Thursday Minute
Entr’acte | March 31, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor, R.I.P.

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“I have never felt more alive than when I watched my children delight in something, never more alive than when I have watched a great artist perform and never richer than when I have scored a big check to fight AIDS.  Follow your passion, follow your heart, and the things you need will come.”
—Elizabeth Taylor, her final interview, Harper’s Bazaar, February 2011

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Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor
Turner Classic Movies
Paul Newman, narrator

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…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
Entr’acte | March 29, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor, R.I.P.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Miss Taylor… is terrific as a panting, impatient wife, wanting the love of her husband as sincerely as she wants an inheritance.”
—Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, 1958

Not everything as Tennessee Williams intended it to be, but the film still packs a powerful punch.  During production, Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband, Mike Todd, died in a plane crash.  It was the only one of her marriages not to end in divorce.

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Richard Brooks, director
Tennessee Williams (play); Richard Brooks, James Poe (screenplay); writers
Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman

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…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 230 | March 25, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John
Wednesday    —   Darlene Love
Thursday        —   Neil Diamond

Tom Waits

Waits is an American original.  Though never a huge commercial success, he’ll be remembered long after many of his more popular contemporaries are forgotten.  He’s a musician first, but he’s worth noting for his work in film as well.  He first had a hit with “Ol’ 55,” when the Eagles recorded it in 1974; his original is a song I can listen to a dozen times in a row and still want to hear again.  ”The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” was nothing less than an anthem during my college years.  You had to love a guy who had the courage to mumble through his songs.  But most of all, there was a sense of feeling in his music that you couldn’t find anywhere else.  Francis Ford Coppola had him score One from the Heart, and the result is a work of beauty.  Waits continued working in film, often onscreen, and his performances in Down by Law and Short Cuts are, to my mind, especially memorable.  I can’t do justice to Waits in a short sketch like this, and I won’t try.  Suffice to say, he’s one of the greats.

Waits on film
One from the Heart (1982)*
Rumble Fish (1983)
The Cotton Club (1984)
Down by Law (1986)
Dracula (1992)
Short Cuts (1993)
Night on Earth (1992)*
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
The Book of Eli (2010)

* Original score.
Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films (too many to mention, but Waits did much of the music for the 1992 Jeff Bridges film American Heart).

Final note on the Class of 2011
In addition to the five performers featured this week, three others were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:  Leon Russell (as a “sideman” and not a “performer,” which seems like an arbitrary distinction to me), and non-performers Jac Holzman (record exec) and Art Rupe (pioneer of indie labels).  Congrats to all!

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Down by Law (1986)
Jim Jarmusch, director
Tom Waits, John Lurie

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One from the Heart (1982)
“This One’s from the Heart”
Tom Waits, Crystal Gayle, with Teddy Edwards on tenor sax / Soundtrack

 

Waits was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.  The story behind Waits and the film here.

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Final Friday Five, the monthly mini-quiz

1.  Name the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers starring in each of these concert and documentary films.

Dont Look Back (1967)
I’m Going to Tell You a Secret (2005)
Live at Red Rocks (1984)
Shine a Light (2008)
Stop Making Sense (1984)
This Is It (2009)

2.  Name four of the seven Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to date who have won an Oscar for original song or original score. 

3.  Well more than 100 movies have opened since the beginning of 2011.  Before this weekend, how many of those films have grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office?

4.  The baseball season usually brings with it another baseball movie or two.  This year’s most anticipated film about the sport is Moneyball, the adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side), due to open in September.  The central character is Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, who used computer analysis and sabermetrics to field a competitive team.  Who plays Billy Beane onscreen?

5.  Match each of the following Elizabeth Taylor movies with the role that she played.

Father of the Bride (1950)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Giant (1956)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Kay Banks
Leslie Benedict
Catherine Holly
Maggie Pollitt
Angela Vickers
Gloria Wandrous

Answers here.

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Quote of note
“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.”
—Tom (Tom Waits), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 229 | March 24, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John
Wednesday    —   Darlene Love

Neil Diamond

My five stages of Neil Diamond:

One) my preteen years:  best known as the guy who wrote songs for the Monkees (“I’m a Believer,” et al.), which meant something, and his solo stuff was catchy and very popular, in a good way (“Cherry, Cherry,” “Sweet Caroline”).

Two) my teen years:  it was not hip to be a Neil Diamond fan in high school (though I would never deny my fondness for ”Solitary Man,” a great song to defend and earn some contrarian cred).

Three) the looking-back years:  all in all, Diamond seemed better that I remembered at the time, someone who I could allow myself to like, even if it was in a campy, nostalgic sort of way.

Four) the not-so-young-anymore years:  recognition that Diamond was, without qualification, a major pop writer and singer.

Five) the current view:  not much different than Four, but surprise at the number of people of a certain age, many of them women, who regard Diamond as the pinnacle of pop, but unlike me, never went through stages Two or Three.

Diamond may have had a whole new career if The Jazz Singer had been a success.  We’ll never know what might have been, but we’ll always have that one shining example of a cast with Diamond, Laurence Olivier, and Lucie Arnaz.

Diamond on film
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)*
The Last Waltz (1978)**
The Jazz Singer (1980)
Saving Silverman (2001)**

* Original score.
** As himself.
Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films, including Pulp Fiction (“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” performed by Urge Overkill).

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The Jazz Singer (1980)
Richard Fleischer, director
Neil Diamond, Lucie Arnaz, Laurence Olivier
“Love on the Rocks”
Neil Diamond

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Saving Silverman (1992)
Dennis Dugan, director
Jason Biggs, Steve Zahn, Jack Black, Neil Diamond
“Holly Holy”
Neil Diamond

 

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Quote of note
Yussel:  He’s just kidding around, right?
Molly:  No, they’re doing it for real.
Yussel:  This song’s supposed to be a ballad.
Paul:  That’s his style, mister.  Made him a millionaire.
Yussel:  Yeah, but the thing is it’s too fast.  You can’t hear the words.
—Yussel Rabinovitch/Jess Robin (Neil Diamond), Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz), Paul Rossini (James Booth), The Jazz Singer (1980)

…58…59…60.

Wednesday Minute
No. 228 | March 23, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John

Darlene Love

It took a long time for women get proper respect in the world of rock.  The girl groups of the 1950s and ’60s didn’t get the star treatment of Madonna or Lady Gaga, but hey, they could sing.  And nobody had a voice like Darlene Love’s.  She started as a backup vocalist working with Phil Spector and was the lead singer for several groups.  Her hits make for a good soundtrack of the era:  “He’s a Rebel” (a #1 single of 1962, her biggest hit), ”He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” “Wait ‘Til My Bobby Gets Home,” and “Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts?”  Love has continued working through the years, and frequently on Broadway.  In the 1980s, she starred in Leader of the Pack, later on, in Grease and Carrie, and just a few years ago, in Hairspray.  Her best-known role in movies was as Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Love on film
Basketball Jones (1974)
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)
Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films.

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Father of the Bride (1992)
Chris Shyer, director
Steve Martin, Kimberly Williams-Paisley
“(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Going to Marry”
Darlene Love / Soundtrack

 

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Bachelor Party (1984)
“Alley Oop”
Darlene Love / Soundtrack
Cover of hit song of the Hollywood Argyles
Dallas Frazier, songwriter

 

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Quote of note
Trish:  Is this your pen?
Martin:  Thanks, I keep losing it.
Trish:  Something’s wrong.
Martin:  No, not really, just another goddamn pen.
Trish:  You were saying about the pen.
Martin:  Oh, it just reminds me of something, that’s all.
Trish:  Reminds you of what?
Martin:  Ah, reminds me of the night Vicki was killed.
Trish:  I didn’t mean to push.
Martin:  Hang on that, okay?  We never talked about this, did we?
—Trish Murtaugh (Darlene Love), Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

…58…59…60.