A Special Musical Monday with Mike Oldfield

As some of you out there might know, I began my professional life as an entertainment writer, focused mostly on music reviews. I did that for roughly four years, after which I was so burned out on music that my car radio stayed tuned to talk and news-stations from 1993 through 2000... and I hardly played any music on my system at home. To this day, I still have not been to a life concert, or even watched one on television.

Major exceptions to my time away from music were certain works by Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Beethoven, and/or Handel... and everything by one of the 20th century's great composers and guitar players, Mike Oldfield.

I have loved Mike Oldfield's music since I first heard "Ommadawn". I prefer his long-form instrumentals over his pop/rock songs, but everything he's done is good. Even his weakest releases are far, FAR better than the best that many other modern song-writers and musicians produce.

Mike Oldfield turns 70 years old today. I honor him on his birthday, and I thank for enriching my life, inspiring my creativity--characters and storylines have all sprung into my head while listening to Oldfield--and bringing light into my world during my darkest times. 

 

This post also celebrates over five decades of brilliant music composed and performed by giving you a chance to listen to some of my favorite songs from him, along with a few videos. Only a few of them actually that fit the black-and-white format around here, starting with a fan-made one (which features a little nudity, so be careful where you watch it), but I hope you'll be inspired to check out more of his music and come to love his work the way I do.

Here's another fan-made video, mostly abstract and set to some very pretty Oldfield tunes.

"Five Miles Out"--the title track from the 1983 album that is Mike Oldfield's greatest masterpiece. "Taurus II" (a 27-minute long track that occupied most of Side 1 of the LP record when it was first released) is his very best work, containing some of his greatest themes and melodies.

"Magic Touch" from Islands (1987)

It's a Mohammed Monday

 

THIS WEEK WITH JESUS & MO

 

It's Fanny Friday!

It's Mermay!

Mermay continues with a public service announcement: The Mermaids Will Always Win.

It's National Teacher's Day the Fanny Way

Low-budget Amateur Film with an Excellent Script!

Sirene en Captivte (Mermaid in Captivity) (2014)
Starring: Fallon Hammer, Nick Sarnelli, and Lucas Waldron

Director: Alyssa Waldron

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A cruel freakshow operator (Sarnelli) captures a mermaid (Hammer) and puts her on display. But some beings are not meant to be caged...

If you've been around this blog for a while, you know we like to go digging in obscure corners of YouTube for student and amateur films and then share those we think are worthy of your time and attention.

We came upon "Mermaid in Captivity" while looking for items that tied in with the Mermay theme we presently have going on. It's another one of those films made by young high-schoolers or college kids trying to emulate the old-time silent movies, presumably for a class project. Overall, it's slightly better than most such efforts, but there are two things that writer/director Alyssa Waldron did better with this effort than a majority of her filmmaking peers.

First, she clearly had a general sense of what she could and couldn't pull off with the resources she had at her disposal. She didn't attempt to show us the mermaid swimming under water, but through excellent use of intertitles and some creative camera work that is meant to seem like we are looking through the mermaids eyes as she swims to the surface, she still manages to convey the notion of a mermad in her natural habitat. While a better job could possibly have been done on the aquarium the mermaid is placed in, it could also have been far worse.

Second, the script for this film is excellent. The unfolds swiftly, the characters are well-drawn, and the shocking twist that kicks off the finale is extremely well set up and filmed. While the lack of budget and developing skills of the director/cinematographer behind the camera and the actors in front of it are apparent, might tempt some viewers to stop watching when the carnival owner goes into black-hatted, mustache-twirling borderline parody of a silent movie melodrama villain... but that would be a mistake. The story in this film, and how it's presented, is far superior to many productions at this level. (I don't know if Waldron went onto a career as a writer, but I certainly hope so. She seems to have had the talent for it.)

Take a few minutes to watch this film by clicking below.

Musical Monday with Oingo Boingo

Before they were Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman and his fellow bandmembers were known as the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo and they performed covers of 1930s and 1940s songs while putting on bizarre and elaborate shows.

This music video featured in today's post was made as a proof-of-concept/test shoot for what eventually became the full-length movie "Forbidden Zone" (1979), directed by Richard Elfman.

Johnny (1977)
Starring: Marie-Pascale Elfman and the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
Director: Richard Elfman
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Back when training films were entertaining...

... the Department of Defense produced a series of animated shorts starring Private Snafu, a character who did everything wrong so the enlisted men would not as World War II raged. These were created by top-notch talent who were established writers and artists and filmmakers and animators who had been drafted and then assigned to positions where their talents could do the most good for training and/or propaganda purposes.

The main talents behind the "Private SNAFU" series were director Chuck Jones (with animators he'd worked with at Warner Bros.), voice artist Mel Blanc (another Warner Bros. animation regular), and writer Theodor Geisel, (an old hand at political cartoons and propaganda who is better known under his pen name Dr. Seuss), and it's another series of 1940s-era training films that makes me wish the things I've had to sit through over the years were half as entertaining.

This is the first of several "Private SNAFU" we'll be bringing you over the next many months. We're not leading with the best of them--today's featured cartoon is amusing, but there are far wilder entries in the series--but this one seemed perfect for our Mermay celebration (which the still above probably already clued you into).

Private SNAFU: A Lecture on Camoflage

Starring: Mel Blanc

Director: Chuck Jones

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Flapper Fanny on the Fifth!

 It's Cinco de Mayo, and Flapper Fanny is here!

Magicians and Mermaids and Babes--Oh My!

The Mermaid (1904)
Starring: Georges Méliès
Director: Georges Méliès
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A magician (Méliès) uses water from an empty fish tank to summon fish, a mermaid, and sirines. Along the way, he performs a variety of other summonings, as well as transformations of both himself and the mermaid.

This is one of the more impressive performance videos that Méliès produced. The transitions that create the in-camera effects are generally so smooth that they rival effects you see made today, 120 years and technology that Méliès couldn't have dreamed of later.

The only weakness of this film arises because of circumstances beyond Méliès' control, such as the wind blowing the hammock and the positions of the fish swimming around in the aquarium. Most viewers--especially back in 1904 when this film premiered--will have their attention focused on the main action, though, so the weird little disruptions in motion and teleporting fish escapes notice... just like they would during a live magic show where keeping the audience focused on a specific thing is important to maintaining an illusion. Since I, as a reviewer, am looking for flaws, I pointing out some very nitpicky weaknesses in this otherwise excellent effort from a trailblazing special effects artist.

But you shouldn't take my word for it. Take a minute out of your busy day to watch a little old-time movie magic by clicking below!