So I open up my browser and CNN’s Screening Room is covering the Top 10 Songs from Movies. Nothing out of the ordinary; just another movie list, right? But as I browse through their selection, it occurs to me as how “nothing out of the ordinary” this really is. I mean, most of these ten songs, if you google “best movie songs,” are in one way or another on EVERYBODY’S list.
It’s hard to get a good honest list when it feels like the critics are lying to themselves half the time. Sure, one could argue that all these similarities actually prove the songs’ worth, but in all honesty, I think these people are just trying to fake credibility. It’s like me when I tell someone I’m an admirer of Scorcese’s work even though I’m a proud owner of “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.” They too just want to be taken seriously, so they go for the safe picks. That’s why, for several years, no one in the AFI has ever commented that they’re rather watch “Wayne’s World” over “The Wizard of Oz.”
Anyways, I’ve decided to assemble my own list of favorite movie songs, devoid of the usual critics’ picks. These songs, I feel, carry a certain nostalgia to them that makes certain classic movies worth re-watching, and certain unwatchable movies almost bearable. Not to mention most of them kick a lot of ass and are pretty much worth cranking up the radio for.
In my response to the SR’s best rap song “Lose Yourself, I’ve chosen this remix of Stevie Wonder’s “I wish” for the 1999 movie flop of the same name. Will Smith turned it into a catchy dance number where the only lyrics that mattered were “Wicki-wicki Wild Wild West” (which becomes more fun every time you say it) and everything else was just fluff while you got jiggy on the dance floor. “Lose Yourself” was heavily missing out on that particular “jiggy-factor.”
Originally written for the film but released in 1966, this song has a certain quality about it that’s both fun to listen to and great for drunken group sing-a-longs. And every time you hear it, it’ll always conjur up those psychadelic mental pictures of Ringo and the gang farting around on that crazy submarine of theirs.
The eighties were undeniably the single greatest decade when it came to film and music. It gave birth to some of the most memorable movie scores and virtually EVERYTHING had a theme song: “Weird Science,” “The Breakfast Club,” “The Neverending Story,” “The Goonies,” “Flashdance,” and the list goes on. While SR only saw fit to honor “Dirty Dancing,” I’d like to think the best dance song of the 80’s was from the master Kenny Loggins for his work on “Footloose.” While he also blessed us with his work in movies like “Top Gun” and “Caddyshack” this one was a dance-anywhere-anytime kind of song that could be partied to in any context.
This is what else the eighties were all about. Kick-ass inspirational songs with giant fighting robots. While Mr. Bush’s synthesizer music never translated past the decade, he created a soundtrack that actually made the single most f*cked-up movie ever totally watchable. You could blow up a planet to this song (and they did!)
If SR is allowing “Born to be Wild,” then I’m also entitled to at least one song that was never written for the film. And for that, I’m picking the theme song from “Night at the Roxbury” and it’s corresponding SNL sketches that sparked a modern wave of goofy dancers bopping their heads in the back of night clubs. If you clicked the above link and aren’t bopping your head to this music already, there’s something wrong with you.
“Eye of the Tiger” is not only the definitive training montage song, but also impressive in the fact that the lyrics are more coherent than most of Stallone’s lines. It’s a heavy-duty song about determine and impossible to listen to without feeling like doing push-ups or hitting somebody. For bottling up pure iron drive and serving it with a side of rock, Survivor earns the #5 spot on the list.
There was no way I was going to finish this list without adding at least one song by Trey Parker. In response to SR’s Aerosmith song from the Michael Bay movie, I have my own Michael Bay song to honor. “The End of an Act” was not only a great satire on cliched song selections in film, but could’ve also managed to come across as a serious love song if one didn’t pay too much attention to the lyrics. Of course, the lyrics themselves are the highlight of this song, even if Michael Bay and Ben Affleck don’t agree.
There we go. A farting warthog and a gay meerkat teaching kids about eating insects and shirking responsibility. Who didn’t love this song when it came out? Who still doesn’t? Nobody, that’s who.
Written for “Footloose” by Meat Loaf’s Jim Steinman, and used in every movie since then, “Holding Out for a Hero” has been scientifically proven to hold some of the highest levels of kickassium for a song ever. This song is so flexible that you could jumpstart the third act of any film with the main character riding back into danger against it. If “Casablanca” had it at the end, that plane would’ve never gotten off the ground. Rick would’ve come riding in on his motorcycle carrying a grenade launcher and ended the movie Bruce Willis-style as the chorus kicked in. Hence, for being able to improve any movie with it’s inclusion, Bonnie Tyler’s masterpiece earns the coveted #2 spot on our list.
“Over the Rainbow” can go take a big steaming dump in a public restroom at Disneyland for all I care when it comes to “Ghostbusters.” With deepest regrets to Dorothy (ha!) I’ve decided that the single greatest movie song ever written, and ever shall be, is something that doesn’t get you murdered if anyone catches you walking down the street singing it. It kicked off the no. 1 catch phrase of the eighties and is the hit theme song to one of the most original comedies in history. Amongst all the ring tones and remixes, this movie theme is still just as popular now as it was back then, if not moreso. For being an obscure song that’s shown incredible staying power outside of it’s own film with some of the most memorable hooks and fun-to-sing lyrics, “Ghostbusters” is a well-worthy replacement for “Over the Rainbow” as the no. 1 best movie song of all time.
Okay, I didn’t expect Valentina to announce it before I did.
Here’s the deal – for later this year when I get the time, I was thinking of doing a little video project similar to both “AMV Hell” and “Iron Chef.” For the sake of this round, I’ll only be taking song requests. My goal will be to take each one, shorten it up to about 10-30 seconds, put it to some appropriate video from my DVD collection, and compile them together in a 3 to 5 minute long video, depending on how many requests I get. And this way, everybody gets a short video made for them.
Aside from picking songs, you can also give me the link to a sound clip you’d like to see synced to something (i.e. a sound bite from Family Guy or Simpsons.)
Is this works out, I might try a second round where you select the video and I pick the songs. Or even an ambitious third round where you pick both the video AND the song. We’ll see how this goes first.
This has long since closed. Please don’t request anything.
Yet another year has passed since me and T randomly went to see Animethon XII and got kicked out 20 minutes later for not purchasing wristbands over two years ago. Once again, I find myself returning to the place where weird and unusual behavior is the norm, and the anti-social are king.
After this year, I have to question my nerdiness once again. Out of all the featured shows that were playing, I was virtually unfamiliar with about 99% of the shown material, so I was lost on virtually everything. I mostly show up to these for the AMV contest anyway ever since Valentina got me hooked on making those – what? About six years now? Something like that.
I didn’t watch too many shows this year at all. I decided to be the social one of the bunch and actually go to the discussion panels and featured classes. I took a one-hour refresher course on Japanese 101 (and got 3 packs of Pocky from the teacher as prize,) attended a video editing seminar where I objlearned some new tricks to try out on After Effects, participated in some amateur improv, got my butt kicked at Super Smash Bros., and even crashed some random panels out of boredom. And this year, I finally got to see what the Cosplay contest was all about – and bear witness to some of the most painfully, yet hysterically, poorly-rehearsed sketches and dance numbers ever produced. Most I watched in the viewing rooms was a couple episodes of Bleach, the Fullmetal Alchemist movie, and AMV Hell 3 (which is basically a 60-minute Japanese version of “Robot Chicken.”)
As for the AMV contest… where this is my ego boost kicks in. What started as an in-joke and a gift to a friend (yes, I’m talking about you, Valentina) became one of the most talked about videos of the entire show. Long story short:
-Best Comedy/Parody Video
-Best AMV Made in Alberta
-Judge’s Best Overall
Yes, I kicked butt this year. And it wasn’t like last year where most of the videos were just cut-n-paste. I was up against some serious competition this year. After watching the first few videos (out of 32,) I was convinced I was already beaten. The Judge’s Best from last year was total crap compared to these. And even more impressive was that even though only 3 Edmontonians submitted any videos, we all walked away with prizes this year (the guy who made the best runner-up action video beat himself by taking home the best action AMV award with his second video.)
Anyway, to recap – here was my winning video. It’s a very obscure reference from “Cowboy Bebop,” and was made this way because the two main characters from the show reminded me of the two main characters from the Dire Straits’ video of the same song. So most of it was animated blocky on purpose to parody the 80’s style.
And because I’m feeling really ego-boosted today, here’s the video that won me last year’s “Best in Alberta” award.
And while we’re taking trips down memory lane, here’s the very first music video my brothers and I ever made from six years ago using my old webcam and a bunch of random clips I had stored on my hard drive. A lot of people still tell me this is their favorite.
Anyway, that’s my fun for the week. Thank you all for stopping by. I think if I actually DO make anything for next year’s contest, I’ll stick to more mainstream material so everyone can enjoy it.
The trailer for Michael Gondry’s (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) new comedy is up and if only because it’s a film about low-budget plagiarism, this may go on to become one of my favorite movies of the year. There’s something about it’s parody-within-a-comedy style that reminds me of a more serious version of Weird Al’s “UHF.”
Last night, I flew back in from New York State after six days of vacationing away from the norm. I had a great time, but it feels weird being back here again so soon with my feet up on my coffee table, the lappy in my lap watching TV and blogging. I really want to book another ticket and travel somewhere else now, but I’ve got a lot of saving and bill-paying to do before I tackle another trip like this again.
Anyway – run-down of the trip!
Day 1
Got on a plane, watch some movies, listened to music, watched TV, landed in Toronto, connected in Albany and get picked up at the airport by Diane and her dad. It’d been years since I last saw Diane so it took us several minutes to find each other. I had a hunch which one she was, but I had to sneak up behind her and whisper “Diane” just to see if she turned her head. Then we went to her house and hung out with her family for a bit. Her family’s very political and likes to watch TV, so there was always news, political debates, or Stephen Colbert on the tube. That night, we watched Yellow Submarine and ate perogies. That was fun.
Also found out that we wouldn’t have time to go see New York City together, so in the guttsiest move I ever made, I booked bus tickets and planned to head down by myself on Friday.
Day 2
Headed down to Albany with Diane and her brother Adam to check out Howe’s Caves, an old tourist attraction Diane use to go to. It was really cool. Miles of underground caves, and even an underwater boat ride. I had to lead Diane around a lot though because she’s got glaucoma and is mostly blind, especially in the dark.
Then we went to Friendly’s and I ate a delicious chicken nugget sandwich. Also, we got fudge.
Later that night, Diane introduced me to the “World of Warcraft.” I created my warrior character “Slagathor” and went around being a noob for a few hours, dancing around, shouting random nonsense, and getting clobbered by stronger characters. I was the best noob ever.
Day 3
As per her mom’s orders, Diane and I traveled back down to Albany again and took a tour of their state’s capital. There was lots of security going on including metal detectors and everything. It was weird, because I remember on Canada Day, people were getting wasted on the roof and the stairway of Edmonton’s capital building – as of where those people would’ve been shot on sight in the states.
Then we wandered around Albany for a bit before meeting up with her family to go see “The Simpsons Movie.” My review: well worth the 18-year wait. There was a lot of nostalgia tied to the film but it could work as a stand-alone movie if it had to – and they still managed to up the stakes from anything we ever saw in the TV show.
The rest of the night was spent watching “Angry Nintendo Nerd” and other random videos on YouTube.
Day 4
Gone to New York! On the bus by 6:55, into the city by 10!
It took a few tries, but I eventually got the hang of the Manhattan subway system and was zipping all over the place. My first stop was the Statue of Liberty. It would’ve taken too long to get on the ferry, but Battery Park was much more interesting to walk through anyway. Then after the Liberty visit, I got lost in New York for about an hour, hitting all kinds of random places until I finally found my way to Times Square again.
And then I got lost wandering around Times Square before I found a friendly Italian pizza chef who gave me proper directions. Only after then could I get all my souvenir shopping done. I was going to go check out the Empire State Building, but it was too far a walk and I realized it was only a high place to look at things from. So I detoured into the famous Ripley’s “Believe it or Not” museum instead and had a great time messing around with all the interactive exhibits (I spent about 10 minutes going back and forth through the Black Hole. That thing was trippy.)
After Times Square, I headed down to Central Park and loved that place too. Every other block had a theme park, a zoo, a playground, a baseball field, go-kart track, or just a generally awesome hang-out spot. They did a great job of designing the entire park overall. You couldn’t take a bad picture no matter which way you looked.
Incidentally, never let the media make you afraid of visiting the city. Even though every NY movie has at least one mugging scene, the truth is I felt really safe wandering around the whole place. No idiot in their right mind would ever mug a person with such huge crowds around. Just stay out of the shadowy areas. They’re probably safe too, but don’t take chances. Heck, I didn’t even see any homeless people. The only guy who asked me for money was a scary guy at the Albany bus station.
Ooh, and I also bought a Bubba-Gump T-shirt from the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. That’s my trophy of the trip.
Woke up early, drove to a fancy Italian restaurant for the La Juene-Gillespie wedding. After about twenty minutes, I finally ran into people I knew. There was Micah from Texas (aka Bittar/guitar on the forums) and Diane’s two best friends Vicky and Jo Anne whom I’d only ever spoken to once about ten years ago when they called me up to see if I was a creepy internet stalker. They were awesome. And Vicky was so TINY!!! Seriously, Jo-Anne could pick her up and do the whole “Spider-Pig” routine with her.
After the wedding, we went inside and got Hershey’s chocolate and Legos. Then we ate delicious Italian food, including giant chicken nuggets, eggplant, and some kind of creamy Alfredo that was really good. Then we just hung around for a few hours. Good times were had all around.
After the wedding, we all drove to Diane’s frat and had the afterparty. Me and a big guy called Will beat Diane’s husband at quarters then a bunch of stuff happened. It’s mostly a blur, but I got drunk as part of Diane’s wedding present (no more after this, seriously.) I also got her a stuffed ducky as a present.
