Tag: entertainment
The Piano Guys – Cello Wars
An evening pause: In honor of the 35th anniversary today of the premiere of Star Wars in 1977, a beautiful and silly rendition by the Piano Guys.
For those who were not alive in the 1960s and 1970s, it is hard to explain the impact of Star Wars. For more than twenty years, science fiction fans had dreamed of seeing a really good space opera science fiction film on the big screen. Sadly, we saw disappointment after disappointment instead. Except for Forbidden Planet (1956) and television’s Star Trek in the 1960s, practically every science fiction film about space exploration told childish stories that made no sense.
And then came Star Wars.
The battle of the bulges, 1940s style
An evening pause: As you giggle at this, be forewarned: seventy years from now what you consider sane will be considered just as absurd.
Henri
An evening pause: “The monkey mocks me with each flip.”
Only those who have explored deeply into the avant-garde French film world will truly understand this classic.
Harp music of Paraguay, played by the Japanese
Puffer fish chases laser
Strange Charm: A Song about Quarks
Rod McKuen – Jean
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.
Piff the Magic Dragon
Russian flash mob – Putting on the Ritz
An evening pause: From frigid Russia, some Russians put on the Ritz.
The Little Mermaid – Part of That World
The world’s eight most unique paths.
The world’s eight most unique paths. With pictures.
The world’s eight most unique paths. With pictures.
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart
Mathilda’s solo
Issy Emeney – Appalachian Flatfooting
Henry Dagg – Somewhere over the rainbow
Japanese Dragon Painter
Candide: Make Our Garden Grow: Bernstein at 70
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.
Edwin McCain – I’ll Be
The Muppets – Bohemian Rhapsody
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.
The Black Stallion
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.
Richard Feynman – The beauty of a flower from a scientist’s perspective
The Statler Brothers – Flowers On The Wall
Wrecking Crew Orchestra
Ennio Morricone: Gabriel’s Oboe and theme from Cinema Paradiso
Chet Atkins – Mr. Sandman
Celtic Harp Orchestra – Morrison’s Jig
An evening pause: Here’s some more harp, this time played in a way you’ve never heard it by the Celtic Harp Orchestra.
Anne Postic – Celtic Harp at Lorient in 2008
Kitaro – Cosmic Love
“The Grasshopper and the Ants” – Disney’s Silly Symphony (1934)
An evening pause: I do believe the grasshopper sings the national anthem of the modern liberal, at the beginning of this cartoon from 1934.