GREATEST MOVIE SONGS
You’re watching a film. A song comes on the soundtrack - either heard or sung. And it’s memorable. And perfect. And right for the film, the time and the place. Might not be your favourite song but there - in the moment, watching the film - it is.
Here is my list of the greatest film songs.
Isn’t this a Lovely Day (Top Hat) - 1935
“The weather is frightening. The thunder and lightening seem to be having their way…”
If there’s a better song, I don’t know it. There’s probably not a day that passes where I don’t sing a couple of bars from this Irving Berlin classic. The movie poster hangs in my bedroom. In the film, Fred and Ginger are caught in a rainstorm and take refuge in a bandstand. As they sing and dance to this clever song, the rain outside pours. Their little shelter becomes a cacoon of flirtation, courtship and growing new love. To a great melody. We probably all wish for this. They weren’t complicated, Hollywood musicals of the 30’s. They went to the point. And what a lovely - make believe - world that was.
Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine - Lost in Translation 2001
Top five favourite movie. What’s not to like? Bill Murray. Bill Murray singing ‘More than This’ in a Japanese karaoke bar. Scarlett Johansson. Yes, Scarlett. A chaste romantic film. Clever. Laid back. The whirlwind of romance away from home. They go out with her friends. A club. A chase. A party. A karaoke bar. They drink and smoke and then get a taxi home. The early morning ennui following a night out. Dozy. Comfortable. With someone special. And this song plays. A surprisingly tender tune for a song with cranked up guitars. It floats along with the hazy reality of a blissful 3am with a girl. In a taxi. On the way back.
Get Back, The Beatles with Billy Preston - Let it Be (1970) Not the single. The final song from the movie.
The Beatles going down fighting. A cold January in 1969. The Beatles are nearly broken up and somewhat lethargic about their latest album. They decide to play one last impromptu concert on the roof of their building because they can’t be arsed going anywhere or organising anything else. So they play their latest songs across London to the unsuspecting office workers. The police get called after half an hour bringing this rooftop concert to an end. But there’s one more song. Get Back. John and George’s amp gets turned off after the first verse. And then ‘fuck it’ they switch it back on and their guitars come back with added urgency. This is it. The last song ever played live by the greatest group ever. It’s scrappy, it’s raw but it’s the fucking Beatles man. Going down fighting.
You’re Sensational, Frank Sinatra - High Society (1956)
“I’ve no proof. When people say, “You’re more or less aloof.”
Ah, Cole Porter… What a song writer. Famously, he wrote both the music and the witty and intelligent lyrics to his songs. High Society is one of my happy places. Happy memories of the family watching a good movie back in the 70’s. Of course, I like The Philadelphia Story too, but I grew up with the colour, musical version. From Louis Armstrong kicking it off on the bus, the hip jazz lingo, Bing Crosby being Bing, right through to the loveliness that was Grace Kelly. It’s a classic movie with a ‘sensational’ score. So many great moments; Bing and Grace harmonising on ‘True Love’, “now that’s jazz”, Frank and Bing duetting drunk, the breakfast outside on the patio. And the effortless class of ‘You’re Sensational’. I know I say it lot, but hardly a day goes by without my singing or humming its opening lines quoted above.
Bela Lugosi’s Dead, The Hunger (1983)
This is the classic opening for Tony Scott’s stylistic vampire movie The Hunger. The music is strange, other worldly and the perfect accompaniment to an unsettling, hip nightclub where Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie go out a’hunting for victims. Long coats, shades, cigarettes; the foundations of Goth are right there up on screen. Of course, in real life, Goths were just smelly losers in bad clothes and worse make-up hiding their acne. But in their mind, they were Peter Murphy, the chisel cheeked lead singer of Bauhaus who dominates this first scene from behind the bars of a cage (see below). Right song. Right movie. Well framed and shot. Hence, on the list!
Sweet Transvestite, Tim Curry - Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Cracking song in one weird musical. Great was the day I found this movie. Suddenly everyone in sixth form was a sweet transvestite as both an insult, a compliment and - at the Christmas disco - a costume. I liked this song so much, I got my group to learn it and we’d chuck it in every now and then to get the crowd going. Or to stop them going. Whatever. At our final gig, at the Hare and Hounds in Brighton in early 1996, this was the last song we ever played. Pissed. Out of tune. Camping it up. And then I pulled a strop and sacked the band and went solo. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Good song though.
There She Goes, The La’s - The Parent Trap (1998)
One of the greats. Of course this song stands on its own. Lee Mavers’ beautiful, beautiful indie twinkling guitar ditty packs three minutes of audio gold. And here, in a mainstream kids movie, it’s framed perfectly. As Lynsay Lohan’s American twin is driven around London - in a vintage Rolls Royce of course - images of London flash by as There She Goes blasts out. The two go together like an American travel agent’s perfect ad of quirky, historical, sunny London. With a iconoclastic soundtrack.
The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music, Julie Andrews - The Sound of Music (1965)
Yeah, I know. A bit route one. Too obvious. What’s your favourite band? The Beatles. Favourite piece of classic music? Beethoven’s Fifth. Favourite movie song? As Time Goes By, Casablanca. They’re culturally ubiquitous for a reason, no? They’re the Stairways to Heaven of their field. Same here. I’ve tried to give a wide range of movie songs in this piece but - hey! - indulge me one indulgence. A toss up between the Dooley Wilson classic (If she can stand it, I can. Play it!) and this one. I went with Julie running around the Austrian Alps singing about mountains. And music. What makes it so special though, apart from the song, of course, is the helicopter shots, the gradual build up before Julie finally comes into shot. It is a classic, musically and cinematographically. Once seen, never forgot. Job done.
70's Films
Rocking that hat! Olly Reed.
I've been working on a blog post about the 70's for a while. Handwritten memories in a leather notebook... Yeah - I can remember the 70's. Lots of long hair, rounded collars and power cuts. A few years later - in the later 80's - I worked for a Tory MP and edited a Conservative In-Touch leaflet for voters that basically painted the 70's as a huge 10 year drift into communism (fault of Callaghan, Wilson, Benn, Heath and other assorted fellow travellers). There's something in that, of course, but my actual memories of the decade - as opposed to my political views - are fabulous; warm, comforting, happy.
I'll post the 70's article when I've finished it and - more importantly - edited it into something readable. But let's not shy away from a list when one hoves into view. So, today's listette is the best films of 1970's with a slight bias towards films I actually saw. Yeah. In the 1970's at ABC Cinema in Rochdale.
Star Wars - of course. I saw it when it came out in 1977 and was pissed off it would 1984 before it came on TV. These were days before videos. Amazon Prime etc. Christ this movie is big now. BIGGER in the 70's when the tech wasn't so dated. I collected the cards. Swapped them at school. Iconic movie. 70's classic. It doesn't get much better than this.
The Long Good Friday - Obviously didn't see this in the 70's! Bob Hoskins on fine form and Helen Mirren looking (as she always does) stunning. Dream girl. London as it was late 70's - a shit-hole but ringing to the song of Cockneys. A time piece of a world in transition before Thatcher reinvented the country.
The Three / Four Musketeers. Richard Lester screwing over Olly Reed, Michael York et al by claiming to make just one movie but then cutting it in half and releasing two. Funny, irreverent, full of humour, British character actors and daring-do. I think I saw this one rainy holiday in Dorset 1974.
Manhattan - I thought this one better than Annie Hall. Shot in black and white. When Woody Allen was vaguely funny. Didn't see this until the 80's. Plot: Woody forms an inappropriate relationship with a much younger girl. Mmm, yeah. An artist, right?
Animal House - I don't think I've ever progressed beyond this story of the worst Frat House on campus. Kent Dorfman. Wow! Tim Mattheson, John Belushi lead the lads into one gross out misdeed after another. Sporned a genre.
Apocalypse Now - "Saigon. Shit!" President Andrew Bartlett goes off to kill The Godfather to sound of the Doors while reading Heart of Darkness. Or something like that. It goes on for, like, nine hours and is always on when I come back pissed from the pub. A bit here. A bit there. Oh, the deleted French scene. Must be director's cut. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Monty Python's Life Of Brian - What can I say? Possibly one of the most iconic and funniest films ever. So many scenes that are now comedy gold. Hard to see that it was controversial at the time. Christianity is a bit of a soft target though, isn't it? Not then, apparently. I suppose one could imagine a comedy team doing a piss-take of another religious figure from a different, militant religion now? Edgy, no? No? They'd rather take lame shots at Trump? How we've progressed since the 70's.
The Godfather 1&2 - Mario Puzo / Francis Ford Coppola's epic tales of a mafia family in New York. What's not to like? Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall. "Forget about it". Not.
Well there you go - some great films. Some good times. Superman in January 1979 at the ABC in Rochdale was memorable only because it was the Winter of Discontent and so the heating was off. Good times.
BTW - I reserve the right to add a couple more as I want to publish this and I've left my initial notes at home... Yes, I do draft these out sometimes. I know it looks stream of consciousness but, it ain't.
What's a DVD anyway?
I like the word cohere. It's one of those words, not complicated, not a tongue twister, that sorts the linguistic sheep from the inarticulate goats. The donkeys from the asses. The Trumps from the Hillarys.
I mention this not because I'm a pretentious nob - I am, of course - but because it reminds me of something I once wrote (I paraphrase):-
"The list format helps the struggling writer cohere a random set of unrelated facts and opinions around a predefined structure to save them actually having to be creative."
Or something like that. Snappy, eh? Some of my best work lies on the cutting room floor of the draft folder, or banished into the dusty corners of the hard drive.* Which is my way of backing ungracefully into a flimsy article which has a list at its core.
Tim's Top 5 DVDs
DVD's - remember them? Yes, grand-dad, I do. What we had before the internet and Amazon Prime and Netflix. I still have some DVDs, tucked away in my French oak coffee table. Well, that is, until I sorted them out yesterday and packed them up in cardboard boxes. I'm moving house, you see.
Necessarily, this little list has an air of a few years ago. I don't mind that - so do I.
Clerks - Foul mouthed, funny, low budget, clever. "36?"
Groundhog Day - Bill Murray relives the same day over and over again until he finds redemption.
Lost in Translation - Bill Murray has an unconsummated but profound romance with Scarlett Johansson (haven't we all?)
Before Sunrise / Before Sunset / Before Midnight - Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy in a classy, verbally rich, trio of films shot over 21 years.
The Wicker Man - Early British 70's horror set in Scotland with great folk music, Britt Ekland and a shocking end for Edward Woodward.
And that's it. I thought you might like to know.
* Beating it hard tonight.