“Wow its been 3 months, almost to the day, since I last posted. Guess my summer ended up being crazier than I expected. But Jesus Christ Superstar was struck last night, bringing my extra curricular commitments back down to zero. I was able to get all of my big summer must movies in, but didnt really get any indies or maybes. At least I was watching shit because I really wanted to (since I had to make the time for it) and not because I felt obligated.
Moving on. The Town. First thing to note: Boston movie! yay! And extremely well done on the Boston-ness. Yes most of it was based in Charlestown, but there was much quality footage of Boston itself. It wasn’t one of those “”oh yeah we’re in Boston”” but really they’re in some obscure area of the city, or “”I swear this is Boston”” but they’re really filming in Canada *cough**cough*Fringe*cough** Especially loved that a good 30 min of the film was in the Fenway area, just blocks away from my apartment and blocks away from the theater I was watching the film in. Those are streets I walk down almost every day. And the image of Jon Hamm surrounded by Red Sox banners was beautiful. Okay, so that picture doesnt do it much justice, but this adopted Bostonian was quite happy.
The one thing that did make me kinda sad about the whole Fenway thing is I remembered how pissed I was on a random Monday morning that fall when they were filming. Why? The first thing I read on Boston.com that tragic day was how they’d spent the whole \m/ weekend shooting down the street from me, and I \m/ missed the whole thing?! Although that’s not as bad as how one of my co-workers missed out on the film. I’d read one day (also on Boston.com) that they were looking for locals, preferably with Boston accents, to be extras. So I told this buddy of mine, and he showed up to the cattle call. He was all excited that you could see him for half a second on this news clip about it. A few weeks go by and he doesnt hear anything. Then one day I get to work and the guy is in a mood. Apparently they called him on his work number (sad child doesnt own a cell phone) at 4:45 the day before that they needed him that day…he had left at 4:30 and got the message too late. I still tease him about this.
Enough Boston nostalgia, what did I think of the actual movie? To be honest, Im still in a bit of a sleep deprived state (hell, I went to sleep at 5 AM after striking JCS last night) so Im not exactly gonna be the best judge of such things this time. I did enjoy it though. Very interesting character piece with some good acting. Ben Affleck has definitely turned his reputation around since he moved behind the scenes a bit more. Again, maybe just biased on the whole Boston thing, but I do think directing suits him as did his role in the film. It definitely felt very personal, like he put a lot of himself into it. Loved Jeremy Renner, although part of me still always thinks of him as Penn on Angel for that one random episode. And its great to see Jon Hamm as not Don Draper. Very psyched to see him in more films in the future. As far as the gals, Rebecca Hall just rocks and I didnt even recognize Blake Lively until I remembered she was in it. Her accent was a bit hard to understand, though.
Okay so no real meat to this write up. Sorry, hafta get back in teh swing of things. But the plan is to go back to my hard ass rule of writing up everything I see in the theater. Debating whether or not to start up another side project. Definitely got somethign in mind, but gotta work my way through my movie queue first. All the TV DVD’s that get released just before the fall season starts are piled up pretty high on my little table. We’ll discuss this again once I knock that down a bit
The Town – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n