The Last Waltz

Since Desperate Housewives (yes, I enjoy it) was a repeat, I watched The Last Waltz instead. This is Martin Scorsese's documentary of The Band's final concert, at San Francisco's Winterland, and arguably the finest concert film ever. I just got the Scorsese box set of which this is a part, last week, and didn't really want to start with a lesser work like Boxcar Bertha tonight. It's a beautifully shot film, which really says a lot about Scorsese's intelligence and work ethic, as he was asked to do this mere weeks before the concert was held. A featurette on the dvd shows the storyboards he did for each song, as well as explaining the other elements that went into making this a real film and not just a filmed concert. If you don't know The Band's music, or even just know moderate hits like "The Weight", "Up On Cripple Creek" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," you really owe it to yourself to hear more. Just a fantastically talented group of multi-instrumentalists who almost all could sing, too. I'm partial to Rick Danko's anguished vocals, but Richard Manuel and Levon Helm are great, too. In fact, it made me want to track down some of Rick's solo albums, as well as the non-Robbie Robertson Band albums from the 90s, which are apparently quite good and not the cynical reunion effort of many bands.

Barely scraped by with finishing page one of Irregular Joe #3, like two panels or something. Just too distracted by the movie. However, after it was over I did add more to my outline for The Solution, including some additional scenes that develop the subplots at the same time as they move the plot and reverberate the symbolic elements. More than anything else I've attempted, this story is really dense with visual signifiers that foreshadow and echo. Swords, statues, trees, falling debris, rivers, and teeth are all important, and I'm delighted that they seem to recur in different ways without my always planning it that way. I do think I will have to give some more thought to the first issue now, which I'd considered mostly written but now may need more polishing to get some of these elements in there from the start.

Oh, bought the rice/veggie steamer today, and will probably use it tomorrow. Had a nice conversation with Marc Mason as well, of www.marcmason.com and his column at www.moviepoopshoot.com.