Musical

Synopsis :

Russian ballet dancer Tatiana (Rita Poelvoorde) loses a competition to become her school’s #1 ballerina, but marries Boris Itovich (Jorge Donn). The war blights their lives, but their son Sergei (Donn) eventually becomes a top dancer himself. Parisian music hall musicians Anne and Simon Meyer (Nicole Garcia and Robert Hossein) marry, only to be deported to a concentration camp. They cast their infant out to chance, and he grows up to be a lawyer (Hossein) who wonders where his son Patrick (Manuel Gélin) gets his musical ability. Big band leader Jack Glenn (James Caan) does USO duty while in the Army, but returns to his singer wife Suzan (Geraldine Chaplin). Their children Sara and Jason (Chaplin and Caan) become respectively a big pop singer and a film director. German piano virtuoso Karl Kremer (Daniel Olbrychski) plays for Hitler in 1938, which complicates his career as an orchestra conductor later in life. Evelyne (Evelyn Bouix) comes to a sorry end after taking many lovers in wartime Paris, including German officers; her daughter Edith (Bouix) returns to Paris and eventually tries a career in dancing. Somehow, the multiple threads of so many creative lives converge at a charity dance concert of Ravel’s Bolero at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.Read More »

It’s the winter of 1933 in Winnipeg. In honor of Winnipeg being named the sorrow capital of the world for the Depression era for the fourth year running by the London Times, Lady Helen Port-Huntley, the legless owner of Winnipeg’s Port-Huntley Beer, is hosting and judging a contest to see which nation has the saddest music in the world, the winner to take home a $25,000 prize. Seeing as to the current Prohibition in the United States, Lady Port-Huntley has ulterior motives for the contest. Father and son, streetcar conductor Fyodor Kent and New York based musical producer Chester Kent, who both have a past connection to Lady Port-Huntley (Fyodor, a WWI veteran and former doctor, has fashioned for her an unusual pair of artificial legs apropos to her business), want to represent Canada and the United States respectively in the contest.Read More »

The 70’s was a period in Australian Rock Music when the industry’s top acts could also be seen at the annual Sunbury Music Festival. On each Australia Day Weekend from 1972-1975, crowds of 35,000 or more would camp at the picturesque site 30 minutes from Melbourne, anticipating a full rocking of their socks from Australia’s own rock’n’roll icons. But the very first Sunbury – an all Australian affair showcasing the talents of the day – is the most fondly remembered by those that made the pilgrimage. Where else could you see Chain, Lobby Loyde and Max Merrit on the same bill? And where else but Sunbury would Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs debut ‘Most People I Know Think That I’m Crazy’? In 1972 – post Woodstock but years before The Big Day Out, Sunbury was an event not to be missed. This film serves as a reminder of that first festival in 1972, and captures the spirit of Sunbury’s ethos – “”to have a good time””. So join your host Molly Meldrum – dressed in the style of the times – and sit back, relax, crank up the volume, and stroll down memory lane to Sunbury.
Read More »

Quote:
An intriguing hybrid, this yarn about a young, John Lennon-like West Country lad (David Essex) who abandons his A-levels (‘I’ve had enough of sodding school!’) and heads off to find his fortune in ashabby, seaside town is made in the same downbeat, naturalistic way as the so-called kitchen sink films of a decade before, but boasts a very upbeat rock’n’roll soundtrack.

Director Whatham (better known for his TV work than for anything he did on the big screen) elicits suprisingly strong performances from Essex and from Ringo Starr as his teddy boy guru. Look out, too, for Billy Fury as the aptly named rocker, Stormy Tempest. The film marked an important staging post in the career of its relentlessly ambitious producer, David Puttnam, and spawned an excellent sequel, Stardust.
Time OutRead More »

“Once” is the inspirational tale of two kindred spirits who find each other on the bustling streets of Dublin.

One is a street musician who lacks the confidence to perform his own songs, and thus works part-time helping his father, who runs a small, vacuum cleaner repair business, whilst he dreams of landing a record deal. The other is a young mother trying to find her way in a strange new town. She works as a house cleaner in an upper-class residence and is struggling financially, yearning for a piano she cannot afford.

As their lives intertwine, they discover each other’s talents and push one another to realise what each had only dreamt about before. Once is the inspiring story of their budding love for one another.Read More »

Quote:
A Brooklyn answering service operator becomes involved in the lives of her clients, including a struggling playwright with whom she begins to fall in love.Read More »

Plot: If faithful Gus can only help the racehorse BIG BOY to win the Kentucky Derby the white folks who employ him will be saved from financial ruin.
Strange, offbeat, bizarre, unique. All of these terms can describe this film which features legendary entertainer Al Jolson in blackface, playing a black man. While acted with tongue very firmly planted in cheek, and meant solely for lighthearted entertainment, this movie will definitely not be to every viewer’s taste. Not until the final minutes does Jolson appear as himself, joking with the audience and reprising the film’s dullest song yet once again.Read More »

Quote:
Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is a zesty version of the classic comedy, highlighted by performances by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Nino Rota’s score. Instead of simply filming a play, Zeffirelli turned Shakespeare’s text into a lively, cinematic movie, with sweeping sets and cinematography. Set in Padua, Italy in the late 1500s, the story concerns the shy Bianca (Natasha Pyne) and the mean-spirited Katarina (Elizabeth Taylor), the two daughters of a rich merchant named Baptista (Michael Hordern). Though Bianca is being courted by a number of young men, Baptista announces that she may not marry until Katarina is wed. Read More »

When the idea of a film about the tango was proposed to director Carlos Saura by a producer, the director spent several months hammering out a scenario that used dance to propel the story about a dancer, Mario Suárez (Miguel Ángel Solá), injured in a recent car accident and freshly divorced, using a film about the tango to heal some deep personal wounds.

Woven into the dances-within-a-film-within-a-film are pieces evoking the tango as the social glue of Argentinian culture, as well as the music’s function during the dark years under Juan Peron, when tango music was played loud by the secret service to smother the cries of torture sessions.Read More »