Tag Archives: Almost Famous

Movie Lists, Movies, Music, Top 5

Top 10: Musical Movie Moments

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CineFix is back after a long hiatus with a brand new list highlighting the 10 best uses of music in movies, instances where music is used inside the film to further the plot…but not musical numbers or scores.  There’s actually a word for this if you want to forgo a rip on your Word-of-the-Day Calendar: Diegetics.  Within this concept are a whole lot of extremely specific uses for music in films: music provided by characters in a scene, contrapuntal scoring (or music provided to underscore a scene wildly out of sync with that particular scene’s gravity; think The Mickey Mouse March in Full Metal Jacket or the closing number from The Life of Brian), songs character choose to play that help define that character (ex: Peter Quill dancing to “Come And Get Your Love” in Guardians of the Galaxy), and a whole bunch of more esoteric musical film categories.  Diegetics, people.


Diegetic sound. Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film: voices of characters. sounds made by objects in the story. music represented as coming from instruments in the story space ( = source music)

Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption

Movies, Their 10 Best

Frances McDormand’s 10 Best Movies

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Frances McDormand

Frances McDormand has made a distinguished career largely working with the Coen Brothers (one of whom to which she is married) and director Wes Anderson.  Both-and the smartest directors for whom she’s worked-have utilized her ability to disappear into roles.  You rarely hear people talking about a “Frances McDormand movie”.  They talk about the characters she creates.  A lot of actors get credit for epitomizing the blue-collar American, but I don’t think any actress embodies that niche better than McDormand, though her range allows her to do pretty much whatever she wants whenever she wants.

Continue reading Frances McDormand’s 10 Best Movies →

List, Movies, Music, Top 5

Top 5: Music Movies

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Top 5Music makes or breaks a film.  We’ve talked about movie scores before and how vital they are to the success of a film.  Today, let’s turn it around and look at what happens when movies look at music.  How big a part of your daily life is music?  This whole list came about as a side effect of a seven hour drive I had to make yesterday, the entirety of it spent yodeling to a vast library of songs (to be fair to me, it was not as bad as yodeling….it was getting very raspy though in the last two hours). Continue reading Top 5: Music Movies →

Movies, Review

Movie Review: Aloha (2015) *And Aloha to Cameron Crowe*

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Bradley Cooper, Aloha
Nine.  “Aloha” is only said nine times in Aloha, which-when you think about it-is pretty amazing restraint. However, the fact that I was disinterested enough in what was going on with the plot to keep a running “Aloha” tally, doesn’t bespeak well of the whole endeavor. Continue reading Movie Review: Aloha (2015) *And Aloha to Cameron Crowe* →

Movies, Trailer Time

Trailer Time: Aloha Trailer #1 *Is Cameron Crowe Back to Form?*

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So the big question with Aloha is: which Cameron Crowe is going to show up?  The phenom who wrote and directed Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous, the super weird guy who adapted Vanilla Sky or the guy on a downward career spiral that spat out Elizabethtown and We Built a Zoo.  I like this trailer.  A lot.  I think it has potential and, as always in a Crowe film, a stellar ensemble cast that includes Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Bill Murray, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski.

The film opens May 29, 2015 and the official synopsis is below:
A celebrated military contractor returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and re-connects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog assigned to him.
Bill Muray, Aloha