Madonna being called for appropriation of minority cultures??  I’m shocked (though I have to admit I hadn’t thought of that in connection with her umm enhanced butt until your comment, unlike Vogue, or more recently the grill, etc...  Though at least with Vogue she appropriated it into something of its own quality...)

Yeah, I liked the Williams themes as a kid but maybe a bit oddly, the first (non musical--well there’s that one song) movie soundtrack I bought and played endlessly was Goldsmith’s underrated Secret of NIMH soundtrack (he says in the liner notes that animation allowed him to write it as a ballet, with longer themes…

Yeah as a kid I got a one disc Williams highlights CD (not a great way to listen to his music but a good gateway and this recording used the actual movie soundtrack music and not concert recordings) and it actually got me interested in some of his stuff left off here--like Dracula (one of the longer excerpts in fact)

Great list—and thank you for mentioning the deep homage AI’s score owes to the Khatchaturian Gayane ballet score (which of course outside of former Soviet countries is only really known for a few orchestral excerpts by most.)

I more or less agree with your main points. However, as a defender of a lot of synth scores, it should be pointed out that their brief period of getting some sort of respect was immediately after Jaws. Giorgio Moroder won the ‘78 score Oscar for Midnight Express and would get Globe and other nominations for American…

I’d also recommend where I first saw him—the 2006 BBC three episode adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty. Really good (if fairly heavy, but there’s a lot of gay sex and cocaine! Albeit somehow less than in the book....) Also good roles for Alice Krige and Tim McInnerny and the first role I remember seeing…

“It’s a welcome feminist sentiment, though somewhat undercut when you realize that it took a dozen films before Pixar finally produced one with a female protagonist, and that Brave’s original female writer-director Brenda Chapman was replaced by a man during production.”

The firing of Brenda Chapman was a bit of a…

To be fair Planes wasn’t Pixar, it’s Disneytoons Studio (though did have some Pixar people on staff.)

I’m gonna guess they care more about Foo Fighters than 80s pop?  (Though you’d think Holding Out for a Hero would be one they’d watch for.)  But it’s always arbitrary--reminds me of the emails I get every so often from HBO about downloads--and usually not for the shows I’d expect them to keep an eye on.

Exactly--and how to do justice to the ambiguous ending on film?

Which of course Disney redid for Winnie the Pooh—Huffalumps and Woozles (including tracing over some of the elephant animation as they were prone to do in that era.)  I had a weird fascination for the Pink Elephants as a kid--I loved it but it freaked me out too, so much that it gave me chronic nightmares as a kid…

I did start with Blood Meridian, though to be fair it was an undergrad American lit course so I didn’t go into it completely blind.  I’ve read 5 other books since then, but it remains my favourite.

I saw a lot of (very generic) ads, myself.  But I’ve yet to hear of anyone admitting to watching it.

Yeah, I think Madden is an actor who people would be likely to *recognize* but he’s not a name.  If you said his name to most people, with no mention of any role he’s played or a photo, most people would draw a blank.

Well yes.  And that was exactly what my comment was meant to imply--that there are people who have watched Birdcage and want to show their outrage on platforms like Twitter which means I don’t really think it’s become a real issue for most people.

Agreed--and of course it’s a homage since its origins are in the planned Haunting movie with Spielberg King was to script (and we know how that ended up)

Not to mention the Vegas in the miniseries had such a ridiculous (and if not offensive at the very least dated) portrayal of “debaucherous” gay (queer?) sex.

Of course Jim Steinman AND Meat Loaf complained that nobody understood what “But I won’t do that...” was referring to (not some kinky sex move, but apparently breaking their heart.)

I’ve certainly seen tweets complaining about it. I think in general most gay people (I know) feel that The Birdcage was done with a lot of good will towards the gay community that it just kinda gets a past?  (Honestly, the main complaints I hear are from people who realize the French version is so much funnier...)

I assumed they purposefully were leaving out full-on musicals, which makes sense to me as that’s something else again.  Of course sometimes with these lists you get borderline cases, but I’d say any film that has characters actually singing in a non-performative setting wouldn’t count here (so no Across the Universe…