Movie Monday: The "Movies of 1968" Edition

Yesterday, I wrote about music in 1968, so today I thought it would be interesting to see what was going on in the world of movies that year.

Looking around a little, I found a listing of the top grossing films of 1968 and was interested to see that of the top ten money-makers of the year, I've seen eight of them, all but one at the time they came out. The ten films that made the most money in 1968 were:

1) 2001: A Space Odyssey
2) Funny Girl
3) The Love Bug
4) The Odd Couple
5) Bullitt
6) Romeo & Juliet (this is the Zefferilli-directed version)
7) Oliver!
8) Rosemary's Baby
9) Planet of the Apes
10)Night of the Living Dead

Of these films that were the most popular at the box office, "Oliver!" won the Academy Award for Best Film, Barbra Streisand's performance in "Funny Girl" tied with Katherine Hepburn's turn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter" (which was the twelfth-highest grossing film of the year) for Best Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role, and Ruth Gordon won as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in "Rosemary's Baby".

I think it's interesting that such a wide variety of films did so well. Looking at that list of most popular films, there is science fiction, musical romance, children's fantasy, comedy, police procedural/crime, Shakespeare, another musical - based on Dickens, horror, more science fiction, and more horror. Compared with the ten highest grossing films last year:

1) The Avengers
2) The Dark Knight Rises
3) Skyfall
4) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
5) Ice Age: Continental Drift
6) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
7) The Amazing Spiderman
8) Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
9) The Hunger Games
10)Men in Black 3

I don't think I need to expand too much on the differences between these two lists and the differences in the variety of the audiences the films on each list are aimed at. The first list contains films aimed at a variety of audiences and demographics. The second list...well, those films might be aimed at slightly different audiences, but at no age demographic about the age of about twenty-five years old. Not that older audiences haven't enjoyed some of those films. I saw "The Avengers" and liked it a lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing "Skyfall" and "The Hobbit", and I'm considerably older than the target demographic for them.

Still, as a group of films, the 1968 list has much more variety than the 2012 list, and I think that is a sad thing. Certainly, a much wider variety of films is being made. The question is, why aren't they attracting larger audiences in the theaters? Is it because, except for big action movies, people would rather see them at home on cable or on DVD? Is it because the distributing companies only really put their money behind the expensive blockbusters such as those that make up most of the 2012 list? Is it because audiences are only willing to part with increasingly more expensive box-office prices for films in franchises that they know ahead of time they enjoy?

I've got no answers for these questions. What I do have are some trailers from films on the 1968 list. I am personally of the opinion that trailers for older films were much more likely to give a better indication of what the films they advertise really are about. Even this trailer for "2001: A Space Odyssey", which is more than a bit abstract (appropriate for what is in many respects an abstract film), makes me want to see the film again:



Here is a trailer for "Rosemary's Baby":



And one for "Planet of the Apes":



Even this action-filled trailer for "Bullitt" shows that the movie is about more than just its justly famous chase scene:



Oh, yes...and the two of the ten top-grossing films of 1968 that I did not see? That I have still not seen? Those would be "The Odd Couple" and "Night of the Living Dead". I've never had any real interest in seeing "The Odd Couple". As for "Night of the Living Dead", the trailer convinced me that I did not want to see it, ever. I mean, really, if the trailer scared me that much, I couldn't see any point in seeing the full movie.

Music Sunday: The Music in Movies Edition

I've been thinking about music in movies lately. Go figure. I love music and I love movies, so it makes sense that I would go there, either here or in Movie Mondays, eventually. And, of course, there are bits from movie musicals that I like and want to share with you.

There are really two different kinds of music in movies. Well, three. There is the soundtrack music - that dramatic swelling of music at dramatic moments, and that "danger music" that telegraphs that something bad is about to happen to the hero or heroine of the film, for example. I don't know a lot about instrumental music, so that's not what I'm here to write about today.

Then, there are movies that happen to have songs in them. A lot of those songs appear over opening or closing credits, or incidentally, as background music or accompaniment to montages during the action of the film. Or there are songs in the movie because the movie is about a musician or a band; a good fairly recent example is That Thing You Do (1996, distributed by 20th Century Fox). A little bit older an example is Victor/Victoria (1982), which I'll be using for purposes of comparison in just a bit. I'll probably write about that kind of movie music at some point. Some directors make really good choices about that kind of movie music, and some make abysmally bad choices in that regard, and the effect on the movies can be really interesting. But that's not what I'm going to be writing about today, either.

What I'm here to write about today are movie musicals.

I'll be honest. I love musicals. Some are better than others, and they've evolved over the years (boy, have they evolved...I'll get to that, too), but in general, I like the genre. So, people burst into song in completely unbelievable places and circumstances. It's a movie. What did you expect? Reality?

Julie Andrews has been in both kinds of movies, the kind with songs and the kind where people burst into song apparently inappropriately. She was in Mary Poppins (1964, Disney), which is a classic traditional musical. Mary Poppins bursts into song at the most unlikely of moments, as when she is trying to get her young charges to clean their nursery, coming out with "A Spoonful of Sugar" (please ignore the animatronic birds; they're creepy):



She was also in Victor/Victoria (1982), which I mentioned above and which has songs because it is about a "woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman", who is masquerading as a cross-dressing cabaret performer. The songs in this movie come in the form of her nightclub performances, as here in "Le Jazz Hot":



Just like it seems wrong to write about movie musicals of the past few decades (and I'm not going to go back further than the 1960s today, mostly due to limited space and time), it's just wrong to write about the genre without including something from Barbra Streisand. She has also been in both kinds of movies with music - movie musicals in the traditional sense, such as Funny Girl (1968, Rastar); Hello, Dolly (1969, distribted by 20th Century Fox), and Yentl (1983, MGM), and in movies with songs, such as A Star Is Born (1976, First Artists) (at least, I can't recall any bursting into song in inappropriate places in that movie).

Here, in a clip from Funny Girl (1968, Rastar), in which she portrays Fanny Brice (if you don't know about Fanny Brice, go look her up, becuase you should know about her), she sings "I'm the Greatest Star" when facing early rejection as a performer:



Again, this is very traditional.

One might be forgiven for thinking that movie musicals are passe, but they aren't. Enchanted (2007, distributed by Disney), makes fun of traditional movie musicals, but it is a gentle teasing, and it still retains the form of the traditional musical, for example when the characters burst into song and a production number in the middle of Central Park:



But some movie musicals that retain the traditional form are traditional in that way only. Of course, the best example of that has to be The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975, 20th Century Fox). "Sweet Transvestite" is not your typical production number, yet it follows the form:



The musical, more or less in its traditional form, has even come to the Internet. It has been tried on television, as well, with various levels of success. There was Cop Rock (1990, ABC), which has been called one of the worst TV series in history, of course. And Joss Whedon's series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, famously did a musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling", in 2001.

Whedon is also the one who brought musicals to the Internet, with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008), which was relased in three episodes. From the first episode, this is "A Man's Gotta Do":



For someone like me, who likes musicals, it's kind of comforting to know that the form persists and is being perpetuated in new venues, such as on the Internet, while remaining traditional in significant ways.

Then, again, we've already established that I'm a geek.