For this blogathon, at least, Santa’s work is done. So let’s be sure to give credit where credit is due as we present
We definitely finished our movie-gifting blogathon in style! If you happened to miss the entries, click on the individual blog names to link to them, and click on “Day 1” or “Day 2” to read entries from those days of the blogathon.
To his favorite Anglophile rock-music fan, A Shroud of Thoughts presents Yellow Submarine, the animated film with soundtrack by and “starring” The Beatles.
Moon in Gemini presents Ratatouille, a Pixar cartoon with themes of food and cooking, to her late father, a self-styled chef.
And Silent-ology decided that the best Christmas gift for a silent-film lover would be Three’s a Crowd, Harry Langdon’s directing debut, in which the legendary silent comic takes a deserted wife and baby into his humble home during the holiday season.
First, I want to thank my blog’s readers who have checked back over the weekend to enjoy the full fruits of this blogathon.
Most of all, I want to thank the bloggers who took the time and effort to provide such fascinating and often touching entries to this blogathon. You provided me and my readers with holiday gifts that, as the great Dr. Seuss put it, can’t be bought in a store. I’m so grateful for your heartfelt entries!
To everyone, happy holidays and best wishes for a prosperous new year!
The following is my first of two entries in The 2nd Annual British Invaders Blogathon, hosted by the blog A Shroud of Thoughts. Click on the above banner, and read some great critiques of a wide range of British and Britain-related movies!
I’ve seen a lot of great movies in my time, but there are very few that mainline me with joy from their very start. A Hard Day’s Night is one of them. After a half-century in which Beatlemania has survived and thrived — if not in its physical state, then surely as a state of mind — there’s not much new that can be said about this delightful movie.
If you’re any sort of pop-music or movie fan, you’d have to have lived under a rock not to know by now that the movie is: (a) a virtually plotless melange about 24 hours in the harried life of The Beatles, culminating in a TV concert performance; (b) cutesily sub-plotted with a side story about Paul’s cantankerous grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell); and (c) filled end-to-end with early-era Beatles songs at their simplest and catchiest.
So, besides (c) — which speaks for itself if you’re a Beatles buff, and should rightfully convert you if you’re not — about all you can do is list the movie’s virtues, of which there are many.
* Among the people who have been credited for the high quality of this movie — including The Beatles, playwright/screenwriter Alun Owen, and director Richard Lester — one name I never see is that of Gilbert Taylor, director of photography. This movie has the uncanny, simultaneous effect of appearing as though every shot was caught on the run while looking shimmeringly beautiful at the same time.
* I find it interesting that any of the movie’s characters who don’t recognize The Beatles can’t stand them. The stodgy train passenger (above, center); the people who encounter Ringo (other than the truant schoolboy) when he goes off on his own; and most notably, the man who owns the field that The Beatles “hurt” (in the movie’s most famous sequence — imagine how much money that guy would try to fetch for that Beatles-trodden land these days!). Small wonder that this movie spoke to a generation that was tired of intolerant old fogeys trying to tell them how to run their lives.
* The movie has that delightful quality that most great comedies have, of saying things that ought to be said. All of The Beatles have such moments in the movie (Don’t mess with Ringo’s drums!), but the best such moment is when George tells off the ad spokesman who thinks he knows what’s hip. Even Paul’s grandfather gets off a great line about how all he has seen so far on his trip is “a train and a room, and a car and a room, and a room and a room” — which pop history tells us was actually an observation of The Fabs themselves when they were trapped in their hotel rooms between shows.
* For a movie whose main reason for existence was its soundtrack album, it’s amazing how much of its comedy is visual — everything from the aforementioned scene where The Beatles briefly escape their routine and cut loose in an open field; to a non-sequitor where a TV actor, portraying a bloodied soldier, pours some ketchup on his lunch, looks at his fake wound, and adds ketchup to the wound to make it look more realistic. And then there are the chase scenes, which are practically Richard Lester’s love letters to his hero Buster Keaton (whom he later employed in his movie version of the play A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum).
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon forever dismissed Beatlemania as high school hi-jinks. He told one interviewer, “You have all the old records there if you want to reminisce,” and when fans would ask if The Beatles would reunite, he’d counter, “Do you want to go back to high school?” You can’t go back, of course, but you can always watch A Hard Day’s Night, enshrined just as you’d want your early glory days to be — beautifully photographed, and with joyous memories that continue to reward future generations.
(If you enjoyed this blog, please click here to read my second British Invaders Blogathon entry about The Beatles’ movie Help!)
Come with us on a magical mystery tour of amazing blogs as we present
Moon in Geminitook down some Blue Meanies in her critique of the classic Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine.
Summer Reeves revisited a snapshot of Beatlemania at its most frantic, in the early Robert Zemeckis comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
Love Letters to Old Hollywood offers a heartfelt and spirited defense of the much-reviled Bee Gees/Peter Frampton version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
A Shroud of Thoughtsprovides a richly detailed look at another Beatles-inspired movie musical, Across the Universe.
And finally, nostalgic old me looks back at a couple of Monty Python-like music videos by George Harrison, “This Song” and “Crackerbox Palace.”
And there are more Beatles delights to come! Keep us bookmarked as we work our way through two more days of the blogathon!
Blogging foreplay is over. It’s finally time for the SEX! (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON!
For the uninitiated (by which I intend a light double-entendre), this blogathon’s subject is movies that are devoted to artistically suggesting the subject of sex, through imaginative dialogue and imagery, rather than graphically depicting it. Any old movie can show you a beautiful naked body, but the “horse” dialogue in The Big Sleep? Let’s see Scarlett Johansson show thatoff in her cleavage!
Below are the participants in the blogathon, which runs from Fri., June 19 through Sun., June 21, 2015. The only set deadline is that the participants must have their entries posted by the end of the day on June 21.
If you are one of the participants, please scroll down to the “Comments” section and post the URL of your SEX!blog entry; once you have posted it, it will be linked to the listing of participants shown below.
If you are a visiting reader, the following list has links to both the blog entries and the blogs themselves. Even if a particular entrant’s SEX! blog isn’t posted as yet, I encourage you to visit each and all of these blogs, as they all have something unique and entertaining to say about a variety of movie-related topics. (And of course, definitely check out their entries for this blogathon!)
Have fun, everyone! Here is the list of SEX! BLOGATHON entries:
moviemovieblogblog.wordpress.com 