Almost Famous

#212 at time of writing.

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."

For me, this film is about what we do and what we say when our defences are down. And this film is about those rare wonderful times when we're surrounded by friends and there's nothing to do but have fun. Those times that you want to last forever - but they don't. However hard you try, real life gets in the way. Jealousy, guilt, responsibility.

Actually, this film isn't really about either of those things, it's about ROCK AND ROLL.

Nobody can fail to fall in love with Penny Lane (pictured, played by Kate Hudson); the scene that did it for me was after William Miller tells her that the band leader sold her for 50 bucks and a crate of beer. She smiles as she cries, and asks "What kind of beer?" Such beautiful vulnerability! Such optimistic willingness to fly in the face of real life! Such sadness!

The film is semi-autobiographical for Cameron Crowe, who started off as a reporter for Rolling Stone. That adds a level of the most genuine kind of sentimentality, in a way that makes you want to have been a teenager in 1973. And the film is littered with in-jokes and nods to bands.

It has a tear-jerkingly uplifting twist at the end, and the whole film is so optimistic and full of great music that you can't help but fall in love with it.

I almost forgot - one brilliant scene deserves a mention: the band leader being cowed by William Miller's mum (mom, I guess, as we're in America) speaking on the phone. I laughed so hard! "Your mom kinda freaked me out."

Oh - and the groupie running into the wall! Yes, this is a great film.