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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 3587
Released: October 23, 2001 |
| Our Price: $7.67 |
| Used Price: $7.66 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When musicologist Doctor Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) is passed over for a prominent teaching position, she leaves the city to visit her sister in the beautifully rugged mountains of Appalachia. It is here she discovers a wellspring of emotional tunes passed down from the original Irish and Scottish immigrants who settled in these parts. Determined to document the history of the songs, she immerses herself in mountain life, falls in love with a local musician, Aidan Quinn, and is profoundly changed by the generosity, strength, and freedom of the fiercely proud mountain people.
Description of Songcatcher:
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
Songcatcher Reviews:
Charm, Innocence & Life 
2008-10-09 - This movie took me completely by surprise! Such a moving story of a womans refusal to submitt to inaffectual male domonance and fear. I found this movie uplifting, entertaining and certainly educational.
As a professional musician myself, I found it filled in a lot of gaps not taught in most college music courses. Absolutely charming, indeed.
Good story, even better soundtrack. A must have for musicologists of every ilk. 
2008-09-25 - I used to live in this part of North Carolina, so the scenery was a treat for me. The history behind that wonderful, culturally rich music was quite fascinating, and the music itself was entrancing. Janet McTeer is superb in her role. Anyone who has seen her portray Vita Sackville-West in Portrait Of Marriage will appreciate the heart-wrenching twist in this story. Colorful, true to life characters will win your heart.
Excellent
2008-09-25 - Ordered to replace a stolen copy. Excellent condition for both DVD and packaging. This one doesn't have a bad spot the original had, either! Was in the process of moving and it came before I had to even worry about it. Thanks! Great job!
Songcatcher Will Put A Song In Your Heart
2008-07-07 - My wife and I rented Songcatcher not knowing what to expect, but the basic story sounded interesting. Well, we loved it so much we bought the DVD. It's a good story, well told...and the only nit I will pick happens late in the movie--when an ongoing lesbian relationship is discovered (a "local" sees the women kissing passionately). The relationship had already been strongly hinted-at, so the "discovery" seemed gratuitous. And I have read criticism of the story's opening sequence--and the event that sets the table for the whole film: A female college professor being denied tenure, and resigning, to visit her sister who runs a school in the Appalachian mountains. It is argued that a female would never have been considered for tenure in the early part of the 20th century. But rather than debate that, I will only remind of the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief"...an aesthetic theory coined by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817.
Songcatcher is a rewarding, lyrical and heartwarming time spent in the world of cinema.
Songcatcher
2008-06-03 - Songcatcher is both an interesting drama and a showcase for some excellent singing. One of the songs is about a man who has no land of his own and thus cannot court a wife; he imaginatively describes his longing in the song. Viewers with open minds are recommended to this film.
