View from East Tennessee

In most cases, clicking on the name of a movie will bring up a trailer. If the trailer is slow or jumpy, try selecting a slower connection. Where I could find no trailer, I linked to the official site of the show or some other pertinent information. In the other two columns, I linked to the Amazon page for the show and to a content review — Screen It, if available, and Christian Spotlight on the Movies, as an alternate.

I’ve grouped the shows into three categories: (1) About Appalachia (pronounced Appalatcha) or Nearby Areas; (2) Connections to Appalachia or Nearby Areas; and (3) About the South.

Here’s the first:

Hee Haw is, well, Hee Haw. Don’t miss Archie Campbell’s backwards fairy tales (Rindercella, Beeping Sleauty, and Pee Little Thrigs), Grandpa Jones’ The Banjo Am For Me, or anything that makes it out of the mouth of Junior Samples. Good stuff. Apparently, Junior now drives a Lincoln Continental. He uses it to pull his bass boat.

I have not seen Foxfire, but it gets good marks from the Amazon reviewers. Jessica Tandy plays a proud Appalachian widow trying to decide “whether to hold on to what she’s always known or follow her heart to the other side of the mountain.” Hume Cronyn plays her crotchety dead husband.

Songcatcher was an odd movie. Here’s the blurb:

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.

I didn’t understand the need for the somewhat-more-graphic-than-PG-13 love affair between the lead’s sister and the older lady at the school, and the characters were complex (meaning they were sometimes likable, and sometimes despicable). But I enjoyed the scenery and the music, and the movie certainly had its moments. If you’re coming to East Tennessee, you just about have to watch any movie that features both a clogging scene and a scene where a mountain woman brings a shotgun to church and uses it.

I also have not seen The Education of Little Tree, but it comes highly recommended. Here’s the blurb:

In 1935, an 8-year-old orphaned boy is sent to live in the Tennessee mountains with his grandparents. He doesn’t yet know that he is half Cherokee, on his grandmother’s side. As he learns about life and the Cherokee “way” from his grandparents, Little Tree’s sensitivity to nature and to others grows.

Read the review linked below for more.

The Andy Griffith Show, set in the fictional town of Mayberry, is reportedly based on Andy Griffith’s real-life home town of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, just a few hours from the Tri-Cities. Dixie Barbeque (”Horrifying vegetarians since 1984!”) here in Johnson City plays all-Andy, all the time on its little t.v.

I have not seen Walking Tall, but it’s a true story about the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, which is just south of Jackson. I hear the movie is pretty violent, but you almost have to watch a movie about a guy named Buford Pusser.

Part II, Connections with Appalachia or Nearby Areas coming soon.