Last Weekend

I was busy last weekend! Friday night, I went to see Flightplan with Jodie Foster. In the movie, Foster and her daughter are travelling from Germany to New York on a brand new, giant airplane, when her daughter just disappears. The movie was great. There were a couple plot holes, but nothing too egregious, nothing that abnormal for these kind of action-suspense movies. The acting was great, especially from Foster, Sean Bean (who played the captain), and the various actors who played the flight attendants. If you like the suspense genre, you should definitely catch this one in the theaters.

After Flightplan, I went out to Herndon to see Lloyd Dobler Effect in concert. I saw LDE open for Kansas in July, and was really impressed. They’re a young band from the DC area, playing pretty typical pop/rock music; maybe you’d call it “party rock.” They’ve got a saxophonist/flutist (!) and a really great percussionist. I’d kinda compare them to Matchbox 20 and the Dave Matthews Band. Their songwriting is really good, the songs are all catchy and fun to listen to. Anyway, the first set of the show was great. But toward the beginning of the second set, I got kinda bored and the crowd got kinda annoying. It got better, but I don’t know that I’d keep driving all the way to Herndon to see ‘em.

And on Monday night, I went to see Porcupine Tree at the 9:30 Club. Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band from England. Their music is definitely very “progressive” in the old-school Pink Floyd sense, but they also know how to write killer, catchy rock songs. With good label promotion, they’ve really been doing well in the U.S. This was their second leg of their 2005 tour; I caught them last May at the 9:30 Club as well. Every time I’ve seen them, the crowd has grown larger and larger, and the club seemed packed last night. They were certainly on top of their game, and played a lot of my favorites, including a couple great songs from their new album, and some older songs they hadn’t played in a while. But again, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t into it that much.