Mining for Hearts of Gold

Neil Young on the slopes of Park City, Utah
photo by Patrick Mcbride, PARADE Magazine

Lots of links on the Heart of Gold film.

The popular Sunday newspaper PARADE Magazine has a feature article "Neil Young: "I Just Keep Going". Also, a nice Neil photo gallery.

Over on CNN.com, a piece on Neil Young and the American family: "Neil Young, iconoclastic troubadour for decades of counter-culture in the United States, has made the ultimate American family film."

This review from New York Observer challenges the above assumption on family values. The review by Ron Rosenbaum is rather dense and heavy on analysis:

"Mr. Demme’s film is in many ways both beautiful and respectful. But by exalting rural virtues—in effect, by equating “rural” with “virtue”—and by making a hymn of praise for the prairie wisdom of the Great White North, Neil’s Canadian prairie roots, he verges on rural supremacism. By that I mean the ingrained American nativist, puritanical distrust of (and distaste for) the urban, the cosmopolitan, the seductive sins of sophistication, irony and complexity. Instead, simple is always best. Or less dangerous.

And so, in his extremely well-meaning way, Mr. Demme—well known as an admirably socially engaged director—has made perhaps the most reactionary film of the past year.

Reactionary in the sense that it implicitly gives the impression that family values of a certain kind—the Great White North, Great White Nashville kind—are the only true values. If you stay close to the land and practice rural virtues, you’ll go to heaven, (as long as you’re a rich rock—sorry, “country-rock”—star). Conventionality rules, dude!"

A classmate of Neil Young reviews HoG by Norm Ornstein. With lots of innnarestin' comments.

The World Wide Glen: Welcome to My Thoughtmare - "Mining Neil Young's Heart of Gold"

And Rotten Tomatoes has links to dozens of reviews.

Thanks for the links from Michael P., Tim M., & anonymous!



More Heart of Gold film reviews.