O brother, where art thou?

                                                    Baptism in the creek 

 As entertainment goes, there are just a few gems back in the 1990s. There were some we will always remember those gems. This one is a definite. Each video is about 3 minutes long, fast forward. 
 

                                                            O Brother, where art thou?

                                Our favorite quotes from the movie, non-sequential:
 

         Ulysses:  Damn, boys!  We’re in a   tight spot! (This our is my favorite  line; my husband and I say it to each other many times. 

Ulysses: Damn it!  I’m a Dapper Dan man.  (Dapper Dan is a pomade used by men of that period. Ulysses was so vain that he even wore a hairnet at night.)

         Delmar: Them syreens did this to Pete.  They loved him up and turned him into a horny toad.

                                                        The Sirens were enticing.

Ulysses: I was not hit by a train. Dammit, I am the paterfamilias!

 (Mother told the line of 6 or more daughters that he was killed by a train.)

                                                        Moral fiber

Pappy O’Donnell:  Moral fiber?  I invented moral fiber! ( Pappy was played by the late Charles Durning.)

                                                A Secret Society

Note:  The writers, producers and directors are Joel and Ethan Coen.
The music is pure blue-grass, memorable and superb.
  
The over-all plot lines are a loose parallel to the ancient adventures of Odysseus. Loose to very loose. Word has it that the Coen brothers never read the real Homer play, but instead read the Yellow Cliff-Notes, so beloved and used by many students.

I never ever used them.  Seriously. I am a reader.

Basically, try to see this film.
  
I am very picky about movies I will watch and appreciate.  My husband, on the other hand, will watch just about anything.  We have conflicts.

I will having surgery on my left thumb joint. Only God knows how long healing takes!  I will post some old writing (which you may or may not have seen) and I hope you write comments.There is precious little to do.   

Fake the Frets

Source

I know, I know--you are probably wondering why I have called you all here. This is why:

You are watching a great movie and one of the characters decides to play a musical instrument.  Maybe it is a guitar.  Or a banjo.  A violin or a piano.  Just some musical instrument. 

Suddenly this actor starts to play some awesome, technically interesting music.  Enthralled you watch as he/she plays away, and you wish that you could play like that. 

Well, hold on a minute, pilgrim. 

Maybe you can.  If you look very carefully at the movements of the hands, arms, and fingers, you will see something: 

The actor is faking the frets.

With the piano, the camera can cut away and film some talented pianist take over the keyboard.  But with a stringed instrument?  It is impossible to ‘act’ the changing of the fingers on the strings. 

This has become a real issue with me, as you can tell.  While there are several movies from which to choose, the two that have disappointed me are “Songcatcher” and “O Brother! Where Art Thou?”.  Both are excellent movies with music as the key focus of the movie. 

In "Songcatcher", a professor of musicology at the turn of the 20th century sets about to document the songs of the Appalachian Mountains.  In this segment, singer Iris DeMent (Rose Gentry) does a cameo appearance. Awesome performance.  Muse Watson is a fine (one of my favorites) actor playing her husband Parley Gentry playing the violin.  But, he is not. 

Muse Watson with Iris DeMent in "Songcatcher": source

More information about "Songcatcher" can be found here.

Iris DeMent singing Pretty Saro from Songcatcher

 Then there is "O Brother! Where Art Thou?"  Another excellent movie, by the Cohen Brothers, based on The Odyssey.  I really wanted the actors to be actually singing.

The guitarist looks like he does an incredible job, but he is not the guitarist we hear.  Actually these are the musicians as per Wikipedia: "The original band soon became popular after the film release, and the country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film, such as John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Sharp, and others, joined together to perform the music from the film in a Down from the Mountain concert tour which was filmed for TV and DVD.^[5]" Perhaps I am disappointed because over the years, I have endowed these actors with super-normal talents. I have assumed that they can sing, dance, play an instrument, talk coherently without a script, have a degree of intelligence, or are able to behave well.  Obviously I am wrong on many counts.. While this is a rant, and I know it, I just wanted to see if anyone else finds Faking the Frets disappointing?