Musical

It’s 28. August 1962, and the day is starting much like any other in Communist Hungary. Uncle Simon wakes up the tenement block with some stirring music and makes the day’s announcements. To Attila, there is one that really is worth listening to this time. There is to be a talent competition and, more than that, the first prize will be a trip to a youth convention on the other side of the Iron Curtain -in Helsinki. This has particular interest for Attila, since his beloved, Katinka, lives in Toronto. The distance between them is straining his heart, not to mention the fact that she hasn’t written for a good number of years. Winning the competition would be an ideal way of escaping to Canada so they may be reunited.Read More »

Fantastica is a 1980 French-Canadian musical film directed by Gilles Carle. It was entered into the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

In this oddball mix of music and drama, an actress (Carole Laure) in a traveling musical revue is involved with the show’s director until she meets and falls for an aging ecological activist. He too is drawn to her, and together they try to stop a factory from being built over an old-growth forest. Written by Jack H. – IMDBRead More »

Based on the Bela Bartok opera. Bluebeard woos his women and then swiftly disposes of them.

Powell originally intended for this to be screened without subtitles so the viewer could be fully immersed in the music and visuals. In 1978, he reissued the film with some contextual-setting hardsubs. This is that version.Read More »

During the 2020 lockdown, Lucrecia Martel returns to her home in Salta, Argentina’s most conservative region. Here she follows Julieta Laso who, like a muse, introduces her to a group of female artists and defiant people who exchange glances and opinions around a fire. Perfectly attuned to a body of work that constructs stories from an amalgam of people and places and, four years after the beautiful Zama, Terminal norte marks the return to the screen of Argentina’s greatest filmmaker. Once again, there is a sense of being on the periphery of the world in a way that is simultaneously real, symbolic and political. Now working in a documentary format, Martel immerses herself and gets lost in Julieta Laso’s hoarse, seductive voice. And then, in a progression that has now become familiar to us, the “I” of the protagonist opens up to encounter a plethora of voices and bodies which the camera never tires of following. The result is a gripping tribute to a community that, temporary though it may be, serves as a magnificent antidote to the pandemic.Read More »

Louis decides to leave his wife and finds his happiness elsewhere. Along the way, he meets a man with whom he falls in love.Read More »

Documentary master Frederick Wiseman’s 38th film in a career that has spanned more than that number of years, turns his attention to one of the world’s greatest ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. John Davey’s camera roams the vast Palais Garnier, an opulent 19th century pile of a building: from its crystal chandelier-laden corridors to its labyrinthine underground chambers, from its light-filled rehearsal studios to its luxurious theater replete with 2,200 scarlet velvet seats and Marc Chagall ceiling. LA DANSE devotes most of its time to watching impossibly beautiful young men and women — among them Nicolas Le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot, and Agnès Letestu — rehearsing the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. For balletomanes and the curious alike, LA DANSE serves up a scrumptious meal of delectable moments, one more glorious than the next, made even more precious by their ephemeral nature.Read More »

Darling Lili is a 1970 American musical film.

Set during World War I, it centers on Lili Smith, a popular British music hall performer who is regarded as a femme fatale. She’s actually a German spy, and the uncle she dotes upon is really Col. Kurt Von Ruger, a fellow espionage agent and her contact for the Huns. In hopes of gaining valuable information, Lili begins using her feminine wiles on Maj. William Larrabee, a top American pilot. However, Lili soon discovers that she’s falling in love with Larrabee and can’t find the courage to betray him, and when Larrabee discovers Lili’s secret, he refuses to turn her in.Read More »

Summary:
From Samuel Sloan@IMDB:
The summer of 1936. Shirou was on the way to Paris as the honeymoon with Madoka. He could marry her on one condition: he gave up pursuing a career as jazz musician. But he planned to stay in Shanghai to enjoy the jazz life. When Madoka found out about it, they were already in trouble which made impossible to get out of Shanghai. They began working in a dance hall, enjoying jazz and freedom. But the war was coming near… (The term ‘bansu king’ in the title derived from ‘advance king’, which means a person who always gets advance of his/her payment.)Read More »

A troubled young woman who visits a psychotherapist to help her quit smoking undergoes hypnosis and finds herself reliving a tragic Victorian romance from a past life.Read More »