You'll remember his name -- and his stories

I'm not sure I'd like to hang out with David Crosby for more than a couple of hours -- but you can watch the documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name and spend a fascinating hour and 35 minutes with an ornery musician and singer whose life embodies the high points, excesses, and eccentricities of a long career as a rock star. Beginning with The Byrds, Crosby went on to be part of Crosby, Stills, and Nash and then Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. He now records and performs with another group, but the most fascinating parts of the documentary -- directed by A.J. Eaton with interviewing chores going to Cameron Crowe -- involve a celebrity life which came to include drugs, so much so that Crosby wound up doing a stint in prison. Now clean and well into his 70s, Crosby doesn't seem interested in self-protection. If he's trying to make himself look good, I shudder to think how he'd appear if he were attempting to conceal something. He's burned bridges. He says no one from the musical circles in which he rose to prominence talks to him anymore. There are many other observations including Crosby's hatred of Jim Morrison, his admiration for Joni Mitchell and his recollections of Woodstock and other rock landmarks. Sad notes also abound, the most poignant of them stemming from the death of Christine Hinton, one of Crosby's lovers who died in a car crash. As he talks about his experiences, Crosby always seems to be telling the truth to Crowe, who began his career as a young rock journalist and evolved into a filmmaker. It's difficult not to believe that Crosby's life has exacted a toll. You can see an accumulation of hard years in a face that retains a hippy outline but also shows its droops and sags, like a coat that's been worn too much. Eaton begins the documentary with Crosby telling a story about a time when, as a young man he got smashed out his mind and went to hear John Coltrane play his saxophone in a Chicago club. Crosby delivers a riveting account of his encounter with Coltrane. I doubt you'll ever forget it, and like many of Crosby's stories, you're right there with him when he tells it.

They bought a zoo, but not much of a movie

Matt Damon plays a man who buys a zoo in a family-oriented film that's never especially believable.

>We Bought A Zoo is an Americanized adaptation of a memoir by British author Benjamin Mee. I’ve skimmed Mee's book, and it seems significantly smarter than this Cameron Crowe-directed movie, an entertainment made palatable by Matt Damon’s likability as the man who buys the zoo and Scarlett Johansson’s down-to-earth turn as the zookeeper who helps him run it. You also may find that some charm accrues to the movie as a result of its story, the tale of a recent widower (Damon) who climbs out of his grief by buying a rundown zoo and learning something about the zoo business. Damon’s Benjamin not only discovers the world of animals, but breaks through to his angry teen-age son (Colin Ford). In case all that's not enough, we get shots of Benjamin's cute-as-a-button daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). The supporting cast includes Thomas Hayden Church (as Ben’s older, more skeptical brother), and Elle Fanning (as a teen-ager who falls for Ford’s character). Crowe, whose last movie – Elizabethtown – tanked in a big-way flirts with after-school-movie blandness in a movie that never feels believable enough. Granted, there's something undeniably intriguing and even a little cracked about a story that puts some old-fashioned resolve into the task of trying to save a foundering zoo. Know this, though: We Bought A Zoo is long way from Crowe's best work in movies such as Say Anything, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous.