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 Disney Live-Action Films Edition

It came to my attention that today is the anniversary of the release of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, "Steamboat Willie", in 1928. It's a silly little trifle, just over 7 minutes long, and probably nobody who saw it on November 18, 1928, thought that it would be the first step to an entertainment empire. But, it has been said that "It all started with a mouse," and today we are still watching films, animated and live action, from Walt Disney Studios.

Of course, "Steamboat Willie" has come under some criticism over the years for scenes like the one in which Mickey slings a cat around by its tail. And, in reality, criticizing Disney films for one reason or another has become another long tradition. Still, it is an historic bit of film, and not just because it introduced The Mouse that no one dares mess with in a serious way. "Steamboat Willie" was the first animation with synchronized sound. It is also on the Library of Congress's National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

And so here, on the 85th anniversary of its release, in its entirety, is "Steamboat Willie":



The anniversary kind of got me thinking, since it is Movie Monday, about Disney films in general, and how they kind of get short shrift from some people for various reasons. Various of the films have come under criticism for being insensitive to various groups, for being simplistic, for being "kids' stuff", which is not the same as being simplistic, and so on and so forth. I think I might have written here before how some people have taken to watching some of the more recent animated films frame by frame to find images that they find offensive for whatever reason.

But, you know, Disney Studios have made some fine films over the years. Or, at least, they've made some films I really liked on first viewing and continue to like as I've seen them over and over again, over the years. Yeah, there have been bad Disney films, and Disney films I haven't liked. But there are those that have held up, at least for me, over repeated viewings. And so, in chronological order, here are some of the Disney live action films that I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. This is not an exhaustive list, but just a few that come to mind immediately when I think of this collection of movies.

I haven't seen "The Living Desert" (1953) in years. Decades, probably. In fact, the last time I specifically remember seeing it was when I was in the third grade and saw it at school, appropriately enough when I lived in Arizona for a couple of months. But, given the chance, I'd sit down and watch it again. It is a documentary about desert life forms that won the Best Documentary Feature award at the 26th Academy Awards and also won the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. It is also on the National Film Registry. Here is just a taste from the introduction of the film:



"The Parent Trap" (1961) is one of my favorite films in the world. That only goes for the original; I didn't really like the remake (from 1998) all that much, although it had its moments. But, the original film is one of those films that I will sit down and watch whenever I find it showing on television. You probably know the story: twins separated as babies when their parents divorce, who discover as young teenagers at summer camp that they actually have a twin. They hatch a plot to return to the parent who they haven't grown up with and then a further plan to get their parents back together. This could have been anything from a pedestrian film to one that was painful to watch. But the way the story is handled, and the performances from all involved - the film stars Hayley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, and Brian Keith - make into something else entirely, a really good film. In this clip, the girls discover that they are, indeed, sisters:



And then there is "Mary Poppins" (1964), which starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. The film was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, the most of any Disney film, and won four, including the Best Actress award for Julie Andrews. The also won best actress awards at the Golden Globes and from the New York Film Critics Circle. It was the top box office film of 1965. This, of course, is the story of Mary Poppins, the magical nanny with the carpetbag that had to have been a TARDIS (some of us argue that she had to have been a Time Lord) because it was clearly bigger on the inside that it was on the outside. After all, she pulled an entire floor lamp out of it, among other things. Here is the original trailer for the film, including a glimpse of the tea party that ends up floating up around the ceiling, which is my favorite part of the movie:



Jumping ahead a decade, Disney released "Island at the Top of the World" in 1974. Not a lot of people, I've found, remember this film, and it didn't get very good reviews when it first came out, although I understand that it has become more appreciated over time. This film is an action-adventure that revolves around an Arctic expedition. There are erupting volcanoes, there are whales...and there is an airship. I like airships, so I was probably predisposed to like this movie, and I did. Here is a clip from the film:



I have not, on the whole, liked the more recent Disney movies as well as I have liked the older ones. I'm not sure why, and there are exceptions: I've liked the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and the National Treasure movies are good despite the presence of Nicholas Cage who, as I've said before here, bugs the crap out of me. One of the 21st century Disney movies, however, that I like immensely, is "The Princess Diaries" (2001), starring Julie Andrews, Anne Hathaway, and Hector Elizondo. I'm not sure what it is that I like so much about this film, which is clearly targeted at teenage girls. I haven't been a teenager in a very, very long time. But I do like it. Here's the trailer:



And then there is "Oz the Great and Powerful" (2013), which got what can be kindly called mixed reviews, but which I liked a lot once I got over the hesitation to see it based on those reviews. It is the story of how the Wizard got to Oz, and it is a beautiful film to look at. It stars James Franco (who also kind of bugs the crap out of me, but not nearly as much as Nicholas Cage does), Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams. But be warned, the Flying Monkeys are even more horrific than they were in "The Wizard of Oz". The trailer doesn't show a good view of the Flying Monkeys, but the small glimpse is enough for you to get the idea:



And, to end on, there is a new Disney film that I just became aware of recently that has premiered in the UK but hasn't been released in the US yet - it will be out next month - "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013), which stars Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. It tells the story of P. L. Travers (played by Emma Thompson), who wrote the "Mary Poppins" books, with an emphasis on the efforts of Walt Disney (portrayed by Tom Hanks) to secure the rights to the books so that he can make a film based on them. I'm really excited to see this film, which has been getting good reviews after it's London premiere. After seeing this trailer (I've previously only seen the short TV ads for the film), I'm even more enthusiastic to see "Saving Mr. Banks":



I know some of you out there are saying, "But what about the animated films?" Just be patient and stay tuned; I'll write about those in a future edition of Movie Monday.

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.