Intermezzo 2013

For a few years I’ve been putting together something called Santa-dote—something that provides a bromide to overdosing on the holidays. But finding myself on Boxing Day with New Year's yet to come, I'm retitling this intermezzo, the sorbet served at a many-course meal to cleanse the palate.

This year, I thought I’d share some of my favorite musical clips tied to film and television, from the Serpentine Dance (1902) filmed by pioneering woman filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché, one of the first directors of narrative fiction in film, to the soundtrack of the growing love and admiration between the main characters in Medicine for Melancholy (2008)

Although Serpentine Dance is not a narrative, and there are other Serpentine dances by other women, attributed to other filmmakers, I chose this one because it’s a Blache. It is quite wonderful.

Cab Calloway provides the awesome soundtrack to Max Fleischer’s brilliant animation in this clip “St. James Infirmary” from the 1933 Snow White starring Betty Boop

Little explanation is needed for the Little Rascals in Our Gang Follies of 1938, which came out the same year as the maverick black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux debuted his film Swing!

There is a great version of the classic Bei Mir bist du Schön! and an extra little fact, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s mother Elvera Sanchez Davis play a tap dancer in a small role.  You need about an hour for Swing.

And if that wasn't enough swing for everyone in 1938, Benny Goodman worked it out in Carnegie Hall.

I couldn’t not put “Belleville Rendez-Vous” from the Triplets of Belleville (2003) in the mix, and another wonderful animation to Annette Hanshaw’s “If You Want the Rainbow Then You Must Have the Rain” (1927) from Nina Paley’s brilliant Sita Sings the Blues 

Watch the whole movie. It’s available free online.

Love this clip from Basquiat (1996), where Jeffrey Wright in the title role paints to jazz (with a lil' hip-hop rolled in) . . .

and then Brazilian jazz with Luis Bonfa providing soundtrack to Black Orpehus

And fellow Brazilian musician Seu Jorge performing David Bowie’s "Rebel, Rebel" in Portuguese in an outtake from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

I had videos open and playing at the same time, starting "Sambo de Orfeo" halfway through "Rebel Rebel." It sounds amazing. Try it.

Keeping the theme of star-crossed lovers the luminous clip (above) from Medicine for Melancholy kills it with "Le Rallye" by Dickon Hinchliffe. 

And then! And then! Another pair of lovers go “Through the Roof, Underground” with Gogol Bordello in Wristcutters: A Love Story. Please watch this movie despite the title. It really is a love story that ends well.

So we’re ending this Santa-dote on love stories.