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Song of the Day #5,339: ‘Suddenly Seymour’ – Manny Magnus and Jenny Slate

I wonder what the odds were of two of my favorite musical movie moments in 2022 coming from Jenny Slate. Slate is a brilliant comedic and dramatic actress whose work I’ve loved for years but I never knew she had the power to profoundly move me with her singing voice.

Today’s song comes from the movie I liked least among this week’s musical selections, but it may well be the scene I loved most. It appears in the forgettable romantic comedy I Want You Back, which features Slate and Charlie Day as new friends who bond over being dumped and vow to help each other win back their exes.

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Song of the Day #5,338: ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ – Jenny Slate

It’s not often that a movie uses one of my favorite songs in one of its most emotional scenes, so when it happens you can be damn sure it’s going to end up on this list.

Such was the case in the delightfully funny and bittersweet Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a feature length movie inspired by a series of YouTube shorts by writer/star Jenny Slate and writer/director Dean Fleischer Camp. This is another movie that will come up again soon so I won’t spend too much time on it here.

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Song of the Day #5,337: ‘Naatu Naatu’ – M. M. Keeravani

No rundown of 2022’s best musical moments would be complete without a shout-out to likely Best Song winner ‘Naatu Naatu.’ This ecstatic dance number is a highlight of director S. S. Rajamouli’s historic drama/action epic RRR.

I’ll have more to say about RRR in the coming weeks, but for now I’ll just marvel at the Indian tradition of dropping elaborate song-and-dance routines in the middle of just about any movie. That demolishing of genre lines makes for such an unpredictable moviegoing adventure.

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Song of the Day #5,336: ‘My House’ – Lashana Lynch

My next musical moment from a 2022 film comes from Matilda the Musical, Netflix’s adaptation of the hit Broadway show.

I’ve never seen the stage show and I’m only passingly familiar with the beloved Danny DeVito-directed original film (let alone the Roald Dahl book), so this was my first real exposure to this story. I ended up liking it quite a bit.

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Song of the Day #5,335: ‘new body rhumba’ – LCD Soundsystem

I interrupt your normally scheduled Random Weekend for a couple of bonus movie posts.

My initial plan was to spend next week featuring five of my favorite musical moments from last year’s films. I culled the list down to seven but was having trouble deciding which to cut. Then it occurred to me that nobody is forcing me to constrain these posts to the weekdays.

So I’m starting my music moments early.

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