在本片中,《豪斯医生》主演休•劳瑞将脱下白大褂,换上村夫装。带领您一同前往美国新奥尔良,领略这座城市的魅力,聆听最原汁原味的蓝调音乐。他边弹边唱(你没听错,房子叔私下是位灰常有前途的蓝调歌手),将蓝调历史上的趣事信手捏来,抒发对这座城市和蓝调音乐由来已久的仰慕之情。可以说《休•劳瑞的蓝调之旅》不但是一部很好的蓝调知识启蒙素材,也是一场蓝调音乐盛宴。
片中休•劳瑞的新奥尔良试听会现场为2012年首次公开,之前只有少部分音乐评论人/记者有幸一睹。试听会曲目收于专辑《Let Them Talk(风言风语)》中,此专辑于2011年发行,旋即占据蓝调排行榜第一名,在流行榜上也有不俗表现,可以算是一张成功的专辑。专业评论界总的说赞扬声居多,但也有人质疑其唱功(vocalability)和感染力(delivery)。但不管怎么说,休•劳瑞是一位真正的音乐家、爱乐者,而绝不是哗众取宠之流。
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”