Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on October 27, 2005 at 08:59:27

In Reply to: It can be annoying, but it does work sometimes... posted by ToshiroofKreplachastan on October 26, 2005 at 16:38:57:

...Duncan's objections, and mine, are to when pop tunes are used as plot-driving devices, especially in the absence of any real drivers. At first the trick was amusing and cinematically novel (Mrs. Robinson), but rapidly became played out (as it were).

Blues Brothers is altogether different, being itself based on music -- if you call that stuff music...

Just kidding!

Even earlier there was Blackboard Jungle. I give you something I wrote about it some time ago:

Bill Haley and His Comets, Sioux City Municipal Auditorium. I remember it well: The first concert I ever attended with friends and sans parentes. What a scene! The early heyday of rock’n roll! Haley’s "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (lifted from Joe Turner) was the new genre’s first-ever million-seller [1]; "Rock Around the Clock" was to become the biggest-selling rock song (100 million) of all time [2], the premier national teenage anthem and also the theme song of a movie celebrating juvenile delinquency, Blackboard Jungle [3], which my mother forbade me to see; their "See You Later, Alligator" became the third million-seller in a row.

[1] A pro hockey team in Massachusetts, the Springfield Indians, presciently adopted "Shake" as their fight song and played it over the P.A. before and after every home game and after every goal they scored. Later, much later, came: "We will, we will rock you!!"

[2] And the first million-seller ever in Great Britain.

[3] Blackboard Jungle injected heretofore-innocent rock’n’roll into an atmosphere of teenage rebellion contexualized with rapid social change and incipient violence, a combination that forever revolutionized cinema and music. One gritty scene: The Gang trashes a hopelessly "square" teacher’s collection of jazz 78s that he has been using to demonstrate the history of music and win the class over to wider musical culture. The kids’ reaction mythologizes them in imaginary revenge against societal repression, with "Rock Around the Clock" blaring in our ears. (Powerful stuff then, although rather a cliché today.) Another telling image: A chainlink fence in the schoolyard foreground, suggesting a jailyard; the kids must break out, as they later do quite literally in Pink Floyd’s movie The Wall.

Within one year the Comets sold six million records.

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