The 1957 musical Funny Face is kind of an odd duck of a movie. It seems to me a bit underrated, coming as it did when the musical was likely on the decline, but it’s still an entertaining film loaded with great songs. Every time I see it I’m struck anew by the lack of…well, chemistry between the leads. I yield to no one in my love and admiration for Fred Astaire, and my feelings on Audrey Hepburn border on worship, but in all honesty, the age difference between the two stands out like a sore thumb in this movie. Astaire was thirty years older than Hepburn, and by 1957 Astaire was nearing 60, so the age difference is very noticeable. I’ve often wondered how the movie would be seen today if it had starred Gene Kelly instead of Astaire, but of course, we’ll never know–and it’s not as if this flaw sinks the movie anyway. Astaire at near-60 is still Fred Astaire, after all.
And Audrey Hepburn is still Audrey Hepburn.
Here is Ms. Hepburn with “How Long Has This Been Going On.”
I’m sure you’ve often wondered: “Why sure, the main theme from Star Wars sounds great when played by a full symphony orchestra, but how does it work when scaled down to a string quartet?”
So a strange thing happened while I was writing my annual Year’s End Quiz for 2019. The last question of the quiz is “Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.” I always interpret this less as a song that has lyrics that can specifically capture a year, but rather a song whose emotional essence seems to me to align with the year that’s ending. I don’t usually have a problem with this, but for some reason, this year I did. I kept thinking that there should be an obvious song, one that was lurking somewhere just beyond the peripheries of my inner ear. It was pretty frustrating, I have to admit–and the song that I settled on, Queen’s “The Hero,” was a fine choice that really does capture a bit of how I feel about a year in which so many of my favorite stories all seemed to end.
And then today, while wandering around my shift at work, I had the ever-popular Ohhhhhh! moment, in which I realized what song I should have used.
I’ve known this song for many years, going all the way back to my high school years when I’d be with the jazz band playing standards from the Great American Songbook at town park dances and church festivals, which is why when I heard it in the context of a movie in 2019, it was…well, it’s one of the best uses of a great old song in a movie that I’ve ever heard. It comes, of course, at the very end of Avengers: Endgame, when Steve Rogers has finally laid aside his shield and is dancing with Peggy Carter just before the film fades out. Here is “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Kitty Kallen and the Harry James Orchestra.
Never thought that you would be
standing here so close to me
there’s so much I feel that I should say
but words can wait until some other day
Kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time
Haven’t felt like this, my dear
Since I can’t remember when
It’s been a long, long time
You’ll never know how many dreams
I’ve dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you
So kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time
Ah, kiss me once, then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long time
Haven’t felt like this my dear
Since I can’t remember when
It’s been a long, long time
You’ll never know how many dreams
I dreamed about you
Or just how empty they all seemed without you
So kiss me once then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again
It’s been a long, long time….
If you read the Daily Dose of Christmas below and wonder which Frank Sinatra song I remember from very early in my youth, it’s this one. Here’s “Love’s Been Good to Me”.
Specifically, the incidental music from an episode of The Original Series. More specifically, the episode Metamorphosis.
If you’ve never seen this particular episode, I can’t recommend it highly enough; I consider it Star Trek at its best. In the episode a mysterious energy field takes over a shuttlecraft on which Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy are en route back to the Enterprise after picking up an ambassador named Nancy Hedford, because the ambassador has contracted a rare disease and has to receive treatment. The energy field diverts the shuttle to an uncharted planet which is home to a single human man, and it turns out that this man is Zefram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive and a man who should be dead because he lived something like two hundred years prior to the episode. We learn that he was brought to this planet by that energy field, and that the field has brought Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the ambassador there to provide Cochrane with companionship.
After some ill-fated attempts at escape, Kirk and company realize that the energy field (which Cochrane calls “The Companion”) is actually female (keep in mind, this show was written by 1960s views on gender roles) and considers itself Cochrane’s lover. They try to convince The Companion to let them go, with Kirk pointing out that since Cochrane and the Companion are different species, they can never truly love. The Companion merges with Ambassador Hedford, curing her disease and thus becoming human, and as Kirk and company depart, Cochrane and Hedford/the Companion are settling in for a lifetime together.
Setting aside the 1960s notions of love and gender, Metamorphosis is one of the finest science fiction love stories I know, relying on insight and discussion over phasers and fistfights. It also boasts a deeply lovely and finely textured music score by George Duning which highlights the otherworldly nature of the beings involved and the hesitant wonder of their first steps into the world of love. This suite was apparently edited together by someone with good sound processing abilities, even if they weren’t entirely able to isolate the music from the occasional sound effects of the show. Enjoy!
I just read a short while ago that Valerie Heywood, a violist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, recently passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Harper served with the orchestra as principal violist from 1991 to 2017, and she remained with the orchestra after stepping down from the Principal Viola chair. The viola has always been my personal favorite of the string family for a number of reasons, but I am chiefly drawn to its mid-range tone between the soaring heights of the violins and the tenor body of the cellos. The viola tends to be overlooked a lot of the time, and while the concert literature abounds with great concerted works for violin and cello, there are fewer such pieces for the viola, so when the violist gets a chance to shine, it’s usually a special moment. The solo viola is used to amazing effect in Berlioz’s second symphony, Harold in Italy, but that work isn’t a concerto designed to exhibit the violist’s skill but rather a symphony where the solo violist is an extra, added voice that adds perspective to the symphony’s action.
Here, offered in remembrance of Valerie Heywood, is the Viola Sonata in D minor by Mikhail Glinka. Thank you for your musical gifts, Ms. Heywood.
Yes, it’s Halloween today! Oooooooh! Anyway, I wrote an article for The Geekiverse the other day summing up a selection of eerie, scary, and spooky classical and film music selections, some of which have previously run on this blog; go check it out for some good stuff!
But we also need something here, so–if I’ve done this correctly–we should have embedded below a playlist of the album The Truth and the Light, which takes Mark Snow’s wonderfully ethereal and haunting music from the first few seasons of The X-Files and combines it with sound effects and snippets of dialog to make a pretty compelling soundscape. Enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
UPDATE: The list I embedded wasn’t satisfactory (the album tracks are supposed to lead into one another, and whoever put the tracks on YT included long pauses), so I’ve embedded a different version that may or may not play the next track automatically. Sigh….
On Twitter the other day, one of my fellow scribes indicated a big fondness for gold old fashioned love triangles. And me, being the huge Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fan that I am*, immediately thought of one of my favorite songs from that wonderful (and even though it’s only been gone since last season, deeply-missed) musical comedy show. So here it is: “The Math of Love Triangles”!
* Goodness, it appears that I never waxed properly poetic about that show’s last three seasons! Add that to my list, I suppose….
Abbey Road is fifty years old this week. This kind of blows my mind. I don’t know why it does, but it does. Anyway, my favorite Beatles song ever happens to come from that very album, so here it is.
Tomorrow The Wife and I set out for our annual trip to the Finger Lakes region, for adventure and food and books and crafts and all sorts of niftiness! In that vein, here’s some adventure music by James Horner. I need to watch this movie again someday….
