Tag: music

Musical Interlude – Mighty Mighty Bosstones

In the meantime, please enjoy this throwback from my high school days – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ super-jaunty Knock on Wood.

Not a lot of film reviews done lately, but I’m working on one for Noah Baumbach’s character-driven Frances Ha. I was pleasantly surprised by that one !

In the meantime, please enjoy this throwback from my high school days – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ super-jaunty Knock on Wood. 

 

Back in the day, a friend of mine knew Dicky Barrett. She’d go to all the shows in town and see him there, and they’d hang out. I never went to many ska shows but I do miss that sound. Now and then I need to throw some on and skank around my house when I’m doing some housecleaning.

FUN FACT – I can’t remember where I heard this but the song is supposed to be about taking responsibility for your actions by getting tested for AIDS. Feels like one of those VH-1 Pop-Up video facts to me, but maybe I also made it up.

Anyway, enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Thursday Check-In

I saw him live when I was 5 years old, and because my dad was too cheap to pay for parking he made us walk through 2 miles of Scarface-era Miami to the arena.

Rather than gurn about all the things that aren’t going my way, as I usually do, here is Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

I have loved Michael since I was 4 years old. I had an MJ doll that was the Ken to my Barbies, complete with red Thriller outfit and single sparkly glove. I saw him live when I was 5 years old, and because my dad was too cheap to pay for parking he made us walk to the arena through 2 miles of Scarface-era Miami. Doing The Wave for an hour confused and exhausted me and I fell asleep halfway through the show…

…BUT. 

MJ’s music has long been a powerful antidepressant for me. As far as I’m concerned Beat It is like a 200-cc shot of ‘NO LONGER TAKING BULLSHIT FROM ANYONE.’

This week has been a downer, but I am resolved to bounce back. I am working on some entries for next week, and doing a lot of reading and commenting in the meantime. I’m resting up, basically, after a marathon of both personal and professional productivity.

I wish you luck today, in all you do!

Go forth and BE AWESOME!  I know you can! 

 

“We Will Speak in Music.” – 1994’s Immortal Beloved

I’ll be honest – Immortal Beloved is a fierce, intense movie. And like anything powerful, it is worth the experience. It is one of the best illustrations of the artist’s interior struggle, and the ultimate tragedy for for some of the most brilliant minds: That people love who you are, or what you do, but rarely both.

Most people are familiar with Milos Forman’s powerful work Amadeus, which explored the friendship and eventual rivalry of Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Boatloads of awards, fantastic setpieces, amazing costumes and performances, and fame in the form of pop culture references are all associated with this movie. And while I love Amadeus, and love to pop it in now and then it is not my favorite biopic of a Classical musician.

That honor belongs to 1994’s Immortal Beloved. 

Immortal_beloved_film

It’s become de rigueur for award-winning biopics to explore the difficult, tumultuous lives and mental states of artists, and Immortal Beloved is one of the great examples of this. (Honestly, it’s more shocking to find a biopic about an artist who isn’t batshit crazy and emotionally abusive. For a fun experiment, watch the biopic Dark Star on H.R. Giger and have your mind blown by now normal and pleasant he is. He has a healthy long-term relationship! His friends hang out at his house all the time! This from the man who gave us the Birth Machine!) But I digress. We were speaking of Beethoven.

First, some background.

Continue reading ““We Will Speak in Music.” – 1994’s Immortal Beloved”

Stay Tuned!

I’m still writing every night, and also watching things now that I have internet again. I’m really enjoying Archer, and Sunday was a huge marathon of streaming. I worked my way through:

So far, I’ve dropped about 1200 words on Immortal Beloved. After a few more edits, I’ll be posting that one tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

In also exciting news, I dropped off my violin bow to be restrung. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, and after watching a movie with so much emphasis on music and performance, I realized how much I missed playing my violin. I played in Middle and High school (7 years), took private lessons on weekends and even played in a youth symphony, which culminated in a performance onstage at the Kravis Center. I’ll do a bigger write-up later on that.

Upcoming posts:

Continue reading “Stay Tuned!”