yesterday i recieved my latest order of dvds from the states:

• absolutely fabulous 1 & 2
  
• tales from the gimli hospital
  
• satan in high heels
  
• the collected shorts of jan svankmajer vol. I
  
• off the charts the song-poem story

so far i've watched volume one of ab fab, and off the charts. ab fab was a gift for peter as he loved the vcds(with chinese subs) i'd picked up in hk a few years back. unfortunately the dvds don't even have english subtitles, so it's a bit difficult for him to catch some of the things they are saying. but with ab fab, sometimes what they say isn't as important as how they say it.

off the charts i bought on a whim, and because it was fairly cheap. a song-poem is basically poetry turned into a song. in the back of certain publications you can find ads for companies that will turn your poem into a song for a price. this film is a documentary about the people who send in their poems, and the people who create the songs from them. i'd heard some song-poems before, but the one's id heard weren't as wonderful as some of the great things featured in this documentary. i didn't realize that jimmy carter says yes was a song poem. but in hindsight, i don't know how it could be anything else.

for more information on song-poems check out the american song-poem archives.