Movies and Books

Well I did see The Devil and Daniel Johnston last night and I have to say that it was an excellent movie. Daniel Johnston is an artist and musician who is very highly regarded in certain music circles. He is incredibly prolific, recording about 30 albums in his 25 year career and making several hundred drawings. He is also manic-depressive with delusions about God. It was a very interesting, poignant and at times funny documentary about his life which was culled from the several hundred audio tapes along with the several movies that he made chronicling his life. The filmmaker also interviewed Daniel's friends and families and used several of his performances that had been filmed. I really liked this movie and will buy it when it comes out on DVD.

Tonight was our book club meeting and we talked about Thank You for Smoking. While it was generally liked, it was very definitely not high art and it was very definitely lacking in character development. We did talk about the fact that the movie is coming out very soon and we may go to see it together. The book for next month was a book that I chose (Woo Hoo!) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Now hopefully it's pretty good.