Saturday, August 29, 2009

This could be my second favorite sheep herding movie

I just noticed that HBO has made a movie based on Jon Katz's book, A Dog Year. Looks like it premieres this coming Thursday night.

I first found Jon Katz when he was writing the "Heavy Petting" column on www.slate.com. Several years ago he rescued a border collie with issues (is there any other kind?) about the same time Katz was going thru his requisite mid life crisis. When he figures out that neither of them is going to survive in suburbia, he moves to the country and gets a flock of sheep (which is exactly what I want to do when I have my mid-life crisis AND win the lottery. Right after I buy the big RV and hire a handsome driver named Rico - but that's another story.) Anyhow - that's what the book was about.

Jeff Bridges (who could also be my RV driver) stars and the preview shows him going ass over teacup in a herd of sheep. I have set my DVR.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jon Katz makes me SO angry. He's a jerk capitalizing on the romantic ideal of farming rather than actually LEARNING about how to work a BC right, or actually TRAIN a dog with a serious behavior problem. He killed that poor dog without ever consulting any of the MANY great professionals right in his backyard in upstate NY, and has made tons of money crying about his death.

Devin wasn't a rescue in the true sense of the word, either. I know some bad stuff had happened to him, but he came from the same breeder and the same breeding as Katz's other BCs.

There's a lot about him on Bordercollies.org' boards.

Kaye said...

Oh goody you have opened up a border collie rant comment section! Ok here is my rant:

I grew up with two bc's, they were wonderful calm dogs, smart, we dragged them everywhere, blah, blah, blah. My sister when she was in her early 20's got a bc for her kids so they could experience what we did growing up. She was hyper, couldn't concentrate it was like an ADHD border collie!

Anyways they have tons of health issues, temperment issues and they have been way overbred, its sad and I hope to god this never happens with our Cardi's.

Ok rant over, I don't know who Jon Katz is, I'll have to look him up.

Janet said...

I have issues with Jon Katz too - even tho I read his column regularly, I disagreed with his opinions often - but I always enjoyed reading him. He has some wacky ideas and is definitely a flawed individual (like the rest of us.)

However - I am still looking forward to seeing this movie just to see what they do with it.

Lani said...

I enjoy Jon Katz's books, too - he's a nice writer who tells a good story. I wish we got HBO so I could watch, too. I'll have to add it to my netflix queue!