Sundance Review: The Guitar

If you were diagnosed with a terminal disease, what's the first thing you'd think of? Would it be your friends? Your family? Your Amazon.com wish list? If it's the latter, then The Guitar is the movie for you -- and only you. It's The Bucket List retooled for bourgeois bohemians, and despite its Sundance trappings (and pedigree -- director Amy Redford is Robert's daughter), it's every bit as phony.

Office drone Melody Wilder (Saffron Burrows) has just been hit with a whammy: she's got inoperable cancer, and only a month to live. For most people, that would be enough of a jolt, but in the next scene after her diagnosis, Melody is fired (wouldn't she have quit anyway?) and in the scene right after that, her drippy boyfriend breaks up with her. Poor ol' Mel is so unlucky that you half-expect her to be shipped out to Iraq next, but instead, she finally snaps and moves into a gorgeous loft, determined to live life to its fullest before she doesn't have any of it left to live anymore.

While Jack and Morgan's bucket list had generic tasks to cross off like "see the pyramids" and "laugh til I cry," mousy Melody is suddenly struck with the aspirations of an Orange County sorority girl. Wouldn't it be soooo shocking, she thinks, to bang the black delivery guy (Isaach De Bankolé) or kiss a girl (Paz de la Huerta)? Still, neither assignation fulfills Melody like maxing out her credit cards and embarking on a movie-long shopping spree (certainly the most morose, "I'm gonna die" shopping montage the film world has ever seen). According to Redford, there may be no better medicine than the Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog, nor any wound that can't be healed by a floor set from Jonathan Adler. Though others might spend their last days living, Melody spends hers spending -- and its the audience that's left with nothing to show for it but empty pockets.

Comments

[George Kennedy]

this reviewer is obviously a frustrated filmmaker turned critic, rejected and criticized so many times himself, that he needs to pass along all the slings and arrows to successful a. The film is beautiful!

[mark]

Tel: 0151 637 2492 Mr Mark Vega
Flat 3
113 Rowson Street
New Brighton
Wallasey
CH45 2LZ

Karen Magee
Chief Executive Officer
PlanetOut, Inc.
1355 Sansome Street
San Francisco
CA 94111
USA

9/4/08

Dear Miss Magee,

I contacted Michael Matson at one of your magazines called Freshmen in September, 2007, and requested the return of my photo shoot that your company did not return to me and had no right to retain, after the model in it was published in a November, 1994 issue of Freshmen, as no buy out agreement was signed in relation to the photo shoot, and to make maters worse your company also printed a picture from the photo shoot which was a violation of my copyright. Michael Matson ignored my e-mails after a few months, and did not keep me updated on the status of his search for my photo shoot, which he could not locate. It was only after I uploaded a web page regarding this matter that your company took my request seriously; David Dempsey (Managing Director Specialty Publications, Inc.) then undertook to do an extensive search to locate the shoot, after searching for them they could only locate 14 cromes from the set. I have contacted him via e-mail and left messages on his answer phone, but he has failed to my e-mails or return my calls. The last time I spoke to him he was reluctant to return my cromes, and did not even give me a reason for his decision.

I have now sent David Dempsey a letter dated 7/4/08 that states the level of compensation that I require for the loss of my photo shoot. I will be taking legal action in the Superior Court to recover the funds due.

In the past I have had to deal with a number of gay owned companies, but I have never come across a company that is so badly run and amateurish in its approach to photographers. I believe this is partly reflected in the very low share price that your company is currently trading at, and could even be an indication of systemic failures of corporate governance.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Vega