Accolades all around...

This is the time of year when organizations start handing out recognitions for achievement in the arts. A few days ago, the Kennedy Center Honors were handed out for the year, recognizing the careers and achievements of actress Shirley MacLaine, singer and songwriter Billy Joel, musician Carlos Santana, composer and performer Herbie Hancock, and opera singer Martina Arroyo. Earlier this week, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that next April it will induct a new class, to include Nirvana, Cat Stevens, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, Hall and Oates, and Kiss. Also recently, the Golden Globe nominations for film and television were announced.

And, today, the Library of Congress announced the addition of 25 more films to the National Film Registry. The new list, which brings the total number of films listed on the registry to 625, contains some familiar titles as well as some you've probably never heard of - certainly I've never heard of some of them. The Registry was created in 1989 by Congress to make sure that culturally important films are preserved for the future. It includes not only "movies" - feature-length films that you and I go to the theater to see or rent at Red Box or watch on cable or Netflix - but also other films. For example, the Zapruder film that documents the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 is on the Registry. So is Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.

Part of the point of the registry is to make sure that important films are preserved. This is especially important when you consider that a recent study showed that around 70 percent of all feature-length silent-era films have already been lost. But it isn't just those very old films that are deteriorating. Not long ago, film-maker Michael Moore, whose "Roger and Me" is one of the films selected for inclusion on this year's list, discovered when a film festival requested a print to show, that no viewable original prints of the film were available because all of them have faded so badly.

The full list of films chosen this year includes:

"Bless Their Little Hearts" (1984)
"Brandy in the Wilderness" (1969)
"Cicero March" (1966)
"Daughter of Dawn" (1920)
"Decasia" (2002)
"Ella Cinders" (1926)
"Forbidden Planet" (1956)
"Gilda" (1946)
"The Hole" (1962)
"Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961)
"King of Jazz" (1930)
"The Lunch Date" (1989)
"The Magnificent Seven" (1960)
"Martha Graham Dance films (1944)
"Mary Poppins" (1964)
"Men & Dust" (1940)
"Midnight" (1939)
"Notes on the Port of St. Francis" (1951)
"Pulp Fiction" (1994)
"The Quiet Man" (1952)
"The Right Stuff" (1983)
"Roger & Me" (1989)
"A Virtuous Vamp" (1919)
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966)
"Wild Boys of the Road" (1933)

For a short description of each film on this year's list, here's a link to the Library of Congress press release announcing this year's class of included films.

Films must be at least 10 years old to be included on the Registry. Anyone can suggest a film for inclusion on the list, but the final decision of which films will be included is made by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington from a shortlist compiled from the thousands of suggestions that are made online each year.

Personally, I'm glad to see "The Right Stuff" and "Mary Poppins" added to the Registry, as they are both favorites of mine. It's also good to see some science fiction included with the addition of "Forbidden Planet" to the registry. I've never actually seen "Forbidden Planet" all the way through, or at least if I have I don't recall it; I guess this means that I need to do that. I'm sure that some people are going to complain about one of Michael Moore's films being included, just on their ideological opposition to him, but "Roger & Me" really is a good movie. So are "The Quiet Man" and "The Magnificent Seven".

But I'm also glad to see films like "Cicero March", a documentation of a civil rights march held in Cicero, Illinois on September 4, 1966, included. Available on YouTube, this 8 minute film is not pleasant to watch, but it documents how contentious the drive for civil rights for all Americans was, not just in the South, but in the Northern states as well. This is something that, as a nation, we should never forget, lest we go back those times and those attitudes in regard to ethnicity, which was the issue then, or in regard to other groups based on other criteria.

But, I'll get off my soap box now, and just say that it's a good day to see a movie.

Movie Monday: The I Can't Not Watch Edition

Over the weekend, I ran across a discussion online regarding the movies that we just can't seem to resist watching whenever we find them on television, be it broadcast, cable, or on demand.

I think it is true that we all a list like this if we like movies at all. If you're like me, and you love movies, you probably have a long list of them. They're those movies that you love and will watch whenever you can, not because they are necessarily good movies but just because there is something in them or something about them that speaks to you, one way or another.

In the discussion online, participants were asked to stick to a list of ten movies. There is no way I can do that, but I managed to limit my first list to thirteen, and then added another to that after stumbling on That Thing You Do! (1996) late last night on cable. It's one of those movies that I've loved ever since the first time I saw it in the theater when it first came out.

Thinking about it this morning, I added a few other movies to the list. I can't rank them from best to worst, or most liked to least liked but will watch any time, and so here is my list in order of when they were first released. They are:

The Mummy (1932)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Rear Window (1954)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
The Trouble With Angels (1966)
The Doberman Gang (1972)
The Turning Point (1977)
Grease 2 (1982)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Road House (1989)
Empire Records (1995)
Twister (1996)
That Thing You Do! (1996)
Almost Famous (2000)
Zoolander (2001)
The Princess Diaries (2001)

As you can see, some of the movies on this list are not what anyone would consider great cinema. Those are the movies that I will watch because of some personal or locational connection I have to them. For example, the reason I will watch The Doberman Gang anytime, anywhere is that it was filmed in the town where I grew up. It's a bank-heist movie, and the bank branch that was robbed in the film was the branch where I had my savings account as a child and teenager. The theater shown at one point in the movie was the theater where I went to the movies on a weekly basis for years. In fact, it was the theater where the premiere of the movie was held, and which I attended. It was kind of funny, because they had used the real tellers from the bank to play the tellers in the film, and they were sitting right behind me at the premiere. Every once in awhile I'd hear an astonished, or a gleeful, "There I am," as one or another of them came on the screen. There are several other places I knew well growing up that appear in the movie, including a quick glimpse down the street I lived on at the time and an equally fast look at the side and back yard of the house where I babysat regularly.

I've also got a personal stake in viewing Grease 2, which really is a pretty bad movie. However, it was filmed at the campus where my high school graduation was held. It was not the school I attended my senior year, but my school didn't have any facilities to hold graduation ceremonies, and so we used the football field at the "other" high school in town. So, whenever I want to see where I graduated, all I have to do is pull out the DVD of Grease 2 and it's there, in the scenes that take place on the football field and track.

The other movie on the list that I have a locational tie to is Road House, part of which was filmed in and around the town I lived in and the town where I went to college for awhile. While I never saw any of the filming or ran into any of the cast or crew, I got a lot of laughs from the women in the small central California town I lived in who, for the duration, were intent on tracking down Patrick Swayze, who starred in the film. Personally, I would have been much more excited to meet Sam Elliot, who was also in the movie, but that's just me.

I also noticed as I was keyboarding the list here, that there are several films that center around music one way or another. A Hard Day's Night, That Thing You Do!, and Almost Famous all center around bands, while Empire Records chronicles a day in the life of an indie record store. This should be no surprise, since anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I love music.

There are also some classics on the list, of course. I'm sure you can pick them out. And the others? Well, I just like them. Sometimes I'm not quite sure why. The Princess Diaries is really a movie meant for teenage girls but, although I can't put my finger on why, there is just something about it that makes me go back to it again and again. With Zoolander, on the other hand, I know exactly why I like it enough to see it again and again: it is possibly the most absurdly funny thing I've ever seen. It is the performances and the fact that I love the ballet that brings me back to The Turning Point again and again.

So. Now you know which movies I cannot resist seeing over and over again. My question to you, readers, is what does your list look like? Feel free to share in the comments section.

Music Sunday/Monday: The Flying High Edition (and that's not a drug reference)

If you're looking for Music Sunday, I have to apologize for being a little tardy this week. I was busy for much of today with other things, chiefly watching Felix Baumgartner taking the most awesome skydive in the history of, well, skydiving.

I have to admit, I did not watch the event live. There were just too many things that could have gone wrong, and I could not make myself watch. However, once I knew that everything had gone as planned and he was back on the Earth safely, I sat down and watched the rebroadcast of the event. It was amazing.

I also have to confess that I've never, ever had any desire to skydive. I just don't understand why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Yes, I know; that's not an original observation. It does, however, sum up my feelings about the subject perfectly.

Baumgartner's jump today is something orders of magnitude different, though. He rode a pressurized capsule, tethered to a helium balloon, up about 24 miles and then stepped out on a little platform said to be about the size of a skateboard before stepping off for a descent that started with a free-fall of over four minutes. Along the way, before deploying his parachute, Baumgartner exceeded she speed of sound by a significant amount, the first time anyone not in an aircraft has broken the sound barrier. And, after all that, he landed on his feet.

Being the history geek that I am, I think a little historical context is a good thing. And that context is this: Baumgartner's jump, and his achievement as the first human to break the sound barrier without benefit of aircraft, came on the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager's flight to become the first human to break the sound barrier with benefit of aircraft. I just hope I don't have to explain who Chuck Yeager is. If you don't know, go watch the film, The Right Stuff, or read the book of he same name, by Tom Wolfe.

Some people see what Felix Baumgartner did today as a stunt, on a par with Evel Knievel's jumps over rows of cars or his attempt (much less successful than Baumgartner was today) to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in some sort of souped-up, rocket-propelled motorcycle. And there is little doubt that Baumgartner was partly motivated by the challenge of doing something no one has ever done before.

But today's achievement was much more than just thrill-seeking. What Baumgartner proved today that can be achieved could be the first step in making space flight safer than it now is. This might have been a stunt, but it was a stunt that collected scientific data that could someday save lives.

But, since it is still Sunday (barely, and not anymore in most of the world)...and there is a song for every occasion and an occasion for every song, I'll leave you with some flight music:

Even though this has nothing to do with skydiving or spaceflight, as I watched the balloon taking Baumgartner aloft today, I kept thinking about this song, "Up, Up and Away", by the Fifth Dimension, from 1967:



And then there's this, Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly", in a live performance from 2006. Some of the lyrics: "I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings/Coming down is the hardest thing", could be seen as appropriate to the day in their own way:



Pink Floyd also recorded a completely different "Learning to Fly":



And, not music, but I found this while I was looking around for some music to share with you. It is a dramatization, from The Right Stuff, of that first time the sound barrier was broken. Just, you know, so you really will know who Chuck Yeager (here portrayed by Sam Shepard) is, and what he did:



Well, it has slipped into Monday while I've been writing this, so I'm not sure what to call this. Music Sunday/Monday? It'll have to do, I guess.

Celebrating the life and work of Levon Helm...

Sometimes you get bad news after the fact. And sometimes you find out before the fact that something bad is soon to happen. And that's the case this week, with the announcement that musician and actor Levon Helm is "in the last stages" of his longtime fight with cancer. The announcement was made by his family on his website yesterday.

This is a sad, sad thing. Not only has he had a hand in making some of the best music of the last half of the 20th century with The Band, Levon Helm is also an actor of immense likability. Lots of people have been posting examples of his musical performances, for good reason. But, today, I'd like to share one of my favorites of his performances as an actor. This scene from The Right Stuff features Levon Helm as Jack Ridley alongside Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager. Helm also provides the narration.