An evening pause: This Rod McKuen song, “Jean,” performed here live by him on the Johnny Cash Show on February 4, 1970, was originally the title song for the wonderful movie The Prime of the Miss Jean Brodie (1969), starring Maggie Smith.
An evening pause: From frigid Russia, some Russians put on the Ritz.
The world’s eight most unique paths. With pictures.
An evening pause: The finale of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Just before the song begins, Candide says this:
We will not think noble, because we are not noble. We will not live in perfect harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We can only promise to do our best, and to live out our lives. Dear God, that is all we can promise in truth. Marry me, Cunegonde.
An evening pause: A very talented actor once told me that a great deal of all comedy is based on contrast, on juxtaposing extreme opposites in unexpected ways.
An evening pause: The central sequence from the 1979 movie, The Black Stallion, when the shipwrecked boy Alec succeeds in taming the shipwrecked Arabian horse. The combination of Carmine Coppola’s music and Caleb Deschanel’s photography in this sequence is unmatched.
An evening pause: Here’s some more harp, this time played in a way you’ve never heard it by the Celtic Harp Orchestra.
An evening pause: I do believe the grasshopper sings the national anthem of the modern liberal, at the beginning of this cartoon from 1934.
An evening pause: From the movie A Mighty Wind (2003), a wonderful and funny pseudo documentary about the 1960s folk era. The folk team of Mitch & Mickey never existed, but this song is superb, made even more poignant by the story.
An evening pause: On St. Patrick’s Day, how about one of Ireland’s best singers.
No lose, it’s just the same
Tears of joy, tears of pain.
They’re hand in hand, they come as one.
Never see the Moon without promise of the Sun.
For all the roses, for all the blows.
I’d rather feel the thorn then to never see the rose.So when you give the handsome flower
Don’t forget the thorn upon the rose
Its cut is deep and its scar lasts forever
It follows love wherever love goes.
An evening pause: As today is the Ides of March, I am always reminded of Julius Caesar. With that thought in mind, here is a clip from the 1953 movie, Cleopatra, staring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, and Richard Burton. The movie overall isn’t very good, though the first half with Rex Harrison playing Julius Caesar is worth watching, partly because of Harrison and partly because it is very clearly inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra.
That first half also includes the scene below, when Cleopatra enters Rome, bringing with her her son by Caesar. A more classic example of late Hollywood spectacle would be hard to find. It is silly, absurd, impossible, and yet totally engrossing. And it was done with no computer effects. When Hollywood PR used to say a movie had a “cast of thousands,” they really meant it.
An evening pause: From the late 1950s, Alastair Cooke introduces Les Paul and Mary Ford, who then demonstrate some advanced music technology (and some smokin’ music) that would only become commonplace in the coming decades.
