After guest-blogging Sundance in absentia for a week, a happy reward comes my way: a few days after its festival premiere, the latest Neil Young concert movie, directed by Jonathan Demme and shot in August 2005 at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, had an NYC screening. Both Young and Demme are old hands at this sort of thing, and they transform the show, which introduced the new album Prairie Wind and then proceeded with Young classics, into a strikingly confident movie.

No trace here of the 70 cuts/minute of the Beastie Boy's Awesome! I F*ckin' Shot That. Demme's direction is all steady shots of Young and his band, which grows and contracts with each tune: Emmylou Harris, Neil's wife Pegi, a slide guitar, a string quartet, a horn section, and a group of gospel singers come and go. Says Demme: "I honestly felt that if we went for this classic approach, with fixed cameras and extended takes, it might just feel fresh and avant-garde." Avant-garde isn't the word that springs to mind, but there is something reassuring in the steady simplicity of Heart of Gold — without frills, a master songwriter performs songs about fathers, daughters, friends, dogs, god, the wind, and his old guitar. There is a lovable, straightforward courage and doggedness in it that speaks for itself.