Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Montana movies ...

As you know by now, I'm pretty intrigued by the subject of Montana movies ... either films about the state, or ones that were shot here. There's quite a list in both of those categories, and I'm a long ways from having seen most of them.

I was thinking about this partly because a friend recently pointed me to a grassroots poll being conducted by fans of the Montana Committee for the Humanities -- a Montana Movie Tournament. There are 32 films on the voting list, a fairly motley cross-section of movies. Some were actually filmed in the state, others only set here. The list includes documentaries, small independent films, and the usual big-budget classics that are sure to dominate the vote. Overall, I thought it was a little disappointing.

Nonetheless, they've constricted the beginning to a Montana movie list -- it's got some of my favorites, some that I've really been meaning to see (or see again), and even a couple of recent documentaries that I can't wait to watch. (Sweetgrass and Prodigal Sons are both in the latter category.) So the list is worth a look.

I think I'll devote the next few posts to a few of the more offbeat Montana movies on the list ... and then maybe I'll construct a list of my own someday.

2 comments:

  1. Amazed at how many of the films from the list I've seen...a few can't be got from Netflix, but I've added those that are available.

    Can't say that I agree with the leader-board.

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  2. Yeah, I've disagreed with a number of the votes so far, too ... and though I wouldn't have voted for it, I'm surprised that A River Runs Through It didn't make it to the finals. (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance wasn't filmed in Montana, and I don't think even mentions the state, so I would have disqualified it from the start.)

    My favorites on that list are mostly the oddball independent films, the ones that a lot of people probably haven't even heard of ... so I definitely wasn't expecting my choices to get very far!

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