similarly to when Mark Harmon played Ted Bundy, for YEARS after, I couldn't see him in stuff without thinking "RUN AWAY! DON'T TRUST HIM!" Woodall was so good at being charming but then switching to sinister in WHITE LOTUS, I feared for her whenever he was in frame.
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Jehovas Witnesses are known to be reluctant to engage outside their own truths. I don't honestly know how many in his family are JW.
But still! If it were just a little better directed, with less of a spoon-feeding manner, it would have been GREAT.
Similarly to when Mark Harmon played Ted Bundy, for YEARS after, I couldn't see him in stuff without thinking "RUN AWAY! DON'T TRUST HIM!" Woodall was so good at being charming but then switching to sinister in WHITE LOTUS, I feared for her whenever he was in frame.