(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I’ve been knocked down by the flu this week, but last week I spent time in Austin Texas visiting my sister and attending some sort of odd male fertility ritual called a “bachelor party” or something like that. I think I may have attended a few more of those when I was younger, but I’m not entirely sure.
Anywhoo, a trip to Austin always means a trip to the Alamo Drafthouse for yours truly to see a flick. The Alamo is an Austin institution that serves a full menu of food and a full bar and goes out of their way to show off beat movies with fun themes. Hong Kong action movies, spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation, vampire women in prison movies, whatever. Just before I moved to Phoenix they sponsored an all day canoe trip with free beer and free pig sandwiches, and an outdoor screening of Deliverance on the shore. For The Big Lebowski, they served White Russians, stopped the movie midway to have a mock joint-rolling contest, and took everyone bowling after the movie.
You get the idea.
The movies I saw last week- Anvil: The Story of Anvil and Zombieland.
Anvil is a fun little movie, basically Spinaltap meets midlife crisis. The movie is filled with Spinaltap references, even going so far as to have one of the main characters named “Rob Reiner.”
Basically, Anvil were the “demigods of Canadian speed metal” back in the 1980s. Sadly, such a status did little more than to earn them the admiration of some of the metal groups that made piles of money back in the day. Now working class joes, the movie chronicles their attempt at a comeback, which will RAWK!!! if, you know, they can get anyone to remember who they are and get the bar owner to actually pay them for playing.
Good stuff.
Very rarely however do you find a movie as well suited to the Alamo as Zombieland.
I laughed
I cried
It became a part of me.
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