Category Archives: Cinema Scope

For the love of movies, and not just the musicals

OSCAR NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED – so, what happened with those hoped for bragging rights, Danny?

Posted on January 14, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

So the Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, and as every year I had the TV on, munching my breakfast, and followed along as they were read out (see the full list of nominees at the bottom of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On, Notes in the News | Tagged Academy Awards, Best Song, Boy and the World, Bridge of Spies, brooklyn, Carol, Ex Machina, I'll See You in my Dreams, Lenny Abrahamson, Mad Max: Fury Road, Manta Ray, Oscars, Racing Extinction, Ridley Scott, Room, Todd Haynes | Leave a comment

BEST SONG OSCAR SURPRISE? – The movie song I predict will be this year’s stealth surprise Oscar Best Original Song nominee

Posted on December 14, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

A few days ago the Academy, aka the people who hand out the Oscars, revealed the list of songs from this year’s movies that are eligible to be nominated as best original song in a motion picture. There are 74 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On, Notes in the News | Tagged 50 Shades of Grey, Academy, Academy Awards, Best Song, Blythe Danner, Bond, Brian Wilson, Brokeback Mountain, Cabaret, Chi-Raq, Cold One, Conchita Wurst, Diane Warren, Dreamgirls, Earned It, EmmyLou Harris, Enchanted, Furious 7, Golden Globes, Her, I'll See You in my Dreams, Karen O, Keegan DeWitt, Kris Tapley, Lady Gaga, Love and Mercy, Love Me Like You Do, Meghan Trainor, Meryl Streep, Moulin Rouge, One Kind of Love, Oscars, Paul Dano, Ricki and the Flash, Rise like a Phoenix, See You Again, Shaun the Sheep, Simple Song #3, Spectre, Spy, The Moon Song, Til It Happens to You, Variety, Who Can You Trust, Writing's on the Wall, Youth | Leave a comment

“CAROL” & THERESE – “SPEAKEASY” & JANE – stories from the time when lesbian love dared not say its name

Posted on December 11, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I love the movie “Carol”. It is one of the best movies of the year, masterful on all levels. While I was watching it, I kept on thinking: “How exquisitely swoony”. Refined and restrained on the one … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, The Speakeasy Chronicles | Tagged 1930s, 1950s, Alice in Wonderland, Carol, Cate Blanchett, drama, homosexual, Jane Allison, lesbian, magical realism, movie, musical, musical comedy, Rooney Mara, Speakeasy, Therese, Through the Looking Glass | Leave a comment

BLONDIE vs. SHEENA – Grudge Match of the Bond Themes

Posted on November 14, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

With the release of the latest Bond, “Spectre”, a whole bunch of internet articles listed rankings of the Bond theme songs. Sultry “Nobody Does it Better” generally wound up the #1 choice of most of these polls, followed by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On | Tagged Academy Award, Adele, Blondie, For Your Eyes Only, Goldfinger, James Bond, Live and Let Die, Louis Armstrong, Monty Norman, Nancy Sinatra, Nobody Does It Better, Sheena Easton, Skyfall, Spectre, theme, You Only Live Twice | Leave a comment

Catching HALLOWEEN around HALLOWEEN 1978 in a seedy New York theater

Posted on October 30, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

My father insists that the movie theater or rather many of the patrons in the theater were scarier than anything that was happening on the screen. Possibly. I was eleven and not world-weary enough to be wary of the pot-smoking … Continue reading →

Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On | Tagged 1978, American Forces Network, audience reaction, creature feature, Halloween, Hammer, Hitchcock, horror, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, Michael Myers, movie, New York, permissive parenting, Psycho, seedy, The Exorcist, theater, Universal | Leave a comment

BERLIN WALL MEMORIES #1 – Growing up 5 miles from the BRIDGE OF SPIES

Posted on October 16, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The moment I read the announcement that Steven Spielberg was preparing his next movie called “Bridge of Spies”, I knew, without having any additional morsel of information, that Die Glienicker Brücke – the Glienicke Bridge of Berlin, also known as … Continue reading →

Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, Notes in the News | Tagged Abel, Berlin, Berlin Wall, Bridge of Spies, Coen Brothers, East Germany, Frederic Pryor, Glienicke Bridge, Glienicker Brücke, Kristallnacht, Novemeber 9, October3, Potsdam, Powers, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks | 4 Comments

THE NEARLY INVISIBLE BISEXUAL MALE

Posted on September 17, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The director of “Speakeasy”, Lissa Moira, and I were conducting another one of our weekly meetings pouring over the script and discussing staging and production issues, when I mused aloud that in many ways “Speakeasy” is an expression of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Live! On Stage, The Speakeasy Chronicles | Tagged Alan Cumming, Alice in Wonderland, bisexual, bisexuality, Cabaret, coming out, Gay, Kinsey Scale, lesbian, LGBT, Lissa Moira, musical, ominsexual, Orange in the New Black, pansexual, Pride, Queer, Scarlet Letter, Sense8, Speakeasy, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Tim Maner, Torch Song Trilogy, transgender, trisexual | 3 Comments

Speak Low, Phoenix, Speak Low…

Posted on August 16, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I attended a matinee screening of the German movie “Phoenix”. As the movie began and the screen was still black, I heard a lone upright bass picking out two notes a major sixth apart, followed by four more notes bounding … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On | Tagged Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbra Streisand, Billie Holiday, Christian Petzold, Donna Murphy, Eartha Kitt, Frank Sinatra, Hitchcock, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, LoveMusik, Michael Cerveris, Nina Hoss, Norah Jones, Ogden Nash, Phoenix, Ronald Zehrfeld, Sarah Vaughan, Speak Low, Tony Bennett, Vertigo | 46 Comments

MERYL STREEP SINGS! and sings again! and again!

Posted on August 5, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

That Meryl Streep is one of the great actors of our time is common knowledge. But what should now be considered obvious is how she is also the great movie musical performer of the modern age. That statement may be … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On | Tagged A Prairie Home Companion, ABBA, Adam Guettel, Bette Midler, Dancing at Lughnasa, Death Becomes Her, Garisson Keillor, Goldie Hawn, Into the Woods, Ironweed, Jeanine Tesori, Lilly Tomlin, Mamma Mia, Mary Rodgers, Meryl Streep, Mother Courage, Olivia Newton-John, Postcards from the Edge, Richard Rodgers, Ricki and the Flash, The Music of Regret | 2 Comments

An appreciation of E. L. DOCTOROW and RAGTIME, the book and the musical

Posted on July 22, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

E. L. Doctorow, one of the giants of contemporary literature has passed. I have read nine of his twelve books, a ratio and record I have equaled in passion and loyalty with only two other contemporary authors, John Irving and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Literary Lyricism, Live! On Stage, Melodies Linger On | Tagged Audra McDonald, Billy Bathgate, Book, Brian Stokes Mitchell, E. L. Doctorow, epic, Graciela Daniele, history, Lynn Ahrens, movie, musical, novel, Ragtime, Stephen Flaherty, The Book of Daniel, Tony | Leave a comment

Rest in Peace, James Horner

Posted on June 22, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

May you soar in the heavens with your melodies. (Hymn to the Sea – James Horner (from Titanic)

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On, Notes in the News | Tagged Hymn, James Horner, memorial, RIP, Sea, soundtrack, Titanic, tribute | Leave a comment

Keeping Company with Cocktails & Classics & CABARET

Posted on May 24, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

So, Logo is showing “Cabaret” tonight as part of their new “Cocktails & Classics” series. This series started around the same time I launched this blog, and in that short time I have already gone on and on here and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Melodies Linger On | Tagged Academy Awards, Bob Fosse, Cabaret, Drew Droege, Joel Grey, Lea DeLaria, Liza Minnelli, logo, Michael Ausiello, Michael Urie, Michael York, musical, Nazis | Leave a comment

Forbidden Movies, Forbidden Music

Posted on May 14, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I walked out of the Film Forum mind abuzz and guts churning. I was chewing on a whole lot of food for thought as well as the ice cream melt I bought to soothe my emotion roiled innards. I’d just … Continue reading →

Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, Notes in the News, The Teaching Artist | Tagged Der Junge Pianist, documentary, Egk, Feuerzangenbowle, Forbidden Films, Germany, Heinz Ruhman, Horst-Wessel-Lied, Nazi, Orff, Propaganda, Third Reich | Leave a comment

THE SOUND OF MUSIC: Embracing the “Sugarcoated Lie”

Posted on May 6, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Ed and I were in Berlin* a couple years ago visiting my folks when we stumbled upon a German movie from the 1950s being shown on TV. We missed the first seconds of the credit sequence and so didn’t catch … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On, The Teaching Artist | Tagged Austria, Die Trapp-Familie, Do Re Mi, Germany, Hammerstein, musical, Pauline Kael, Rodgers, teaching artist, television, The Sound of Music, Trapp Family | Leave a comment

SPEAKEASY and the “breaking into song with music out of nowhere” musical trope

Posted on April 30, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Alice goes through the Looking Glass JANE (puts the Drink Me bottle back onto the little table): How much hooch will I have to down before I get to the Wonderland? (singing) WHAT ARE THESE DRINKS THAT I’M DRINKING … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, The Speakeasy Chronicles | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, Breaking into song, Cabaret, Dream, musical, Speakeasy, Through the Looking Glass, Wizard of OZ | 1 Comment

How Cabaret circumvented the “characters breaking into song” musical trope

Posted on April 27, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

When people who say they hate musicals explain why they hate musicals they usually fall back on this well-worn reason: it is unrealistic that characters just break into song and dance; this doesn’t happen in “real life”. I find this … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema Scope, Melodies Linger On, The Speakeasy Chronicles | Tagged All That Jazz, Berlin, Bob Fosse, Breaking into song, Busby Berkley, Cabaret, Chicago, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Joel Grey, Kit Kat Club, Liza Minnelli, musical, The Boyfriend | Leave a comment

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