The story focuses on an attempt by property developers to buy out residents and small business owners and develop the area as a resort. In reality this is little more than a hook on which to hang an impressionistic view of the lives of a cross-section of the community. This might sound like anodyne soap-opera stuff, but Sayles carries it off so well that 140 minutes seems like little over an hour. The acting is absolutely superb and as usual there's a thought-provoking twist in the ending - a lot more subtle than in Limbo but every bit as effective.

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Aside from that Sunshine State had the best photography from a digital source that I've seen so far this year. Film-Techers in Florida might want to know that this was filmed on Amelia Island, north of Jacksonville.

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I got the feeling that this movie was meant to bring out nostalgia for the past -- when men were men, colored people knew their place, etc., etc.

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It raised those issues, certainly, but I got a sense that Sayles was trying to do more than just evoke nostalgia. On the one hand you had the bossy wife who enthusiastically organised the heritage weekend event, whose husband was so fed up with being hen-pecked that he tried several times (unsuccessfully) to kill himself; but there is also the hotel owner who is terribly unhappy in her leadership role and wants to get out. With coloured people, the point is made that although they may have had to deal with civil rights issues in the past, at least they owned the small businesses on the seafront rather than having to work on the minimum wage for big businesses which take their profits out of the area. I think Sayles was trying to make the point that with evey social or political change there are both positive and negative effects and that nothing is as clear-cut as it first seems, hence the landscaping contractors discovering archeological remains in the penultimate scene and having to abandon their plans for yet another golf course.

Was it really shot on ? I didn't notice any artifacts or pixellation at all. The technique has obviously got better since Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which you could spot it from a mile off.