Music Sunday: Another Movie Music Edition

I'm not really sure whether this is really a Music Sunday post or a Movie Monday post, but since it's Sunday, I'll classify it as a Music Sunday entry and call it good.

I've been watching the 2007 film "Zodiac" this afternoon. Based on the true story of the hunt for the Zodiac killer, the film stars Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey, Jr., and Brian Cox. It focuses mainly on the crimes attributed to the killer, who was never caught, in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although there are other crimes at least provisionally attributed to the same man in other regions of California, including a murder in Riverside and two murders in Santa Barbara, and an attack on a woman in Modesto. The Zodiac wrote letters to several newspapers in the Bay Area, giving himself the name "Zodiac" and claiming credit for several murders. Some of the letters claiming to be from Zodiac, especially those after the main crime spree in the Bay Area, were later called hoaxes or from copycats.

Anyway, the movie is a good one, and landed on a lot of year-end "Ten Best" lists in 2007. The film is based on a book, also called "Zodiac", by Robert Graysmith (published in 1986). He was a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the search for the killer, and became interested in (some would say obsessed with) the case at that time, trying to decode the cyphers in the letters received by his paper. In the film, he is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhall.

The other main character in the film is the lead detective on the case, David Toschi, who was on the San Francisco Police Department from 1952 to 1983. He is portrayed in the film by Mark Ruffalo. The interesting thing about Toschi is that he has become sort of a mainstay of portrayals of San Francisco police detectives in film. He was the major inspiration for Clint Eastwood's "Dirty" Harry Callahan in "Dirty Harry" (1971), which was loosely based on the Zodiac case, including using a threat from one of Zodiac's letters, that he would attack a school bus filled with children, as a major plot point. Before that, it is said that Steve McQueen modeled his character in the movie "Bullitt" (1968) largely on Toschi.

Apart from being a good film, the "Zodiac" soundtrack includes some really good music from the period, which is what turns this post into something appropriate for Music Sunday. First of all, because I will use just about any excuse to include a song by Eric Burdon and the Animals in these posts, the band's song "Sky Pilot", from 1968, appears in the film. Here is the long version of the song:



Another song featured in the soundtrack is Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man", also from 1968. As a piece of trivia, Donovan's daughter, actress Ione Skye, plays a small, uncredited role in the film. Here is a live performance of the song from 1968:



There are at least a couple of songs used in the film that are from other movies. First, there is Three Dog Night's version of "Easy to Be Hard" (1969), which comes from the play and film "Hair":



Also originating in another film is Oliver's version of "Jean" (1969), which was written by Rod McKuen for the film "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie":



A third song that was originally written for another film ("Lizzie", from 1957) but that appears on the "Zodiac" soundtrack is "It's Not for Me to Say", with the performance in both films by Johnny Mathis:



There are a lot more good songs on the soundtrack of "Zodiac", but I'm running out of room for this week. I'll end this for today, then, by sharing "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)", from 1971, by Marvin Gaye:

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.