Richard Rush

Number 8 - The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson has created an unmistakable style to his films. I remember first seeing the trailer for The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was obvious within the first few seconds that this was his next movie. You both see it on the screen and feel it in the way the actors speak.

There are quite a few things to admire about this movie, but I think I most appreciate the story within the story... within the story. You have three levels of story going on, but it doesn't feel like a forced storytelling technique. It just feels like... Wes Anderson.

Some of Anderson's earlier movies are too quirky. With his last couple movies, he's hit just the right level of quirkiness. While I appreciated movies like The Darjeeling Limited, I didn't enjoy them as much as I've liked The Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. I think he's also opened the door for plenty of new viewers.

This was released in March. I saw it in April. It's January, and even though it's out on home video, it's still showing in a local theater. I think that certainly speaks to this movie.

William Wirt

Number 9 - Wild

I might be have Wild as high as it is due to low expectations. The trailer and name gave me the idea that this was the female version of Into the Wild. In addition, Reese Witherspoon has never been impressive as an actor. She was good in Walk the Line, but that's still a relatively light role. I was wrong on both accounts.

The similarities between Wild and Into the Wild end at the basic idea of leaving civilization. A big part of this movie is exploring Cheryl Strayed's reason for walking the trail. She comes to the trail from a really dark place, and Witherspoon is really great in showing that side. This is absolutely her best work.

A danger in a movie like this is that there will be too many big nature shots or shots of Witherspoon just walking. I remember when the Lord of the Rings movies were announced and in finding out that they were three hours long. I pictured two and a half hours of just walking. I think the makers of Wild did a nice job of avoiding that in a couple ways. The first is in using the flashbacks to tell her story. Whenever she just walks, we go with her mind to visit her past.

The second is in the use of the soundtrack. Strayed just walked the Pacific Crest Trail without headphones. She didn't have music in her ears. But she was always hearing music. We know this because she hums a few different songs. When the movies starts, the songs are barely recognizable. They start to come together as the movie progresses until you hear the songs played. There was some satisfaction is "guessing" what those tunes were. But their coming into focus goes right along with the clarity in her head.

If you've read A Walk in the Woods, you have a great companion for Wild. And if you haven't read it, check it out. The two walkers go for completely different reasons, walk different trails, have different experiences, and reach different conclusions. But I still flashed back to that book while watching Wild. Both kind of make you want to leave it all behind and just start walking. OK, not enough for me to actually do it...

John M. Berrien

Number 10 - Interstellar

I geeked out at the beginning of Interstellar in a way that most normal people probably wouldn't. It basically starts with these seemingly odd clips of people talking about all the dust and dirt. I immediately recognized the person giving the comment. No, this isn't some famous person that people would recognize walking around the streets. I probably wouldn't, either. But I know those clips and people from The Dust Bowl by Ken Burns really well.

Having just finished another Winter Break, I look back on the past two weeks and think about what I accomplished. Eh, not a whole lot. What could I have done? What could I have created? How could I have helped the world? All right, so maybe I don't feel quite that way, but there's still that idea of lost time.

That's a huge part of Interstellar. One of the scenes involves a huge loss of time. It isn't for the characters themselves. It's even worse. It's the world around them. As they play with time travel, time travels past these characters faster than they experience in. MUCH faster. And that's a weird concept to me that just crushes the inside of my skull when I think about it. I only partially mean wrapping my head around the whole theory of relativity. It's the emotional sweeping away of time that can never be returned.

2014 Movies - Runners Up!

These received the Top Ten mark when I saw them, but it was a good year for movies. I wish that "ten" had fourteen numbers in it.

Number 14 - The Lego Movie

Everything is Awesome about this movie. There are two different layers of the Lego Movie that make it work. The first is the overall plot idea involving the "real" Lego bricks. In case you haven't seen it, I won't give away too much. If someone wanted to make a cool short movie about playing with Lego bricks, that would have worked. It would have been sweet.

Someone was smart. They realized that it wouldn't have worked as a full length film. In addition, it could have been about so many other kinds of toy, including  the Tinker Toy Movie or just the Toy Model Movie.

So then you get all of the fun with the Lego toys themselves. How about they throw in Batman and the rest of the JLA? What about Star Wars figures? In reality, Disney COULD make an Avengers/Star Wars movie. But remember that the JLA/Star Wars movie came out first. Or in reality, a JLA/Star Wars/Shaquille O'Neil movie.

The voice work is great. Chris Pratt, will return to this list, gives a non-generic, fun voice to the lead Lego. I have my fingers crossed that he's be on the 2015 list with Jurassic Parks and Rec. Will Arnett is one of the best on screen Batmans. You have Morgan Freeman, Nick Offerman, Liam Neeson, Channing Tatum, and Johah Hill. And if Lando Calrissian isn't in the upcoming Star Wars movies, at least Billy Dee Williams got to play him again.

And one more thing is the great social commentary that comes from the Everything is Awesome song about conformity vs. individuality. But that's too deep. Lego!

Number 13 - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

These movies have no right to be as good as they are. The Charlton Heston movie is fun but cheesy. The Marky Mark version removed the cheese but took the fun with it.  These two movies have nailed it.

A big reason has to be the level of expertise that creators have hit with CGI. We're able to make Caesar the focus of the movie. He's the hero. He's the one we want to sympathize with. That never would have worked with a latex mask.

That gets expanded in Dawn. We also have a legitimate villain, Koba. We see the badguyness in his eyes. He's the one we want to root against.

Yes, there are human good guys and bad guys in here. But we're almost at the point that they aren't as necessary to the story. The third movie has been announced for 2016. I hope to see the apes continue to push even more humans off of the screen. I want them to develop even more interesting ape characters.

Number 12 - Gone Girl

There are plenty of moments where Gone Girl teeters on the ridiculous. It may even go over a few times, but the actors are really, really good.

Ben Affleck carries this movie in what isn't an easy role. If there weren't so many other great performances this year, I would whisper Oscar nom.He's got the chops. Can he out Batman Will Arnett? Maybe.

Here's the other newsflash. David Fincher is good. Damn good. Remove that ridiculous crapfest Benjamin Buttons from his IMDB page and you have a really special career. I keep hoping they'll bring him back for another Girl Who movie.

And hey - Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris are also pretty good, though a lot of their stuff is the stuff that gets close to ridiculous.

So has anyone out there read the book? Is it worth reading?

Number 11 - X-Men: Days of Future Past

Comic book movies. Here's your warning: there will be more in the top ten.

These movies started moving in the right direction with First Class. Days of Future Past brings one of the most classic comic book stories to the screen, and keeps moving the right way. Just like heading to the 60s was a great movie in Class, the 70s hit the spot in Past.

A little comic book lesson for y'all. Back in the day when Stan Lee was writing a comic, each story was usually self contained in a single comic. There were usually bigger storylines that continued through the books, but you didn't need it to understand that single comic. This story, though, took TWO full issues to tell. Yeah. That's how important it was. (No, it wasn't super rare. The first Galactus story from the Fantastic Four was three issues, and the Kree-Skrull War from The Avengers was nine issues).

I mention this because many movies are made from books which are several hundred pages long. This story was 43 pages long, and a lot of that is art. So yeah, they need to add stuff. They need to change things. Personally, I would have been OK with Kitty Pride keeping the starring role instead of Woverine. It would have been a bigger risk for the movie, but the studios never would have approved.

I'm very curious about the next planned movie, Apocalypse. In the comic books, that's when the X-Men started getting too many different books and too many different characters. It became more and more confusing to understand what was going on. It actually got even worse for the next 20 years, with a few exceptions. So I don't know the story nearly as well.

On a brief tangent, as I've started rereading Marvel books over the past six months, X-Men comics and Avengers comics have flipped around. I'm really enjoying the different X-Men books while the Avengers books are getting more and more convoluted. Every story is a time travel story with way too many characters. Comic book lesson continued, today comic book stories take five or six issues to tell. It's rare to get a single issue story. This is so they can sell trade paperbacks with those stories bound together. The Avengers books are trying to create stories that are way too big with consequences that are way too big, and I think its to justify the story being five or six issues long. Except these stories are continuing until ten, twenty issues. And they aren't good. When the Marvel movies get to these Avengers stories, that's when the movies will decline.

People are taking about the direction Sony is taking with Spider-Man, and mostly want them to give him back to Marvel. The upcoming Fantastic Four movie looks like a disaster. I hope it's some elaborate troll and the movies are actually nothing like what has been described. So people want the FF to revert back to  Marvel.

But the current direction of the X-Men movies? I dig it. Yeah, I want Fox and Disney to play nice so that characters can cross over. Marvel and DC have worked together in the past, sometimes with really cool results. I hope these studios can move past ego and instead view the huge bags of money that we are offering them to get along. I have hope that money might actually start to influence a few people in Hollywood.

NEXT: Number TEN!

2014 Movies - A Bunch of Good Movies!

I really enjoyed these movies, but I didn't mark them down as a top ten film when I watched them. In a different year, many of them could have made it.

I watched Philomena and Captain Phillips after they were nominated for Best Picture. I briefly wrote about both here, and I don't have too much to add other than both are still in my memory after a year. I think they both hold up well, and I still recommend watching either one. The Philomena case is still an interesting one that people should be aware of. The action scenes from the end of Captain Phillips were quite intense.

Muppets Most Wanted was a surprise for me. I didn't expect to like it very much, and if it had been released later in the year I probably wouldn't have seen it. Much like the previous Muppets movie, it comes down to the music. I like it. This is the opening song from the movie, "We're Making a Sequel." Take a quick listen. The opening of the song sound like typical Muppets fare. In that clip, it starts at 13 seconds. But then at 40 seconds, when you reach the chorus, it feels like Flight of the Conchords.I loved that mesh from the first movie, and it works again here. That particular song has a good line from Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, who points out that this is actually the seventh sequel.

I also enjoyed "I'll Get You What You Want", which is pure Flight of the Conchords (Bret McKenzie even sings it). None of the songs are as catchy as "Life's a Happy Song," but it's all fun.

22 Jump Street was another great surprise. People talk about sequels being bad. Some movies even open with a song describing just that. But the real culprit in the bad sequel department is comedies. They don't often measure up to the original. I wrote this about 21 Jump Street: "21 Jump Street was funny enough. I don't think I ever saw the TV show. I considered putting this on the overrated list, because some fools have gone a little too apeshit for this. But I liked it enough to leave it off of there." The sequel is better than the original. It's does some of the stuff from the first movie, but funnier. The new stuff is funnier. The pre-closing credits sequel based montage is funny. If I'm ever in the conversation about Best Comedy Sequel, I'll have no hesitation throwing 22 Jump Street into the mix. It deserves it.

Boyhood was a good movie. It was an interesting experiment that mostly worked. I hope that it gives other writers and producers ideas for future movies. That should be its legacy.

I feel like its going to be an Oscar favorite. I won't be actively rooting against it, but I don't feel like it really deserves it for Best Picture (for Patricia Arquette or Ethan Hawke? Yes.). It's too long. Not too much of interest really happens. And the kid doesn't grow up to be the greatest actor.

I certainly didn't dislike Boyhood. I liked it quite a bit. But there are plenty of others singing its praises out there. It's good, but not amazing.

St. Vincent is another movie that's bring blown up a bit too high. I think there are a lot of people who went to see this thinking that they're witnessing the brilliance of tiny, independent movies. Eh... not really.

But I enjoyed it. Bill Murray is great. Of course. When isn't he? And this role was made for him. Look at the poster to the right. There's nothing that feels out of place for Murray, and that pretty much shows you his character.

The relationship between Vincent and the kid is pretty good, even if the ending is a bit hokey.

Big Hero 6 did a few good things with its marketing. They let you know the feel and mode of the movie without giving away much of what happens. It wasn't like the bait and switch from Frozen last year (though I approved!) because you still knew what kind of movie you were getting into.

I haven't read any of the comics this is based on, but apparently not too many other people have either. I understand that the changes were significant so that this has become its own entity. I wonder if they can still try to make the rest of the MCU fit into any possible sequels. Can an animated Iron Man show up for Big Hero 6 2?  Big Hero 7? I don't see why not.

And oh yeah - it's a lot of fun!

Speaking of movies that totally change a character from the comics, Nightcrawler was also very good. This movie is all Jake Gyllenhaal. He's creepy, and his weight loss for the film exaggerates that even more. His eyes are practically popping out of his face, something that would be necessary to have his night vision.

This movie really takes some chances. It goes places that you don't want it to go with a character you don't really want to go with. Its biggest strength is just that. You don't root for this guy. You don't want to be with this guy. But you stick with him to see exactly what he's going to do next, a lot like watching that grisly news story that guys like him captured for you. Bamf!

Finally, The Theory of Everthing showcases a performance that should win Eddie Redmayne an Oscar nomination, and very possibly the win. He redeemed himself from his Muppet-like Les Mis singing a few years back. And for that reason, I enjoyed watching this movie.

But much like a couple movies above, I feel like people have been over-singing the praises of this movie. First of all, something seemed off with me near the beginning of the movie that pulled me out of the film. Seeing that it was a biopic, I was confused. Did they change the story?

You see, Stephen and Jane meet at a party. He enters and they see each other across the room. They start talking, and things progress from there. Not such a big deal at first, but you also have to remember this. Hawking was a nerd. A huge nerd. And he acted like it in social situations. Jane was a cute girl. Now rethink the scene with those ideas. That just doesn't happen for huge nerds. There HAD to be something more to the story. When I got home, I investigated to discover that they had actually been introduced because she was a friend of his sister. Ah - that makes sense. And that paragraph may also explain why I personally felt like it wouldn't happen that way.

My second issue with the movie was that it was good. But it never wanted to be great. Here is a review that states what I was feeling in such a better way. I pretty much agree with every word Lemire writes, though I think I liked it better than she.

Again, remember that I included The Theory of Everything on this list instead of my disappointed list. It's good and well worth watching. Redmayne's performance was almost good enough to land it on my top list. And if you went to see some crappy movie like Ouiji or Saving Christmas instead of this movie, you're worse than Hitler.

Next: The top 14 begins!

2014 Movies - In-Betweeners

I saw these movies. They were fine.Not awful, not great. I'll just say a few words about them. All of these are worth watching if it's in your wheelhouse.
  

A Million Ways to Die in the West had its funny moments. I didn't expect much. Might be a fun rental.

Godzilla was fun. Perhaps the most important part was "Let Them Fight," which helped to teach Realism in International Relations. I wouldn't mind a sequel.

Edge of Tomorrow was a good video game movies, as that's what's really happening. Tom Cruise is just restarting the game each time. It was fun to watch him make different decisions to progress further along.

A lot of people seemed to really like Chef. I found it to be OK. I guess it must have hit an emotional button with them that it didn't with me.

Snowpiercer was a different angle for a dystopian future. It had its moments, but over two hours is a long time to be in one location. There are parts that are a bit weird. A few big adjustments and this could have made my top ten list, I think.

I seem to remember liking The Skeleton Twins. I think there was good chemistry between Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, even though they played twins. But other than that, it was too forgettable.

If you want to know more about tank warfare in World War II, you might enjoy Fury. It was a decent movie.

Foxcatcher features three great performances from Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo. It's well worth watching just for those. I try to go into movies knowing as little as possible, so I avoided the true facts about this until after I had seen it. I wonder if I actually would have liked it more if I knew more about it.

I would have enjoyed Into the Woods much more if it hadn't been a musical. And that's because I didn't like any of the music. I can't recall a single melody. Most of it felt more like talking in tune than singing a song. It's also probably about twenty minutes too long. Johnny Depp truly finds his inner... pedophile.

I just saw the following two movies today. They aren't bad enough to be on the bottom list, but they weren't really good either.

 The paintings in Big Eyes are accurately described by an art critic as kitsch. I felt like Christophe Waltz's performance was as close to a representation of kitsch that an actor can portray. Unfortunately, I don't think it was on purpose. It was creepy, silly, and over-the-top. The movie itself? OK.

Unbroken is broken. I hoped that the Coen Brother's role in writing the script would elevate this beyond melodrama, but it doesn't. If you enjoy being uplifted by cliche, by all means go enjoy it. There's probably a good movie to be made about Zamperini. This isn't it. Eh - I probably would have put this on my bad list if I had more time to get angry about it.

I saw two more movies this year that don't get to go onto the good or bad list since they are re-releases. The first was Gone With the Wind. I wrote about it here, though I'm not sure I remembered to mention how it's SO DAMNED LONG.

A movie that would have made the top ten list if it had come out this year was Blazing Saddles. I saw it at the Paramount. If you've never seen a movie at the Paramount, you need to do yourself a favor and go see something in 2015. First, it's a beautiful art deco theater. Next, it begins with a news reel and cartoon, then old movie trailers. You can win prizes in the raffle (which comes with your ticket). And then you get to see a great movie with people who also love that movie. Best of all? Five dollars. Don't I repeat this every year?

Oh yeah - the movie? Blazing Saddles is still the funniest movie ever made.

2014 Movies - Just Plain Disappointment

These movies were just plain disappointing. There's lots to like in them. I would probably like to watch individual scenes of them someday. Eventually. I don't think I have a lot of new things to say about them. Most of what I'm going to say I've seen repeated online.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was an advertisement for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and all of the spinoffs. The thing is, that works with comic books because you have a new one every month. It works with TV shows (Mork on Happy Days) because you have a new episode every week. But with a movie? You get one every other year at the most. So it has to be a REALLY good movie in order to include all of that. It wasn't.

As a teacher, I think I have a good idea of how Electro's origin was written. The people who were supposed to do it forgot that it was due. So they got drunk and/or high instead. So someone came up with idea of him being bitten by a radioactive electric eel. They thought that was hilarious, wrote in down in a joke email that they pretended to send. They then were all awoken the next morning by a call from the person in charge wanting to know what their idea was, seeing how it should have been finished. They panicked and sent the email. The douches in charge didn't notice how stupid it was, so they accepted it. I'm pretty sure I've received essays written the same way, though they were probably smarter.

I think I've figured out part of what I don't like about the Amazing Spider-Man movies. On one hand, they finally captured the humor and banter of the character. But they haven't figured out the heroism. In the comic books, every once in a while (quite often these days), someone from the future comes back and mentions what a great hero Spidey turned out to be. Most of the characters do a double take, thinking or even saying, "This guy? The creepy guy who hangs from the ceiling, covers his whole face, and makes stupid jokes? I doubt it." That's the attitude these movie makers have. But for a few of the heroes - the ones who know him best, such as the Fantastic Four and Captain America - will nod and understand that he is a great hero. And the audience knows. We nod along with them. We don't in these movies.

I loved The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I loved each movie more than the last. I liked The Hobbit movies less and less. Things that worked in the first three - Legolas defies the laws of physics - didn't work in these.

I'm definitely not the first person to state that these three movies could have been cut down into one great movie. Perhaps, if we're lucky, Topher Grace will do that for us someday. If it were me, though? I would probably cut almost all of third movie. I would cut the entire Battle of the Five Armies. The problem with this movie is that it's called The Battle of the Five Armies. I think I would only include the first and last few minutes. Maybe you could but the battle down into a quick five minute montage of important plot points, though I don't think that's even necessary.

I made small plans to reread The Hobbit when the movies were officially announced. None of the three really pushed me to finally go ahead and do so. Maybe I'll get around to it after I watch a super-edit of the three movies.

There's at least one good thing that came out of Rosewater. John Oliver got to host The Daily Show while Jon Stewart was making it, and that led to his HBO gig.

We had been hearing about this movie since even before then, and it sounded like a great idea for a movie. I wonder if directing Rosewater was too "serious" of a job for Stewart. It felt like he wanted to get his comedic side out of the way.

The thing that really made this movie disappointing was the last act, not because it was bad but because it was good. Once we start to find out what else was going on while Bahari was in prison, the movie takes on a new life. It felt like that's where the movie should have really begun.

Ready for the surprise about Wish I Was Here? Kate Hudson isn't the bad part about it.

I really liked Garden State and I still enjoy sitting through episodes of Scrubs. I'll plug that into Netflix while I'm doing other things and let it play in the background. So I really wanted to like Wish I Was Here. The problem is that it wanted to take the quirk from Garden State that often felt natural, but it felt forced. I guess it's much like how Legolas get to slay the Oliphaunt and ride down its trunk, but he doesn't get to climb a falling bridge. Natalie Portman gets to make silly sounds, but Josh Gad doesn't get to wear a space suit.

Next - the in-betweener movies.

2014 Movies - You have to start somewhere!

41 movies this year (with still a day to catch another or two). Not the most, but much better than 23 from last year. Two of those 41 don't count, but I'll get to those later. These are the worst movies of 2014.

Good news for me. Much like 2013, there weren't any movies that I absolutely hated. But these bottom three are movies that I wish I'd skipped.

Starting at the very bottom is Under the Skin. I didn't get it. I had no idea what was going on for most of it. I read a review of this after I saw it from someone who liked it. I feel like we saw totally different movies. He described things that I would have genuinely liked to have seen. Just... blah.

Noah had very few redeeming qualities. But it's starting with a story that's pretty dumb to begin with. Probably my favorite thing about Noah were a couple comments I read on various social media sites. The second time I saw basically the same comment, I copy/pasted it. "I didnt' see it because I heard it wasn't historically acurate."  That's funny. The big creature things were cool. I might want to see a movie about those things.

Sin City was by far my favorite movie of 2005. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was just about my least favorite this year. Part of that has to do with my expectations following the first. But the rest is that it just doesn't work. It's bland in the characters, story, and most disappointingly, the visuals. Such a shame.

So those are the only three movies that deserve the bottom. Next I'll get to four movies that I want to like, but I also want to include on this list. They were the four most frustrating of 2014.

1940: Gone With the Wind

I made it through eleven movies before this extended break. The plan was to watch a movie a week. How difficult would that be? Throw in the summertime to make up for a few missed weeks and I would finish in about a year and a half. But right from the beginning, I knew there was a movie coming. I knew there was a movie that I was going to have to force myself to watch again. What's the big deal? It's just SO DAMNED LONG.

I watched Gone With the Wind for the first time when I watched all 100 of the AFI top 100 movies. I believe I split it into two days, breaking at the intermission. And still, with two different two hour chunks, it felt incredibly long. I knew that I was either going to have to split it into smaller chunks and watch it scene by scene or just force myself to sit down and watch it straight through. So I put it off and put it off and put it off. Why? It's SO DAMNED LONG.

Thank Cinemark for bringing me back to the Oscar Project. They show a weekly classic movie. When I saw that they would show Gone With the Wind, I thought it might be an opportunity to give it a shot. I have a much easier time watching longer movies in the theater. You just can't quit on a movie in the theater (unless it's so incredibly bad (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, since we're discussing Civil War movies)). So I went, and here I am. First thought? It's SO DAMNED LONG.

There are a bunch of great things about the movie. There are several beautiful shots of the characters, usually Scarlett, silhouetted against and orange sky. They were even more incredible on such a large screen. The music is great; I'm still whistling the theme. Every time Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable are on screen, they are terrific. Since just about every one of Rhett's scenes are with Scarlett, that means he's always brilliant. That goes double for the final scene where he, frankly, no longer gives a damn. But the final scene is also great because the movie it over. You see, it's a four hour movie. I don't know if I've yet expressed that it's SO DAMNED LONG.

When I was thinking ahead to writing this, I was planning on writing about how it clearly didn't deserve the Oscar. In 1940 it was up against Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, to name a few. And there's one more movie - The Wizard of Oz. Yes, Wizard should have won. I would rather rewatch all of those other movies than to rewatch Gone With the Wind. But that's mostly because those are reasonably lengthed movies which this one is SO DAMNED LONG.

But after this second viewing, and especially seeing it in a theater, I get it a little more. Sure, it's incredibly racist. Yes, Scarlett is a horrible, horrible person. Yes, it gets rather... rapey. But it really is an epic film. It's a BIG movie in ways other than it's four hour run time. I just wish it wasn't SO DAMNED LONG!

NEXT WEEK: 1941 - Rebecca

Oscar Project Rankings:

1. It Happened One Night (1935)
2. All Quiet on the Western Front (1931)
3. Mutiny on the Bounty (1936)
4. You Can't Take It With You (1939) 
5. Gone With the Wind (1940)
6. The Life of Emile Zola (1938)
7. Grand Hotel (1933)
8. Cimarron (1932)
9. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
10. Broadway Melody (1930)
11. Wings (1929)
12. Cavalcade (1934)

May is... Lyric-a-Day Month!

Why Lyric-a-Day Month?

It, of course, follows in the grand tradition of the ever popular Haiku-a-Day Month in November and the (on hiatus) Blog-a-Day Month in October and (one time) Movie-a-Day Month in December. I figured I might as well throw another little challenge out there for myself, since the end of the school year isn't enough.

So why lyrics? I've loved music, as all human do, forever. But I've always been a melody man instead of a lyric lover. I pick the songs I enjoy based on whether I can tap my toes, dance, hum, whistle, or sing along.

But if I sing along, I don't always know the lyrics. You know those misunderstood lyrics that show up every once in a while? "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." Like that.  That's me. I regularly have no idea what the real lyrics are.

As I play some guitar every once in a while and try to learn a new tune, I actually have a lot of trouble memorizing the lyrics. I understand when my fingers can't find the chords, since I play guitar rarely enough to be horrible. But they lyrics escape me. I don't allow them to make sense. I don't picture what they are saying. I don't follow the story. I just like the way the words sound.

So enough! This May, I begin my journey to search through lyrics to find some that I like. I've laid out a few simple ground rules for myself.

First, I can't cheat just to be cute. "Tequila" will not be an option. I can't use onomatopoeia to create the sounds of a song without lyrics (Ba Ba Ba Baaaaaaaa for Beethoven's Fifth).If it's in another language, I have to translate. It's not about the way it sounds; it's about the meaning.

Second, I choose to hamstring myself. If there's one band that I actually read the lyrics to, it's my favorite, They Might Be Giants. As soon as I thought of this project, my second day was immediately going to be "Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves his broomstick arms and does a parody of each unconscious thing you do." I love that line. But I could spend the whole month just on TMBG lyrics. So I can't use them. I'll make it up another time.

Third, I'm giving no explanation for the lyrics. I'm just posting the lyric and where it's from. I guess you can ask if you really want to know, but I'm just going to go with what hits me. I'll also be inaccurate with the writers of the lyrics on occasion. I don't know if I'll do my full research to list the lyricist. I'll probably just list the artist.

Finally, I need to find the lyric myself in the entirety of the song. That means that I can't just see something on the internet with a song lyric and use that. I can't just use the title of the song. I can't hear someone else quoting the lyrics and decide to use it. This is one I'm going to have to police myself on. Starting with day two, that is.

Day one's lyrics, "It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be" by Bob Dylan, was actually the spark that lit Lyric-a-Day month. But I didn't hear that lyrics myself and decide to use it.  I got it from Penn Jillette.

Penn usually uses the quote to sign off on his podcast, Penn's Sunday School. He has talked about it a few times as being a lyric that he thinks about often. I want some of those lyrics for myself. So while I start in Penn's shadow on day one, I move out for day two.

And for those keeping track, yes, this is the second internet project with inspiration from Penn Jillette. Filthy atheist.

And for those not on Facebook, I'll post them there. Sorry I might round them up here at the end of the month. I might not.