Monday 28 October 2019

Musical Monday #223

I have not seen this movie, nor do I particularly want to,

But OMG this musical number is the most 60s thing I have ever seen:

Pajama Party from Pajama Party
Performed by Annette Funicello
Written by Guy Hemric and Jerry Styner

Saturday 26 October 2019

Best Movie Of Each Decade

I realise that here in The Modern Day, most people just stream media or only own digital copies, but I am old school and while it may not be very environmentally friendly, I just like owning libraries of stuff that I can stare at. It evokes memories and emotions that die away when you turn something into just a digital file.

We currently have one big cabinet full of movies. A while back, I decided to put all The Movies in chronological order (mainly to avoid The On-Going Argument I have had throughout The Life about what alphabetical order means, i.e. why 'the', 'a' and 'an' are not allowed to count as words just because they are common, whether numbers are spelled or put in a separate digit category, and don't get started on punctuation, whether spaces between words change which letters count first, and whether sequels go after originals or elsewhere due to having different titles, ugh, too much headache). I like having movies in order of release date (or premiere date anyway) because it shows the progress and trend of time and helps with what kind of a movie-mood I am in. But it is difficult when putting films back on The Shelf to know exactly where they are all supposed to go. So I labelled them all.

And this really highlighted how skewed our movie tastes are. It certainly makes me feel like a bit of a philistine. The 1930s-1960s all fit on one shelf, but the 1990s and 2000s fill half the entire cabinet! However, I have been more discerning with the older movies, whereas the newer stuff I rarely actually watch so it might all go at some point, plus it is much harder to get hold of older movies.

Based on these movies, I wanted to see what The Favourites are from each decade. That doesn't necessarily mean that these would all be in The Top 10 Movies Of All Time list, because for that list I might pick five 80s movies over any from the 30s, for example, but these are still all pretty good movies. (The Second Favourite Movie Of All Time* didn't even make it into this list.) Also these choices are off the top of The Head while staring at the shelves, so I might wake up tomorrow and be like, I've suddenly remembered all the brilliant films from the 90s that I forgot about...





Weirdly slid into animated kids movies at the end there.
I think this shows I have some diverse tastes, right? 
Or just weird ones.
(I don't know why this bit of text is centralised; blogger refused to realign it)


So, and I genuinely mean this, what answers would you have given?





*Who Framed Roger Rabbit




Monday 21 October 2019

Musical Monday #222

It's no secret that I'm not a particular fan of Les Misérables - I don't enjoy through-sung musicals because everything just drowns into one dull mess, and I've seen enough plays to know that I want to watch comedies not tragedies. I just can't take theatre seriously enough.

However, I do appreciate that there are some good songs in Les Misérables and One Day More is pretty classic as a get-everyone-on-stage-at-the-end-of-act-1 standard that most shows try to emulate.

However however, I'm not going to use the one from the movie, because that would involve having to listen to Russell Crowe as Javert and that's just not going to happen on my blog. Not when I could be listening to Philip Quast - y'know, my favourite singer ever. So I thought I'd use the One Day More from Hey, Mr Producer! because it is more visually interesting than say the 10th Anniversary Concert where they all awkwardly stand there like lemons. Unfortunately, the version I have chosen does come attached to Being Him Home, which I don't particularly like. Add high-pitched singing to stuff I don't like. It doesn't even make sense thematically because Bring Him Home comes after One Day More in the show (how can Valjean be begging for Marius's life if Marius hasn't even gone to war yet?)  but whatever...

Bring Him Home / One Day More! (Les Misérables) from Hey, Mr. Producer!
Performed by Colm Wilkinson, Michael Ball, Lea Salonga, Philip Quast, Teddy Kempner and Ruthie Henshall, among others (it is super hard to find a cast list for some reason).
Written by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer 

Monday 14 October 2019

Musical Monday #221

Sorry, but I only have a two-day week this week, so not feeling those Monday blues because I'm already halfway through! Woo!

I was considering going with 'N.Y.C.' from Annie today because I have been singing 'Two-Day-Week' to the same tune, but it's a fairly naff song, so instead here's how you can still have fun at work even if you have to go there for many more days...

Nobody But Me from The Office, episode 'Nepotism'
Song performed by The Human Beinz, scene performed by cast of The Office (US)
Song written by The Isley Brothers


Hang in there, guys.

Monday 7 October 2019

Musical Monday #220

Even though I have seen Kelsey Grammer do this live and of course Elvis Presley made the song famous, to me, The Impossible Dream will always be about Sam Beckett quantum leaping through time...

(annoyingly this video is out of sync, but try to ignore that)
Medley of Man Of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote), Dulcinea and The Impossible Dream from Quantum Leap, episode 'Catch A Falling Star'
Performed by Scott Bakula (and others)
Written by Joe Darion and Mitch Leigh.

Sadly the episode itself is quite an annoying one because Sam thinks he is in love with the woman even though she obviously doesn't know who he is.

The soundtrack to the series came with a much fuller version of Scott Bakula singing a Man Of La Mancha medley, so it's kind of weird to listen to the one from the actual episode that is different.