Monday, February 23, 2009

Southern Movie Fest

My friend J.J. paid a visit to Winston-Salem for a couple days and we took the opportunity to blaze through a slew of southern movies -- most of which I hadn't seen before.
  • To get the Southern moviefest started, we popped in Junebug -- one of my favorite movies of all time. It was on the top five list even before I discovered that it was filmed in Winston-Salem (apparently a number of other movies have been shot in part in Winston-Salem, ranging from Leatherheads to Thank You For Smoking).

  • After this, we went old school and watched Gone With The Wind. I had never watched it before, and now I am all the more confident that I will never have to watch it again. After almost four hours, if I have to hear Scarlet say "Oh, Ashley!" one more time I might have to kill myself.

  • Next up we watched Deliverance, the point of which seems to be either (a) a cautionary tale to avoid canoeing down rivers in the south, (b) an opportunity to show Bruce Reynolds shirtless, shooting things with a bow and arrow, or (c) an attempt to make people feel a twinge of fear whenever they hear "Dueling Bangos."

  • Not done yet, we shifted to Fried Green Tomatoes. Interestingly, I think this marked the second movie that I've seen with Kathy Bates swinging a sledgehammer. This movie was a little less scary than the first, but after viewing this one I will nonetheless probably find myself hesitating a bit before digging into the food at my next barbecue.

4 comments:

Lucy said...

No Steel Magnolias? No Sweet Home Alabama?

Let me know when you want the lineup for Southern FilmFest, Part Deux.

vergelimbo said...

June Bug is a great film...If you pay attention you'll see many of the extras at Krankies
You should try "All the Real Girls" directed by NCSA grad Gordon Scott Green...it reminded me of the southern adoloescence I did not have.
Also, "Being There" I think was partly filmed in Crunchyville -at the Biltmore estate.

Unknown said...

The only thing worse than "Oh Ashley!" is having to listen to Melanie Wilkes warble, "Scaaaaaaarlett." Haha! I'll have you know that's a great feat of cinematic achievement that you just pooh poohed there!

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just saw Deliverance this week for the first time. I thought the whole thing was scary as hell, but good. I think the point of it was to create an overall creepy feel - and that includes via Burt Reynolds' clothes.