BBVD is indeed awesome, though they're probably the most self-aware '90s swing group. Also, their pianist is contractually obligated to do as many glissandos as he possibly can.

Whatever
I like the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, and to hell with hand-wringing over whether it's "authentic" swing. (Though their non-swing records are more interesting because apparently Steve Perry wrote in whatever genre he felt like from day to day, and they recorded all of it.)

GF-N: I don't really buy the argument that bad voices are somehow more "authentic" or "poignant" or whatever than good voices. And maybe it did lend it a "dirty, lo-fi" quality, but Sondheim's music is absolutely not dirty or lo-fi (not that those things are bad, but they're not SWEENEY TODD). I mean, the show was…

I realized after three or so viewings that nothing* in DONNIE DARKO means anything, but I still love it for the peculiar way in which it doesn't mean anything. "Dream logic" is an easy defense for this kind of movie, but it does feel like an actual, real-life dream: meaningless incidents that have nothing to do with…

I've never actually seen RENT, but if I hear "Seasons of Love" one more time in my whole life I will kill somebody. I used to like "One Song Glory," the only other number I know from the thing, but eh. I figure that it will always be better to just actually listen to LA BOHEME.

SWEENEY TODD is good, and would have been great if Burton had decided that singing roles required real singers. And if he hadn't cut "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," because, come on.

This is you:
"Aggle aggle aggle"

YOU'RE someone a person might say in idle conversation.

I like how the quality of the cuisine was the conclusive factor in ZMF's decision to not join the army.

Glass is best when he steps out of his comfort zone—the DRACULA score or the Second Symphony, for example. I stopped paying attention about a third of the way through the Violin Concerto, because really, when you've heard ten minutes of three-against-two minor-chord arpeggiations, you've heard all of it.

Why does everyone think plot is so damn important? Film isn't intrinsically a storytelling medium, it's intrinsically a visual medium. I don't think anyone here would hate an intelligent, well-plotted movie just because it didn't look like anything special, so why the reverse? Is it just backlash?

I know this is late (I meant to participate here but didn't finish the book until today, damn me), but I did too, bizarrely enough. I guess because…"Lynn"/"Lynch"? Or something.

The reveal in THE HAPPENING came, what, like one-third of the way in? And it was so idiotic that I spent the rest of the movie waiting for the other, REAL twist. Like that it was aliens or something. But nope, killer trees is all we got.

With some composers it would literally be impossible to collect every performance of their works. Some guy was collecting recordings of JUST Beethoven's "Eroica" (so he could plot tempos on a graph, I think) and he ended up with about three hundred of them.

Yeah, I have no idea what most of that post is about, but Naxos kicks ass. Antoni Wit, Marin Alsop and Theodore Kuchar FTW. Also their CDs used to sell for something like $6, which made life easier on me when I was like fourteen and had no money.

@Principal Blackman: I thought it was Toby's thoughts at first, but I'm pretty sure it was just a talking head played over other footage.

I think there were actually some clips from deleted scenes. One, at least—the clip from "Beach Games" where they're having a hot-dog-eating contest and Michael says something like "just let it slip down your gullet" and five or six people instantly respond "that's what she said."

This isn't "pop" culture, but…
I bought Graham Johnson's/Hyperion Records' Schubert: The Complete Songs, which amounts to something like 650 (including oddities like accompanied part-songs or choral numbers) over 27 CDs (plus for some reason three more CDs called "Schubert's Friends and Contemporaries" that has stuff…

He played in over eighty silent films after leaving Broadway for the cinema in 1915.

I can't decide if this looks more or less terrible than the numerous awful "Hey, look, little people doing stuff!" reality shows. On one hand, it's not a reality show. On the other hand, is it even possible to have a non-minority play a minority without it being exploitative?