arthera09 I was totally blown away by this film. I did not know what to expect when I went into this film, but I knew that Robert Altman was a filmmaker to check out. I actually bought this film for a few dollars at a local video store and have had it for years. I am glad I did.It starts out with a mystery noir feel to it and it really just added to the charm to film. This introduces this world that is not of any time period, but really a meeting point of old and new. There was something so classic about the film that it had me smiling through most of the film. The movie follows the cast of a radio show called A Prairie Home Companion as they perform their final show. Everyone from the performers to the producers and more feel the lose of the show and by the end you will too.There is an indescribable charm that can be mostly attributed to Garrison Keillor. He plays the host of Prairie Home Companion a live radio show that is performed in front of a live audience. I guess this was pretty common back in the day. The single most amazing thing about this movie is that I feel as if this is what the show is actually like.Garrison Keillor, or GK, really has a certain charm that is just missing. He plays his character as if he slightly senile, but in the end all of his stories of how he got into radio really says a lot about his character. He tells all of these different stories of how he got into radio and in end it says that everything that has happened in his life is what has led him to where he is now. It really is a wonderful character that the more you think about him the more intricate he becomes. He refuses to say goodbye to his listeners even though it is his last show. At first it just comes off as a stubborn old man, but it means a lot to him and to not to change anything ends up making sense.I could talk about the character of GK all night, but I must say that I loved the rest of the cast, with the exception of the most seasoned actress. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. They did a good job acting, but unfortunately their singing talent is not up to par to the rest of the cast. They are just not that good. But in their defense in one of their songs about their "mamma" I did start to feel the emotion of the song. Even if they did not sound that good they were still able to get the emotion across. Harrelson and Reily on the other hand sounded great. I was really blown away by how good they were and how well their voices came together.The rest of the cast were all extremely well cast and played their parts perfectly. Madsen gets a lot of credit and I really bought her as an angel. I feel as if I must say a few words about Lohan and the fact that she can act if she chooses to. She was not the best actress out there, but her character brought a lot to the film. She had the largest arc out of any of the characters. She went from an attitude filled teenager to a young adult who understood what made this experience so special.I must say it is really hard to describe this movie and it is something that needs to be experienced for oneself. There is so much to like about this movie and all of it comes together in a neat little package that just warms the heart. I loved the experience of visiting a Prairie Home Companion and Altman has really captured something unique on film and has shared it with the world to enjoy.

Steven Torrey "I died laughing" is a cliché. Except that she and her boyfriend are in a car when they hear a joke on the radio: "Two penguins are standing on an ice-floe. One says to the other--'You look like you're wearing a tuxedo.' The second responds: 'What makes you think I'm not?'" Whereupon the driver of the car laughs so hard, he loses control of the car and kills them both. Virginia Madsen is a ghost who 'died laughing.' Not figuratively, but really: she died laughing. The radio show is about to die, a character in the show dies, and the person who has bought the theater dies--or more accurately they all get killed--Hear the comic's triumph: "I killed them!" The characters are all imbued with death, with killing the audience, with dying--but never on stage. The comedic cry "I killed them" matched by its opposite "I died" to signify failure to get the joke across. The difference between 'killing' and 'dying' presents a huge metaphysical distance.But A Prairie Home Companion is about telling a story by leaps and bounds, by twists and turns; and the story happens to be about death, killing, and dying.Guy Noir is a Garrison Keillor's (imaginary) doppelganger/twin; imaginary and hence not living. Garrison Keillor, story teller, would rather be Guy Noir cheap dime-novel detective. Look at the DVD cover: There's Kevin Kline as Guy Noir--really Garrison Keillor--center stage and there's Garrison Keillor on the edge of the photo looking sideways towards the camera, slightly annoyed that his (imaginary) doppelganger has taken center stage.The stories Garrison Keillor tells are slice of life stories. Nothing more: no profound moral, no depiction of great character, no life/soul altering crisis. A story about something. Better than Seinfeld's 'story about nothing' because with Keillor, the story is recited on radio where sound is to play on the listener's imagination--where action comes alive. (Note dead television versus live radio.)A Prairie Home Companion occurs in the Fitzgerald Theatre where Garrison Keillor did his thang on the radio before a live theatre audience (as opposed to a dead studio audience?). And so the musical performances--more than ably performed by the cast--are simply part of the story line that really doesn't contribute to the story line. But darn good listening.And in the end, the strange woman who seems to kill off a lot of people can't kill the spirit of people who are no longer working in theater. A Prairie Home Companion, like all simple stories, has that element of complexity which makes the story work. A ghost matched by the pregnant stage manager.I remember listening to his program in the 1980s with my young daughter on Connecticut's NPR Saturday nights at supper time and just before the Muppets, the highlight of the weekend. The movie was an evocation for me of time past, time gone, time not forgotten. And a way of presenting death and dying.

Jackson Booth-Millard I heard of this film after the death of legendary director Robert Altman (MASH, Nashville, Gosford Park), who died from complications of leukaemia after completing this film, so I had to watch it. There is no specific plot, it is basically seeing behind the scenes of the making of the last of episode of radio show "A Prairie Home Companion", being cancelled. It is a music variety show recorded live in front of an audience in a theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, hosted by real radio presenter Garrison Keillor, or GK (best known for voicing the Honda adverts). Regulars including singing guitarist cowboys and risqué humoured Dusty (Woody Harrelson) and Lefty (John C. Reilly), and the singing Johnson sisters Rhonda (Lily Tomlin) and Yolanda (Meryl Streep). The film sees them talk about their lives and the show backstage, and they try to convince the youngest Johnson sister, Lola (Lindsay Lohan) to sing on this last show. Also there is a mysterious white trench coat wearing woman (Virginia Madsen) wandering around the theatre, dim-witted security guard Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) is around too, and of course the man closing the theatre and show down, The Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) is around to see the show end. Also starring Maya Rudolph as Molly, Marylouise Burke as Lunch Lady and L.Q. Jones as Chuck Akers. The all-star cast is very appealing, the singing and humour is the big hook of the film, and it was certainly a fine film for Altman to bow out with, a great comedy. Very good!

chaos-rampant Upon receiving an honorary Oscar at the 2006 Academy Awards, Altman revealed that he had been the recipient of a heart transplant approximately 10 years prior, and hadn't gone public out of fear that it would hinder his ability to get work. A few months later he passed away. Seen in that light, his swansong, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, acquires a bit of a special weight.You wouldn't know it was a movie done by an ailing 80 year old director if you looked at it. It feels as fresh and vibrant as Altman ever was - done with the sweetness and nostalgia of a director who knows his final curtain call is near. This is the kind of autumnal 'last film' I love to see from directors in their old age. It just clicks with me in just the right way. Even when the results are not as satisfying (John Huston's THE DEAD), I think people blessed with the means to express themselves in a creative manner ought to give us a little glimpse of the other side, share the lessons a lifetime of experience taught them with us one last time. If every movie is a case of the director telling us "I believe the world is like this", then how much more so with his last films.The final show of a radio company playing live in an old theater, before they're bought by a Texas corporation who wants to build a parking lot where the theater stands, is only the beginning. All the hallmarks of an Altman film are present. The loose plotting used by the director as a skeleton to hang his own real-life observations on, the overlapping dialogue, the camera canvassing the frame picking up little details as it goes on, an ensemble of first-rate actors (four Oscar winners among them) acting their hearts out like actors have always done for Altman. Meryl Streep once again shines with her brilliance; Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson are right there with her every step of the way.Altman could have tugged on the heartstrings really hard if he was so inclined. It's a coming-of-age story of life and death after all. Old country singers dying in dressing rooms, young girls getting their first crack at the stage. But Altman goes sweet and gentle and funny, sometimes too silly and whimsical for his own good, like old men know how to be, but to his credit he sticks with it. The movie begins with Kevin Kline playing manager Guy Noir (what's in a name, right?) giving us the lowdown in a very campy narration. Lots of running gags too; Reily and Harrelson as the duo of cowboys singing ribald songs. A long gag where the radio show host, singers and audio SFX man improvise live on-stage buying the script girl time to find the next ad - the show must go on. And the movie goes on in the same tragicomic vein.When Tommy Lee Jones as the cynic, coldhearted executive of the Texas corp. shows up in the Fitzgerald Theater to judge if the show should be cancelled, Altman is already piling up the winking-at-the-audience thick and fast. When he leaves in the end to meet a dubious end, Altman has absolved himself from all responsibilities to a story rooted in reality; instead he gives us a schematic condemnation of a dog-eat-dog world neither he or his characters have much place or use for. A sweet, heartfelt movie filled with songs about green pastures, ads about Powdermilk Biscuits, and strange women in white trenchcoats that may or may not be angels, A Prairie Home Companion is as good a last bow from a great American director as we're likely to get.