Songcatcher | 
| Director: Maggie Greenwald
Actors: Janet Mcteer, Michael Davis, Michael Goodwin, Greg Russell Cook, Jane Adams
Studio: Lions Gate
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $8.35
You Save: $6.63 (44%)
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Rating:  138 reviews
Sales Rank: 25134
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 109 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: VMMD8344D
ISBN: 1588177963
UPC: 031398834427
EAN: 9781588177964
ASIN: B000092T3Z
Theatrical Release Date: 2000
Release Date: June 3, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Hauntingly beautiful folk music and stunning Appalachian scenery take center stage in this winner of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for outstanding ensemble performance. Musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric has a deep love of English folk ballads. After a humiliating failure to make full professor, she heads off to visit her sister's tiny school in rural Appalachia and finds herself in folk music central. Lily is entranced, but the locals are suspicious of the outlander's motivations. Issues of tolerance, clashing cultures, and Big Bad Men abound, but Songcatcher wisely focuses on the music. Janet McTeer does fine with the "repressed academic gets in touch with the earth" role, but her truly outstanding work is in revealing scholar Lily's rapture in her discoveries. McTeer leads a truly great cast, including the wonderful Pat Carroll, and a just-for-the-hell-of-it cameo by bluesman Taj Mahal. Songcatcher has a healthy respect for the mountain people it portrays, and an absolute reverence for their music. --Ali Davis
Product Description
Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 05/25/2004 Run time: 109 minutes Rating: Pg13
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| Customer Reviews: Read 133 more reviews...
 One of my fav. films WONDERFUL July 1, 2009
sarasn1derland (pineville, nc United States)
I love this movie. i watched it years ago on an independant channel and fell in love. i have told everyone i meet to watch this. The music is amazing. It makes you wish you were part of that mountian too! if you've never seen it, you won't be dissapointed.
Great DVD June 13, 2009
Henry's Grandmother (Estacada, OR USA)
This is a great movie. Thanks for the quick shipment. In perfect condition as stated.
Again, In The Time of The Mountian Music Revival June 8, 2009
Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
This review is being used to comment on both the soundtrack CD and movie DVD.
In a recent CD review of the music from the now mountain music movie classic, George Clooney's "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", I mentioned in passing that the movie from which the CD under review is taken was also a contributing factor to the revival of interest in the mountain music genre. I also noted there that the CD and film were worthy of a separate review of their own. I make amends here and I think that this settles all debts.
That said, the following excerpt from that above-mentioned review can be used here to set the tone for a look at this "Songcatcher" (and a couple of words on the movie, as postscript) here:
"Sometimes a revival of a musical form, like the "talking blues", that highlighted the urban folk revival of the early 1960's is driven by a social need. In that case it was to provide a format for the "glad tidings" that a new political and social movement was a-bornin'. In the case of the revival several years ago of what is called "mountain music" it was the films "The Song Catcher" and, more importantly, the very popular movie starring George Clooney, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". The CD under review is a compilation of music from that movie, a not unnatural tie-in in the modern entertainment business. The movie deserves a separate review, however, this CD can stand on its own as a very nice cross section of "mountain music", some familiar most not so.
Without straining credulity "mountain music" is the music of the simple folk of Appalachia, those who worked hard in the coal mines, on the hard scrabble farms and in the isolated mills of the region. This was their Saturday night entertainment and with the advent of radio was a unifying cultural experience. The songs "speak" of hard and lonely lives, the beauty of the then pristine countryside, the usual vagaries of love and lost and the mysterious ways of a very personal, if arbitrary, god. Throw in a few upbeat tunes reflecting the love of "corn" liquor, women and the sometimes funny side of coping with life's trials and tribulations and you have the mountain version of the folk experience. Sound familiar? Sure it does, except, it is done with simple guitar, a blazing fiddle and, hopefully, a full-bodied mandolin."
With that in mind there only remains the need to highlight some of the better efforts here. For starters, apparently, I knew the work of Iris Dement long before I consciously knew her work. I have mentioned in reviews of her work that I had become enamored of her music through her rendition of "Jimmy Rodgers Going Home" on a Greg Brown (now her husband) tribute CD. From the copyright date here (and on Ralph Stanley's "Clinch Mountain Sweethearts" where she also does a couple of tracks) that is now incorrect. What is not wrong is that her lyrics and vocal range have led me to dub her my "Internet Sweetheart" (Sorry, Greg). And she does not fail here on the traditional "Pretty Saro". Needless to say no country music/folk music/ folk rock music presentation of any kind is complete these days without a contribution form Emmylou Harris. Here she does a split version of the traditional Child Ballad "Barbara Allen". Of course, when one talks of mountain music in its 20th century incarnation then the name The Carter Family is front and center. Thus, naturally, one of the representatives from that extended clan, Roseanne Cash, is a welcome addition here doing the old traditional "Fair And Tender Ladies" (a version of which that I first heard way back in the early 1960's done by Dave Van Ronk). Finally, of necessity again, no "hard" mountain music themed production can be complete without a piece from Hazel Dickens who, as a woman of those mountains, has probably done more to popularize this art form than anyone else. So listen up to a genuine piece of Americana.
Note: Although I am mainly interested in the `Songcatcher" film for its soundtrack the movie itself is worth seeing. The plot line revolves around an English woman's search for authentic American music from the mountains (naturally enough as much of the music crossed over from the British Isles). Sound familiar? Along the way she learns, perhaps more than she wants to know, about this milieu as she collects her music. Naturally, in such a commercial effort there s a little love interest thrown in with a real live mountain man musician wary of "city ways" from his own earlier experiences. Other themes touched upon, although in some cases obliquely, are the isolation of rural life, that just- mentioned conflict between rural and city values, religious fundamentalism and the, seemingly obligatory, nod to same sex issues (here, in a dramatically compelling way, lesbianism and the local reaction to it) that feature in many modern movies. Put the music and those themes together and you have a passable couple of hours. If you have to choose though, get the CD.
Songcatcher June 4, 2009
Andrea D. James (Helena, Montana)
I have been loooking for this dvd for quite awhile and was pleased to find it; the dvd is great, and so is the fast shipping
 Emmy Rossum could sing country May 11, 2009
David A. Knighting (A magical forest with unicorns)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ok, I know this movie is about a musicologist. But come on, at some point the sitting on the porch singing ballads, while trying to prevent the evil industrialists from taking the old family farm routinue gets tiresome.
The plot is sort of mundane, but entertaining. Lily, comes to visit her sister and falls in love with the music of the mountain folks, particularly Emmy Rossum's character, who is an orphan, i.e. Appalachian child of the woods. These mountain folk at first are churlish and distrusting as mountain people should be, but eventually you discover they all have a heart of gold. Except the proto-evangelicals, they are mean to Dr. Lily, who is only trying to make her way in a man's world. The unwashed masses burn down the school in a fit of righteous indignation at the loose women, destroying the recordings and their school. I guess this is to show us the self-destructive nature of anti-intellectualism.
Stock Appalachian characters abound: wise old grannies, beaten down women, angry youths who are just angry, dirty rednecks, and a troubled artist (Aiden Quinn) who Dr. Lily despises but eventually falls in love with. The smart lass and the proletariat guy, they run off together where he presumably will become a proto-folk singer and country star. The one interesting twist in the plot was Dr. Lily's sister who was a lesbian and the local community's reaction.
The themes dealt with in the movie are authentic and are still problems almost 90 years later: American domestic colonialism, local anti-intellectualism, and dysfunctional families. Furthermore, there were real life prototypes for Dr. Lily and the gang. But this sort of is a chick flick about finding love and career fulfillment and less about early 20th century Appalachia. Worthwhile seeing, but the cultural issues of the region are only touched on.
What is most interesting in this movie is Emmy Rossum's voice. Her brief singing of Barbry Allen and the little Mattie Groves had this native son fooled. I thought she was for sure a local discovery. To bad the tracks didn't make it to the soundtrack. She does do a lovely duo with Dolly Parton, however. Iris Dement makes a brief cameo and sings Pretty Saro for Lily, who as always looks really weird when watching the mountain people sing. I kinda thought she looked like she wanted to eat them; as grandaddy always said "Yankees is weird". I wouldn't sing for anybody that looked at me like that, much less stay in their vicinity. Black banjo virtuoso Taj Mahal also has a cameo, and is the only black guy in the movie. Is this a shout out to the influence of African-Americans on mountain music?
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