Movies and Music in Maine

The first song by the widely admired shoegaze band Slowdive that I really loved was a remix of “Shine” on the soundtrack of Gregg Araki’s 1999 movie  Splendor . I backtracked from there to Slowdive’s early albums from a decade before, and I’ve also followed founding member Neil Halstead’s solo career since then. So I was excited to see Slowdive in concert for the first time this weekend at the State Theatre here in Portland, Maine, and the show did not disappoint. The demographics of the audience members spanned about forty years, which was also reassuring to confirm that the band’s sound has continued to appeal to listeners of diverse ages all over the country and the world. I sat right up at the top of balcony, directly in the center of the theatre’s speaker system, which was the perfect sonic position for one of the most immersive shows that I’ve ever attended. Slowdive’s sound, a...

I love living just one block away from the beautiful City Theater in downtown Biddeford, Maine, which runs five excellent shows per season. This year, their Christmas production is Irving Berlin’s musical  Holiday Inn , a stage adaptation of the 1942 film that opened on Broadway back in 2016. Directed by Linda Sturdivant, City Theater’s staging of the musical is a spirited celebration of the holiday season, and of all holiday seasons for that matter, given that the songs are basically a revue of our various holidays themselves. The cast members all ably attend to their roles and to the demanding song & dance routines throughout the performance, the most famous of which is “White Christmas.” It’s remained a Christmastime mainstay in American culture for over 80 years now, although our white Christmases have become less reliable and more nostalgic in the face of climate change, even as far north as Maine. I’ve of...

The British filmmaker Andrea Arnold is the most important living director of films that focus on female subjects.  Fish Tank  and  American Honey  (as well as her excellent documentary,  Cow ) solidified her status in that regard, and her latest film  Bird  re-confirms it. The movie is set in north Kent and traces the daily familial challenges and frustrations of Bailey (Nykiya Adams) and her father Bug (Barry Keoghan). Although it's loving, their relationship is also a somewhat fraught and trying one. Bug is about to get re-married, and Bailey refuses to try on the cat-suit that his new wife has had made for her and the other girls to wear at their wedding. Some trans vibes are strongly hinted at early in the film, yet it’s just as likely that Bailey just doesn’t want to be told what to do and resists any hint of authority. Instead, she wants to fit in with the tough guys and scally...

Very rarely these days does a film make every right visual decision for two solid hours, but Steve McQueen’s  Blitz , which focuses on the WWII air raids on London in 1940, does precisely that. As the feats of technical innovation and virtuosity throughout  Blitz  amply prove, McQueen is one of the finest mainstream filmmakers since Spielberg. Saoirse Ronan, radiant as ever, stars as the mother of a young boy named George (played by the truly fantastic Elliott Heffernan), whom she puts on a train to travel to a new school out in the countryside under much duress, as a way of attempting to protect him from the bombs falling all over their city. George has grown up there with her and her father (Paul Weller, in his first feature film role) and is quite reluctant to leave. So he jumps off of the train a short distance into the journey, in order to find his way back to his mother in London, traversing the c...

Since I moved to Maine this fall, I was excited to review a new movie that’s set in Maine for my brand-new, Maine-centric blog.  Lost on a Mountain in Maine  is based on the classic Maine children’s book of the same title by the late Donn Fendler, who died in 2016 at the age of 90. As a boy at age 12 in July of 1939, Fendler was hiking with his father, his twin brother, and their guide on Mount Katahdin in Maine when Donn was separated from his family during a storm on the mountaintop, fell down an embankment, and then was lost for nine days in the dense wilderness of the mountainside. He walked over 80 miles to his rescue, a grueling journey for a 12-year-old boy, and one which he almost did not survive. His endurance and survival have made his tale a highly memorable one for many generations of Mainers ever since that time. For his bravery as a boy, he received the Army and Navy Legion of Valor’s annual me...

I moved to Biddeford near the coast of Maine this past month, after 31 years of living in Boston, and my first post for my new blog about movies & music in Maine is about a local musical quartet right here in town, the wonderful singer/songwriter & guitarist John Redman’s superb band  The Biddeford Beat . Redman worked in public service for years with his wife Marianne in Washington, DC, before retiring here to Biddeford, where Marianne had spent many summers since childhood. One of John’s pursuits in retirement has been writing a fantastic set of folk & jazz-inspired songs that’s available to listen to for free on his website,  thebiddefordbeat.com , along with performing his songs live with vocalist & keyboardist Mesa Schubeck (who teaches music at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine), lead guitarist Patrick Sylvia, and percussionist Joe Beninati. The quartet’s next live show will take place ...