blues brothers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

High on my list of favorite movies is the original Blues Brothers flick. One of the few SNL skits to ever translate well into a full length film, it has an appeal to it which is entirely undeniable. Strong characters, insanely quotable dialog, tremendous music and a wacky, unbelievable-but-ridiculously-fun plot have turned the movie into a comedy classic. The film contains many icons -- people, objects and places -- but one of the real life icons was nearly lost this week in an unfortunate accident.

Pilgrim Baptist Church of Chicago, which was featured in the film as the location where James Brown performs, had been undergoing major renovations for some time, with money raised by the congregation. Sadly, shortly before an 89th anniversary celebration, an electrical fire caused major damage to the church, rendering it unusable for at least six months. On a positive note, however, nobody was injured and the church avoided major structural damage, so it can be repaired. The expense of rebuilding is yet unknown, but we can certainly pray it will not be prohibitive.

With blues musician John Lee Hooker's birthday just a day after Count Basie's, I couldn't resist continuing the theme of great musicians with notable cameo roles in popular comedy films. Even if the name is not familiar to you, you might have heard songs like "Boom Boom" or "Boogie Chillun" in films such as The Waterboy or The Longest Yard.

But who am I kidding? I'm willing to bet that the movie most responsible for people hearing Hooker's music is the one feature film in which he makes an appearance: the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. You remember those guys playing music outside of the soul food cafe? That's Hooker in the tan jacket, playing music that makes everyone who walks by want to dance. Everybody recognizes Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, but the next time you watch The Blues Brothers, pay attention to John Lee Hooker, performing with a stellar group that included another blues legend, Pinetop Perkins. Hooker died in 2001.

I like to have background noise while I am working. I don't know if it is because I am a product of the age of multi-tasking or simply because I have concentration issues, but my mind tends to get bored when it only has one thing going on. It is not particularly unusual to find me seated at my computer desk typing an article while simultaneously watching television, throwing down some Nintendo action, and chatting with my fiancee (I like to call this "living the dream"). After years of functioning in this manner -- as a college student, it is now nearly impossible for me to be working at my computer without at least one other function happening simultaneously -- I feel like I'm wasting good time if I'm only working. Ergo when I sit down with my laptop to blog, it is almost a guarantee that I'll be either listening to a Pirates game online or watching a film. Sometimes, I'll substitute Gamecast instead of audio for the Pirates; then I can keep track of the Pirates game while watching a movie.

Now as you'd expect from a guy who gets paid to write about movies, I own a lot of movies. However, It'd bankrupt me to own enough movies to have a new one for every time I blog or do other work on my computer. I've written before about my love of commentary tracks, as a good one can double the watchable length of a film. Every now and then you get a great DVD with two or more commentary tracks, and you've got that many more good viewings of the DVD in store. Bonus documentaries, featurettes, and making ofs can also extend the life of a DVD. But what do you do when you've got nothing new on the shelf and are jonesing for a good flick? You go to one of your standbys. We've all got them -- that handful of films you could watch on seemingly endless repeat for eternity and never get bored. It is a quality that video games refer to as "replay value," and although some films (like The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Holy Grail) have almost universal rewatchability, some are highly dependent on the individual viewer. Here are a select few from the very top of my list, the movies I am most likely to grab off the shelf when I'm in need of something to watch: