Sing Street (2016)

[Edgy MD]

In hardscrabble mid-eighties Dublin, a schoolboy with a crush, and little in the way of musical training, rallies his mates to start a band, mainly for the purpose of impressing the girl. Hyjinx ensue as the band learns playing and songwriting on the fly, changing styles in cycles that parallel the MTV rotation.

John Carney, latter-day auteur of music-creation stories, directs. I'm heading in tonight. Support your local theaters that are not showing Captain 'Merica!

[fimg=380]http://dl9fvu4r30qs1.cloudfront.net/b6/f8/45ba491b4c9db3775afaaedef4b7/sing-street-poster.jpeg[/fimg]

[Frayed Knot]

Heard good things, but haven't seen it.
And you gotta like that sub-title on the poster: Boy Meets Girl, Girl Unimpressed, Boy Starts Band.

[Frayed Knot]

So part way into this I'm thinking that it's going to be a tale of a dorky kid bouncing from one uncomfortable/awkward situation to another (and I tend to really dislike those movies) but it quickly grew beyond that and turned into a nice little flick.
I take it this director likes making music movies [ONCE, BEGIN AGAIN] which is OK because he's pretty good at them. And you don't even need to be an '80s music geek to enjoy this one.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Guest

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'll never uncover the riddle of the model.

Oh, I really enjoyed this. I knew I recognized the guy who played the father but would never have guessed it was Tommy Carcetti from The Wire!

[MFS62]

I thought this was about a new animated movie about animals engaging in a singing contest. I saw the coming attraction when I went to see another movie earlier this year. Its called Sing, and it looked like fun for the grandkids when it comes out.
I couldn't cut and paste the link to the trailer. Check it out for yourselves.

I don't think I'll see this one.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I knew I recognized the guy who played the father but would never have guessed it was Tommy Carcetti from The Wire!

Also is quite recognizable as Lord Peter 'Littlefinger' Baelish for those Throne of Games fans.
And the part of the mother was played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, who was Natalie, one of the trio of female singers in THE COMMITMENTS, a movie which sadly seems to be out of circulation these days (never on cable, not available through Netflix, etc.).
The women from that movie all seem to have gone into acting afterward but I don't think any of the guys did unless you want to count Glen Hansard and even he just went from a musician playing a musician in one movie to a musician playing a different musician in a different movie.

[Edgy MD]

Nobody in the Baltimore of The Wire is actually American. Fun fact!

[Frayed Knot]

I re-watched THE DROP not long ago, a movie mentioned here recently in one of the threads discussing Tom Hardy.
And while the movie set in a Brooklyn bar did have New Jersey’s own James Gandolfini as a major character, his cousin was played by the quite English Tom Hardy with the other two leads in this very New York movie going to Noomi Rapace of Sweden and the Belgian born Matthias Schoenaerts despite English being at least the third language for each of them.

Man Trump’s right, all these fur’ners are pouring across the borders and stealing all our jobs.

[metirish]

Going to watch this at the weekend

[Edgy MD]

You'll like it, but there's some weird anachronisms. Like, it's 1985, and it's Dublin, and everybody's caught up in an economic decline that is mirrored in a decline of the family, the culture, the church, and all sorts of societal institutions. And that reads as authentic. And escaping the economic trap generally means escaping to England or points beyond. And that's authentic too.

But ... it's 1985. In Dublin. And U2 isn't mentioned once. And if nothing else was preserving Ireland's cultural identity in 1985, especially among youth, it was the message from U2 and others that music was happening right then and there among them. Musicians were the ones that didn't need to go abroad to find a future. Hell, with the Waterboys and the Pogues and even Bob Fucking Dylan, musicians were coming to Ireland to make music. And record labels were scouting the hell out of the country looking for native talent. In Tua Nua! Something Happens!

I salute John Carney and the vein of gold he has found, but he seems to have a bit of a stick up his ass. Maybe he hates U2—and he wouldn't be the first—but they are unavoidably part of his story, and somehow he avoids them. Not only does he fail to give them even a mealy-mouthed acknowledgement, but he throws a minor hissy whenever somebody makes a comparison between his film and The Commitments. He himself was a member of The Frames in the early nineties, and I get the notion that he was one of the thousand Dublin musicians who auditioned for The Commitments and still holds a grudge because he didn't get cast.

But The Commitments clearly remains as an obvious reference point for the film, as does a handful of eighties school torment films like My Bodyguard and Heaven Help Us, among others. Good films.