Movie Scene of the Day: Best in Show

Currently I am in the midst of a battle of wills with my right leg – I would like to remain upright and walk like a normal person, but my right leg seems determined to make me fall on my face at every opportunity.  Only this week, my ankle decided to trip over nothing and I did a spectacular stack in the middle of street.  Thank god no one was around.  Otherwise the world would have seen me walking much like Catherine O’Hara in Best in Show:

Best faceplant in a movie ever!!

Taking classical to the people

I did two things out of the ordinary this week. I attended not one, but two classical music concerts.

This is out of the ordinary because although I have what I would call a healthy appreciation for the arts, I certainly am not a classical music buff. Apart from those failed piano lessons from a Catholic nun when I was a kid, I’m no expert.

Watching both a solo pianist and symphony orchestra, as part of the 2011 Brisbane Festival, left me a little surprised. Not because they weren’t amazing - they were - but because they were so easy to watch. What also surprised me was the wide variety of people in the audience; teenagers, children and young couples, not just your stereotypical middle-aged classical connoisseurs (not that there’s any wrong with them, of course).

If you’ve never visited Brisbane, Australia, you probably best know the city, or state of Queensland, as the place devastated by widespread flooding in January this year.

That tragic event inspired one composer, who was already in the process of composing a symphony about the city of Brisbane, to create a symphony purely based on the flood and its aftermath, which was one of not just devastation, but community spirit and hope.

The Song; The Memory: "Starlight" by Muse

It's funny how songs can take you on a journey into your past.  One tiny snippet will instantly transport you through time and space until you are 17 years old again trying to tape the song off the radio, madly writing down the lyrics so you will be able to accurately sing them next time you are in your car.  Or was that just me...

Every single time I hear the song Starlight by Muse, I am instantly on the E2 Bus in London on my way to work.  I've always been a bit of a Muse fan, and that summer in London I basically only had one CD to play on my old school walkman.  So Muse (and particularly Starlight) was a bit overplayed.  It's five years later and I recently heard the song in the trailer for the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love - and once again I am on that bus, two seats from the front, dying of heat exhaustion (stupid summer heatwave) and pressing repeat over and over again.

Which songs are particularly effective in inducing a flashback for you guys? 

Movie scene of the day: Clue

There was honestly a time when I thought my sister and I were the only people in the world who

a) understood the brilliance of the movie "Clue"

b) thought this was the funniest movie clip we'd ever seen:

Google informs me we weren't alone. Madeline Kahn: comic genius. And she improvised this whole scene.