Another Redbox Testimonial

If you have no life like me, you will know that there was absolutely NOTHING on television last night.

Sorry, I consider myself a responsible, well-informed citizen but I can't get into the presidential debates (the candidates just try to maintain the status quo without screwing up too badly), so there goes the network channels and there were no interesting games on because all of baseball's first round playoff series had already been decided (ESPN was running poker tournaments - thanks guys).

Beyond that, as you can see from the bar to the right, there really aren't any new DVDs worth renting either (Adam Sandler got my money once for "Zohan", I'll never let that happen again).

So I used last night night as one of those rare opportunities to find something new, something I wouldn't normally watch or get into.

I stopped by the nearest Redbox machine and was completely open to anything. There really wasn't much that I haven't seen or knew I wouldn't like but for whatever reason, the Jeff Goldblum movie "Pittsburgh" caught my eye. I've been to Redbox many times over the past year and I never noticed it before yesterday (it was released in 2006) and even though I've never been a big Jeff Goldblum fan ("Jurassic Park", "Independence Day"), I thought I'd give it a whirl.

It definitely wasn't amazing but it definitely wasn't bad at all. More than anything, "Pittsburgh" plays with your mind as it completely blurs the line between fiction and reality.

It's filmed in the mockumentary style of the Christopher Guest "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show", etc. movies only Jeff Goldblum is playing himself and everything he does is completely real only it's completely fake...

Or is it.

Basically, he's playing himself and he wants to help his Canadian fiancee (actress Catherine Wreford playing herself) stay in the country by getting her some acting work and he agrees to join her in a local theater production of "The Music Man" in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.

Here's the thing, Jeff Goldblum actually played the lead role of Harold Hill in a local theater production of "The Music Man" in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA for the show's two week run in 2004 - you can read an article about it from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here (This movie debuted at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival).

So everything that happens is technically "real" but it's only real because of the fictional pretense.

It's actually kind of brilliant, especially in the context of our current day and age of "reality" television.

The film had no rating, but it's pretty clean and while I'll wouldn't recommend it on a night when one of your favorite shows is one or you actually have something worthwhile to do, it was bizarrely fascinating and a good option on a boring Tuesday night.