Notes from 7 Blog: Della Mae brings Ludiker home

(Posted Thursday) Della Mae made a big splash on the bluegrass world with their second album, “This World Oft Can Be.” So much so, the all-female quintet was nominated for a Grammy Award for best bluegrass album. (They lost to the Del McCoury Band.)

The group is returning to Spokane next week – they played the Blue Waters Bluegrass Festival in Medical Lake last year – for a concert Tuesday at Chateau Rive at the Flour Mill. And that makes perfect sense, as founding member Kimber Ludiker is a Spokane Valley native and member of the famous fiddling Ludiker family.

Tickets are $15 through TicketsWest.

Carolyn Lamberson

Sci-fi, biopics and quirky comedies

(Posted Tuesday) Following Scarlett Johansson’s transition into the Internet – setting her up for, hmmm, her role in “Her”? – a sci-fi week-of-sorts continues in the nation’s theaters.

Friday’s major openings are as follows:

“Guardians of the Galaxy” (3-D, 3-D IMAX, standard): An offbeat team of space rogues must stand against dark forces to save the galaxy from a deadly menace … which is shorthand for Marvel Comics’ adapting a minor band of characters dating back to 1969 (with a transition in 2008) to these contemporary comic times. Starring Chris Pratt and an almost unrecognizable Zoe Saldana.

“Get on Up”: Chadwick Boseman (“42”) stars as the great funk/soul singer James Brown. The fact that Hollywood felt it had to use the likes of Ice Cube, Pharrell Williams and Mick Jagger to inform contemporary audiences about who the Godfather of Soul was is … well, sad.

And for most older audiences, unnecessary.

And at the Magic Lantern:

“The Grand Seduction”: To save itself from financial ruin, a small Newfoundland town tries to seduce a doctor into sticking around. Starring the American Taylor Kitsch and the Irishman Brendan Gleeson, this Canadian film earned four of its country’s top movie awards (winning one, Gordon Pinsent for Best Supporting Actor).

Dan Webster

Documentaries online

(Posted Tuesday) In running down the ways that people could access “The Staircase,” the crime miniseries that I reviewed at Spokane7.com, I found a website that offers free documentaries of all types. It’s called Documentary Storm, and it gives you free access – say again, free access – to hundreds of documentaries in 24 different categories from Art to War.

It doesn’t have everything (my first search, for “Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows,” was fruitless). But the overall selection does look interesting. I’m going to check it out this very afternoon.

Dan Webster