Continuing my personal ranking of the 25 movie musicals deemed essential by the American Film Institute…
#7. Funny Girl – 1968
(#16 on the AFI list)
I’ve already written about how much I loved Barbra Streisand’s performance in this great film.
#6. Chicago – 2002
(#12 on the AFI list)
The most recent movie on the AFI list, director Rob Marshall’s Chicago is credited with sparking a revival of the musical genre in the 2000s, after it had been largely relegated to the world of animation.
Continuing my personal ranking of the 25 movie musicals deemed essential by the American Film Institute…
#8. Guys and Dolls – 1955
(#23 on the AFI list)
Frank Sinatra fared well in my rankings, with his two AFI-recognized films placing at #11 (On the Town) and now #8. Sinatra’s film career is almost as impressive as his singing career, with multiple comedic and dramatic roles, an Academy Award (for 1953’s From Here to Eternity), several films as a producer and one as a director.
Sinatra is a treat in Guys and Dolls, but it’s his co-star Marlon Brando who really made this film for me. Brando as a song-and-dance man is not something I expected to encounter during this project.
Here’s a track from an album making its first appearance on Random Weekends: Marc Cohn’s 1991 self-titled debut.
This is the only Cohn album I own, so it’s no surprise that it took this long for it to win the Meet Me in Montauk lottery. We’re talking 11 songs out of more than 13,000.
Cohn has released nine albums since this one, though two are live albums, one is a greatest hits, one is a collection of unreleased tracks, one is an album of covers of songs from 1970, and one features re-recordings of his own songs with the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama.
‘Same Ol’ Mistakes’ is the ninth track on Rihanna’s excellent 2016 album Anti. After releasing seven albums in eight years, Rihanna took her time before releasing Anti, waiting four years after 2012’s Unapologetic to drop this record.
The approach worked, with Anti generating the best reviews of her career and producing four hit singles.
It’s been another four years since Anti‘s release and, despite rumors about her ninth studio album, there’s no indication yet of when we might hear it.
Continuing my personal ranking of the 25 movie musicals deemed essential by the American Film Institute…
#9. My Fair Lady – 1964
(#8 on the AFI list)
My one memory from a childhood viewing of My Fair Lady is Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle, newly refined, slipping in to her former dialect at a horse race and shouting “Move yer bloomin’ arse!” to the horror of the upscale crowd around her.
That is indeed a standout moment in a movie that is filled with good humor, great songs, and delightful performances by the entire ensemble cast.
Meet Me In Montauk 