Musical

  • Sidney Lanfield – Wake Up and Live (1937)

    1931-1940ComedyMusicalSidney LanfieldUSA

    Synopsis:
    Built around the publicity “feud” between newspaper-radio-gossip spreader Walter Winchell and band leader Ben Bernie, a radio star, Alice Huntley (Alice Faye), who does an advice-and-inspiration program, helps a mike-shy singer, Eddie Kane (Jack Haley) to success by tricking him into singing with Bernie’s orchestra. Winchell uses it to expose Bernie as the trickster. But Kane becomes a great hit with the radio public, and falls in love with Alice. And Bernie and Winchell shake hands to show there’s no business like show business and fabricated feuds.Read More »

  • George Archainbaud – Some Like It Hot AKA Rhythm Romance (1939)

    Drama1931-1940George ArchainbaudMusicalUSA

    Nicky Nelson is a fast-talking sideshow barker with a wax-and-alive concession on Atlantic City’s boardwalk. Even with the band of his friend, struggling musician Gene Krupa, playing on the sidewalk to attract the customers, “The Living Corpse” and other low-rent acts aren’t enough to lure the seen-it-all boardwalk strollers, and the landlord closes the show in lieu of never-paid rent. Nicky, always promoting, goes to Stephen Hanratty, head of the pier’s Dance Pavilion, to plug Krupa’s band as an attraction, but Hanratty won’t even listen to them. But, while there, he meets singer Lily Racquel, who knows he is a phoney but might have the ability to to talk a radio-station manager into giving her an audition. She gives him a ring to help finance the project; he promptly loses it in a crap-game.Read More »

  • Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren – Hevi reissu AKA Heavy Trip (2018)

    2011-2020ComedyFinlandJukka VidgrenJuuso LaatioMusical

    Quote:
    Turo is stuck in a small village and the best thing in his life is being the lead vocalist for the amateur metal band Impaled Rektum. He and his bandmates have practiced for 12 years without playing a single gig. The guys get a surprise visitor from Norway — the promoter for a huge heavy metal music festival — and decide it’s now or never. They steal a van, a corpse, and even a new drummer to make their dreams a reality.Read More »

  • Monte Brice & Laurence Schwab – Take a Chance (1933)

    Monte Brice1931-1940ClassicsLaurence SchwabMusicalUSA

    Take a Chance was based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, though only one
    of the original songs, Eadie Was a Lady, has been retained. The thinnish plot involves the
    misadventures of a pair of pickpockets, played on Broadway by Jack Haley and Sid Silvers
    and on film by James Dunn and Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards. Tired of fleecing the suckers in
    a traveling carnival, our heroes head to Broadway, where they get mixed up with gangsters.
    The soubrette role originally played on stage by Ethel Merman is herein essayed by Lillian
    Roth, hardly a fair trade. Billed last in the huge cast is Marjorie Main, 15 years before
    stepping into her trademark role as Ma Kettle.Read More »

  • John Berry – Cross My Heart (1946)

    1941-1950ComedyJohn BerryMusicalUSA

    Synopsis:
    A compulsive liar admits to a killing she didn’t commit so her husband, a lawyer, can clear her and build a reputation for himself.Read More »

  • Manijeh Hekmat – Bandar Band (2020)

    2011-2020DramaIranManijeh HekmatMusical

    Quote:
    After a long time, some Iranian women singers are going to enter an unofficial competition in a coffee shop in Tehran. Pregnant Mahla along with the other members of Bandar Band, her husband and one of their closest friends, starts her journey to Tehran from a southern province just when they have lost all they had in the flood. They still keep their hopes alive, however every road they take leads to a dead-end in a flood-stricken land. They intend to go to Tehran, but they wonder if it is just another turn around a vicious circle. —Anonymous from IMDBRead More »

  • Charles Reisner – The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)

    Charles Reisner1921-1930ComedyMusicalUSA

    Plot: MGM’s big showcase of musical talent is the main appeal of this film. It’s clunky, but it was filmed literally at the dawn of the sound age. So where else could you see Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Marie Dressler, Laurel, & Hardy, Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Cliff Edwards, Rose Tyler, Conrad Nagel, Charles King, Polly Moran, Bessie Love, William Haines, Anita Page, Gus Edwards and your master of ceremonies, Jack Benny.Read More »

  • John Sanborn – Perfect Lives (1984)

    1981-1990ExperimentalJohn SanbornMusicalUSA

    An opera for television by Robert Ashley. Robert Ashley’s television opera “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, et al, in the American Midwest. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century.Read More »

  • Frank Borzage – Seven Sweethearts (1942)

    1941-1950Frank BorzageMusicalRomanceUSA

    This MGM musical lifts the premise of Pride and Prejudice and plunks it down into the early 1900s. S.Z. Sakall is a restaurateur who has decreed that his seven daughters must marry in order of age — the oldest one first. Kathryn Grayson isn’t the oldest, but she has the sweetest singing voice, and it is she who bags the first husband (Van Heflin). For the record, the remaining six sisters are played by Marsha Hunt, Frances Rafferty, Cecilia Parker, Peggy Moran, Dorothy Morris and Frances Raeburn. Seven Sweethearts was produced by Joe Pasternak, who’d been doing much the same material when in charge of Universal’s Deanna Durbin vehicles. ~ Hal EricksonRead More »

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