A couple of news items of note about some recent rock documentaries that are well worth your time, starting with Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, a fascinating account of the legendary power-pop cult band, which this blog reviewed when it was screened at the South by Southwest Music Festival last year.
The film by Drew DeNicola and Oliva Mori now has been picked up by the respected indie distributor Magnolia Pictures. The directors and producers “have done a terrific job capturing the amazing story of one of the greatest bands of the 1970s, recreating a truly special time and place in music history,” Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles said in a release. “Big Star fans will rejoice.”
Indeed. A theatrical release is planned for later this year.
Brain-cell-slaughtering though these pursuits may have been, I am not too much of a movie snob to admit that I have taken some pleasure from the mindless Bradley Cooper farces The Hangover and The Hangover Part II, and more than once, albeit on evenings when there just wasn’t anything else on cable. What’s more, I’ll not only confess to getting sucked in to the occasional Lifetime movie—who doesn’t enjoy a good tale of a spouse done wrong seeking bloody revenge or a crippled skier struggling to come back to the land of the living?—but to actually looking forward to Rob Lowe starring in Prosecuting Casey Anthony, which premieres on that channel on Jan. 19.
