Yippeeeee! It's the "Musical of the Month" I miss group love-ins and I miss musicals (haven't watched one in too long). I was tired of blog-a-thons but a movie o' the month is like a mini-thon only more reg'lar like and therefore (theoretically) less planning / scheduling / brainstorming heavy. Horror fans have Final Girl's great "Film of the Month" party (I'm going to pipe in this month for The Car (1977) I think. Why not stretch?). But what do fans of song and dance get? Zip! So The Film Experience will be correcting that. On the 6th of every month, we'll cover one and link up to any musically inclined or stretching blogs who want to speak out on their "Secret Love" (i.e. musicals)
August 6th Calamity Jane (1953)
Why Calamity Jane? Why not?! I'm not that familiar with Doris Day and I didn't want to kick it off with a musical people still talk about consistently. Who knows... maybe we'll even get Deadwood fans participating' for contemporary comparison's sake.
If you'd like to join the Musical of the Month club shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you a reminder as we get closer. On the day of the 'big bonanza musical extravaganza', I'll link up to all participating blogs/sites. Just like a blog-a-thon which I'm pretending this isn't. So there. (If you plan to participate feel free to place any of these images or animated gifs on your blog or webpage to advertise your participation)
Otherwise... Yes I am aware that I still have a backlog of movies I promised to write about --namely Maurice, A Touch of Evil, Moulin Rouge!, Sweet Bird of Youth, Darling, Jeunet & Caro and Julia... My goal is to get to all of them before August 29th. Somehow. Then and only then can The Film Experience arise from the ashes of backlog like the glorious phoenix it wants and deserves to be.
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10 comments:
musicals on the sixth of each month? i'm taking that a personal shout out
calamity jane is one of those films i always forget how much i love until i'm watching it for the umpteenth time and finding myself loving it even more
can i put in a request for cabaret one of these months?
the way i think it will work best is that the participants each month will be able to vote on the following month's musical.
i'm hoping to do slightly more obscure things rather than stuff like wizard of oz... but we'll see. (i think CABARET could always be talked about more so even though that's B-I-G i'd totally be up for it)
That song 'Secret Love' from Calamity Jane gives me the chills everytime I listen to it. Even knowing that Doris Day is an ardent republican can't diminish the greatness of that song.
And here I thought I was going to be all funny and original by mentioning Deadwood in my comment. You ruined everything!
Fantastic choice for your opening musical! Only once during Doris Day's long tenure at Warner Brothers, did they give her a vehicle worthy of her awesome talent. She should have been at Metro with Gene & Judy & Minnelli & the Freed unit. But(who knows how it happened?) Warners somehow managed to get it together on that one film to create something as great as the best of the MGM musicals. "Secret Love" is wonderful (of course) but the score's lesser known songs are all gems too - mounted and performed to perfection. The script's smart, funny and loaded with subtext.Rest of the cast is superb and - at very least - Doris should've bagged an Oscar nomination.It's an amazing display of talent, personality and sheer,lovable tomboy pizzazz.
I never, ever like Doris Day, particularly when she sings, but I'll try to find time in July to give this one a chance. Big lesbian cult film and all.
I don't have a blog but will try to follow along on the comment board - love the idea.
I know you're not really looking for suggestions at this point, but two lesser-seen musicals that I think would be cool to do for this: "Colma The Musical", which if nothing else would be quite a conversation starter. Also, I haven't seen but am very curious about Melvin Van Peebles' "Don't Play us Cheap".
I do love Doris, but I only have eyes for Howard Keel.
"Oh the Deadwood coach is comin on over the hill..."
Could Doris Day be any butcher in this movie. Oh my!
.."I just blew in from the windy city, the windy city is mighty pretty, but it ain't ogt what we got..."
I just love this movie. It's one of my favorites.
Thanks Nat, you know how to keep us all a smile on this blog.
As this is a totally worthy project, and as nagging gets me nowhere, I'll simply have to give up prodding you about the Moulin Rouge project (although that pic of Ewan kinda got to me.) *sigh*
I admit to having seen Calamity Jane only once, in the '80's, I think, on TV, but I still remember some of Day's finer moments in that. Man, she ripped up the screen like a hurricane at times. Too bad she had to be "domesticated"; that was one character this fledging baby lesbian (who hadn't come out yet) didn't want to see cinematically tamed.
PS - your new photo is adorable.
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