songbirds

We were scheduled to see "Wrestling with Angles," a documentary about Tony Kushner. We showed up two hours in advance. It was freezing in a way I know little about having come from southern California. My body was aching, my feet were becoming useless blocks. Although both Alex and I love Tony Kushner to death, we opted for "Songbirds"... it started forty five minutes earlier, and we figured that something about Tony Kushner would be something that we could find later on. We didn't know anything about it, but even if I had I really doubt I would have known what to expect.

"Songbirds" (click for more info) is, if you can believe it, a documentary musical about women in prison in the UK. Yeah. It opened an a women named Mary, and known as "Scary" Mary. She had first been imprisoned at the age of 15 years old. Being 35 now she speculated on whether or not she's spent more then 2 years out of prison in the years since. Somewhere in her story a beat began to bump. Then, "Scary" Mary began her rap. After a few minutes of the awful cinematography, and the ridiculous music, I looked to Alex in fear. I began to think that a documentary musical about prison women wasn't such a hot idea.

Luckily that was by far of the worst of it. None of the music in the film was anything I'd listen to outside of the piece, and I still want badly to kill the cinematographer, but the women and their stories were amazing. It really was an interesting film. I don't think that it will ever find it's ways to movie theatres, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but I wasn't disappointed. Definitely something different.