screaming jay hawkins - The Screengrab

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part Two)

ALMOST FAMOUS (2000)

Some people knock Cameron Crowe's fictionalized cinematic memoir for viewing the '70s through rose-colored granny glasses...but, hey, it IS told from the point-of-view of a very, very happy 15-year-old kid who not only gets to write for Rolling Stone, but also loses his virginity to a trio of sexy groupies! For me, the hero's starry-eyed wonder was the whole point: it's a rare movie that can honestly make me remember how exciting, innocent and mysterious life (and, for that matter, show biz) seemed before I became such a cranky old man. And I've always gotta give props to any Hollywood movie made with such heartfelt emotion, humanity and attention to detail...PLUS it’s got Philip Seymour Hoffman as cool-nerd Jedi Master Lester Bangs, Fairuza Balk in a well-deserved good role for a change, Kate Hudson (in her ONLY good role to date) as the embodiment of the Great Unattainable and Zooey Deschanel in a cool-ass stewardess uniform. It’s all happening!

Strangers In A Strange Land: Screengrab’s Favorite Fish-Out-Of-Water Stories (Part Four)

LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003)

A sad, funny ode to those fragile bubbles of joy, romance and deeper meaning in life's otherwise bitter cocktail of boredom, loneliness and disappointment, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation captures a certain mood of isolated intimacy so well that I only wish I could've stumbled across it in a deserted movie theater and kept the experience all to myself. Then again, one of the points of the film is the importance of shared experience: disconnected from her goofus husband (Gionvanni Ribisi), familiar surroundings and a sense of forward momentum in her life, Scarlett Johansson's young American abroad drifts through Japan like a lonely camera, recording her isolated perceptions for no one until she herself is perceived by fellow traveler Bill Murray, kicking off a sweet "like" affair through the streets and karaoke bars of late-night Tokyo. "I'm looking for, like, an accomplice," Murray's Bob Harris says to Johansson's Charlotte during one of their early encounters...and sometimes that's all a stranger needs to make a strange land into a momentary home.