Opus 80|A Musical Opus from the 1980s

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I love watching movies that have plenty of music in them.  They don’t have to be musicals per say, although I don’t mind musicals, but I like it when music is a strong component of the movie.  Movies like Fame would fit into that criteria.  It’s definitely not a musical, but because of the story line, there is plenty of great music in there.  I’m talking about the original movie Fame of course.  I’m not sure how they went wrong with the remake that just came out, as they had some incredibly great footage shot, it just never jelled as a move.  It was like a bunch of really cool musical performances taped together with a bit of dialog in between.  A good musical movie, still needs to incorporate the building blocks of being a good move.

One of my favorite music movies, had to be Moulin Rouge.  Even though, it wasn’t entirely music from the eighties, there was enough to keep me interested.  And, how they incorporated all the lines and phrases from different songs was nothing short of genius.  Let’s also not forget how incredible the movie looked.  There’s were some pretty impressive sets here (elephant), and some even more impressive production numbers.  I was quite surprised to discover just how talented a singer and dancer both Nichole Kidman, and Ewan McGregor were.  Nichole was never one of my favorite actresses, but in this role, she did win me over.

If you’ve never seen either of these movies, and like to watch movies online, your in for a bit of a treat.   Another move that has some great music in it, would be the movie Dirty Dancing.  Here’s one I enjoy watching over and over.  While the movie is great, the story and characters are what really hold everything together.  From the starting roles, down to the smallest bit roles, this is a move that obviously enjoyed some great direction and production.  The fact that the music soundtrack went on to being on of the biggest movie soundtrack sellers of all time says something for how good the music is as well.  While it’s not a musical type movie, the Tooth Fairy (2010) movie just stuck in my head.  It’s kind of random I know, maybe because I was thinking of one of Julie Andrews famous musicals that it just jumped out.

And, here’s one more oldie but goldie movie to check out.  All That Jazz by Bob Fossee from back in 1979.  I know, just prior to the eighties, but I must confess to it being one of the movies that got me going with the musical movie genre.

A few months ago, we were having a nice dinner with a few friends at a nice Mexican restaurant, celebrating Brians birthday.  It was a fun family dinner with the other family.  Everyone was there, except our oldest 15 year old daughter, who had a prior commitment.  We were taken quite by surprise, when they mentioned how much they had enjoyed our daughters piano performance they had viewed on YouTube.  At least they were pretty sure it was our daughter, as how you could see where the hands and the piano keys in the video.  She was playing a song that was rumored to be used in the upcoming Twilight movie by some Japanese performer.  I forget the actual title right now, but that’s kind of irrelevant.

Needless to say, both my wife and I were pretty surprised, as we didn’t know that my daughter even had a YouTube account, let alone was posting videos of herself.  Now this was kind of good and bad.  First of all, my wife was pretty apprehensive as she’s a bit paranoid when it comes to the internet, especially concerning her children.  Me not as much.  But the good thing seemed to be that she was taking an interest in playing piano again, which in my mind is always a good thing.  Anyway, we went home and checked it out.  Found it on YouTube, and gave it a listen.  It was really quite good.  We were both impressed, and so did many of the commenters who had listened to the video.  It had already been viewed like 30,00+ times.  Makes a dad proud doesn’t it?

Anyway, we talked to her about it, and she was even more surprised that we found out about it, then we were when told about it by friends.  Apparently, she had found some free sheet music online, and taught it to herself.  Then she proceeded to record it, and post it online.  It was pretty cool I thought.  Nice to see her playing piano again as well.  I even tried to get her to learn some Radio Head sheet music I also found online.  That didn’t seem to interest her as much, so I left her to find her own stuff she liked playing.  I think eventually she took the video down, as I kept showing it to so many friends and family, she was getting embarrassed by all the attention.  In the end though, I thought it was nice to see how the internet can be a valuable resource for kids.