The nominations for the 92nd Oscars were announced yesterday, and when looking over the list you realize that you've got a lot of catching up to do before the big night. But where can you see all of the nominated movies? Sure, some are still in theaters, but why go out when you can just settle in for the night in front of your TV and binge watch all the nominees?
Movie Dearest shows you how:
Now available on Blu-ray and DVD - click on link to purchase from Amazon:
From Elton John and Judy Garland biopics to animated sequels and live action remakes to the (now infamous) big screen debut of a certain long-running Broadway sensation, there was plenty of songs sung, classics covered and dances danced in the movies of 2019, and Movie Dearest is here to name the best (plus the five worst)... and you can listen to (almost) all of them in the YouTube playlist below!
Best Oscar Winning Song: "Over the Rainbow" (Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg) in Judy, performed by Renée Zellweger
Best Solo Dance Number: "Criminal" (Fiona Apple) in Hustlers, performed by Jennifer Lopez
Best Fantasy Musical Number: "Express Yourself" (Madonna & Stephen Bray) in Isn't It Romantic, performed by Rebel Wilson, Adam Devine, Liam Hemsworth, Priyanka Chopra, Betty Gilpin & Brandon Scott Jones
"Being Alive"
Best Show Tune: "Being Alive" (Stephen Sondheim) in Marriage Story, performed by Adam Driver
Best 11 O'Clock Number: "Show Yourself" (Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez) in Frozen II, performed by Idina Menzel
Best Song Sung by a Cat: "Gus: The Theatre Cat" (T.S. Eliot & Andrew Lloyd Webber) in Cats, performed by Ian McKellen
Best Ukulele Cover: "Baby Mine" (Frank Churchill & Ned Washington) in Dumbo, performed by Sharon Rooney
"By Myself"
Best American Folk Song:
"Wayfaring Stranger" (Traditional) in 1917, performed by Jos Slovick (video not available)
Best Standard: "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne) in Avengers: Endgame, performed by Harry James & His Orchestra
Best Torch Song: "By Myself" (Arthur Schwartz & Howard Dietz) in Judy, performed by Renée Zellweger
"Shake It Off'
Best Novelty Song: "The Hide & Seek Song" (James Bairian, Louis Castle, Daniel Iannantuono & Darren Howard) in Ready or Not, performed by Headquarters Music
Oscar's favorite character actors: With her third nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Best Picture nominee The Shape of Water, sassy sidekick Octavia Spencer cements her status as this century's Thelma Ritter. Of course Thelma, who was nominated six times in the same category (including her first for 1950 Best Picture winner All About Eve) never won, while Octavia was victorious her first time out, for 2011's The Help.
And while he wasn't singled out for his role as the supportive father in Call Me By Your Name, Michael Stuhlbarg can claim bragging rights for appearing in a third of this year's nine Best Picture nominees; in addition to Call Me, he also co-starred in The Post and The Shape of Water. The last actor to pull off a triple like this was John C. Reilly in 2002's The Hours, Gangs of New York and that year's Best Picture winner Chicago.
Octavia, supporting Sally
Best of Times, Worst of Times for the Streamers: Previously only recognized in the documentary categories, Netflix broke into the mainstream races this year with their acclaimed drama Mudbound, which also set a few records with its four nominations: Rachel Morrison became the first female cinematographer to be nominated, the film's director Dee Rees is the first African-American woman to be nominated for Adapted Screenplay, and Mary J. Blige is the only person to be nominated for acting and songwriting for the same film. The streaming giant also added three more documentary nominations (the short Heroin(e) and the features Icarus and Strong Island) to its haul, as well as its first Foreign Language Film nominee, On Body and Soul from Hungary (which starts streaming on February 2nd).
That's an impressive eight nominations total for Netflix. Meanwhile, the news wasn't so good for its rival, Amazon. After becoming the first streaming service to garner a Best Picture nomination and to win Oscars in the major categories last year for Manchester by the Sea, Amazon landed only a single nod this year, for The Big Sick's Original Screenplay. All its other potential contenders — The Lost City of Z, Last Flag Flying, Wonder Wheel and (sadly) Wonderstruck — never quite broke through.
Proud Mary
Great Song Selections: There's not much to gripe about for a change when it comes to the Original Song category. First off: No documentary songs! Although I'm not crazy about "Stand Up for Something" from Marshall (it tries way too hard to be both inspirational and hip and winds up being neither), the remaining four are exceptional, with two thematically strong soundtrack tunes — "Mighty River" from Mudbound and "Mystery of Love" from Call Me By Your Name — and two narratively rich show tunes — "Remember Me" from Coco and "This Is Me" from The Greatest Showman. Plus, all of them have the potential of adding memorable musical moments to the telecast, especially a show-stopper like the Gay Pride anthem in-the-making "This Is Me" (see lyrics below), which Keala Settle has already confirmed she will be performing on the Big Night. Let's hope they can book as many of the other original singers as they can, although I'm pretty sure that Supporting Actress nominee Mary J. Blige will be on hand to belt out her mighty "Mighty River".
Fun fact: Three of this year's Best Picture nominees feature previous Oscar winning and nominated songs on their soundtracks, most notably the dreamy "You'll Never Know" from 1943's Hello Frisco, Hello in The Shape of Water, where it is heard several times. Dirty Dancing's iconic "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" is used ironically in a memorable scene in Get Out. And you'd have to be a true connoisseur of classic movie music (like, oh, yours truly) to recognize "My Foolish Heart" (a nominee from the 1949 film of the same name) as a lovely instrumental in an early scene in Phantom Thread.
One can assume Keala will shave before the big night...
And the rest...:
It's pretty much a given at this point that Coco will (rightfully) win for Best Animated Feature, but did we really need the phrase "Academy Award nominee The Boss Baby" to be a reality? And what does the Academy have against Lego?
Speaking of animation, where's the super-cute gay boys in love story In a Heartbeat in Best Animated Short?
Great to see well-deserved multiple nominations for genre faves Blade Runner 2049, Baby Driver and Star Wars: The Last Jedi,
including one each in the two redundant sound award categories (the
five films nominated in both categories are exactly the same).
As for the Foreign Language Film category, Germany's Golden Globe and Critics' Choice winner In the Fade was criminally overlooked. Instead, they picked Sweden's ridiculously pretentious so-called "satire" The Square, the epitome of the type of foreign language film that make people hate foreign language films.
How can the beautifully made Jane not be a finalist for Best Documentary Feature, for which it was not only expected to be nominated but also the winner? This one is arguably the biggest snub (there, I said it) of this year's nominations.
On the other hand: yeah for Agnès Varda, nominated for her very first Oscar for her delightful doc Faces Places. But if she wins it won't be her first Oscar: she received an Honorary Oscar at this year's Governor's Awards. Oh, and she's also the oldest Oscar nominee like ever, with fellow 2017 nominees James Ivory (Adapted Screenplay, Call Me By Your Name) and Christopher Plummer (Supporting Actor, All the Money in the World) right behind her. In other words, no #OscarSoYoung.
Strong man
And last but certainly not least: In yet another Oscar milestone in a year of Oscar milestones, congratulations to Yance Ford, director of the riveting Best Documentary Feature nominee Strong Island, the first transgender filmmaker to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Coming soon: my reviews of this year's short film nominees and a Movie Dearest annual tradition, "If We Picked the Oscars".
By Kirby Holt, Movie Dearest creator, editor and head writer.
Thanksgiving weekend can be a feast for the senses, beginning with the tastes and aromas of a festive family feast. You'll need a sharp eye and a quick touch for the ensuing shopping sprees on Black Friday. And then just open your ears and you'll hear it all around you: Christmas music!
Bridging one holiday to the next, Christmas music signals it's time to start rolling out the annual traditions of the season, from tree decorating to gift wrapping to, that's right, Christmas movie watching! Which is all just an elaborate lead in to:
Movie Dearest presents(in chronological order) our Top 10 Christmas Movie Musical Numbers!
When one hears "musical number" you think of hordes of hoofers in flashy costumes dancing their feet off on sparkly sets while the camera spins around them. But sometimes the simple approach is best, such as just pointing the camera at the singer and letting them sing their heart out, as Vincente Millinelli did in this perennial favorite. Of course, it helps if the singer is Judy Garland, who's Esther plaintively warbles Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin's soon-to-be-classic to a weepy Margaret O'Brien as her sister Tootie. "Have Yourself..." has since gained the reputation as being the most depressing Christmas song ever, so it's no wonder that immediately after Esther finishes it, little Tootie runs off and beats the crap out of a couple snowmen.
Bet you didn't know that this charming yuletide tune, by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, was from a movie, right? It's just one of many cases where a song has outlived the movie that introduced it, in this case a Bob Hope gangster comedy set in a Damon Runyan-esque New York City. The number is set within the bustling "city sidewalks, busy sidewalks" during "Christmastime in the city", where Hope (in a sorry-looking Santa beard) and his sweetheart Marilyn Maxwell (his other beard?) stroll along and are joined in the song by passersby, with Hope mugging as usual all along the way (he even flirts with a policeman!). And yes, that is William "Fred Mertz" Frawley as the grumpy street Santa at the start of the scene.
Of course, Irving Berlin's all-time bestseller was first introduced in 1942's Holiday Inn (and won the Academy Award that year for Best Original Song), but it got upgraded from a simple sing-along at the piano to the full-fledged finale twelve years later in this eponymous pseudo-remake. Bing Crosby is joined by co-stars Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen (dubbed by Trudy Stevens), as well as a tiny troupe of ballerinas, as they croon about "treetops glistening" and "sleigh bells in the snow". Yes, there's a lot of red velvet and white marabou going on up on that stage, but at this time of year it's hard to resist such nostalgic, albeit cornball, sentimentality. May all your Christmases be white indeed.
Ah, Lucy. For years on the I Love Lucy show we thought you were just funning us with your out-of-tune shrills, but alas, it turned out you really couldn't sing. Or, several thousand cigarettes later, at least you couldn't by the time this wholly ill-conceived silver screen adaptation of Jerry Herman's Broadway musical decided to (mis)cast you as the larger-than-life Auntie Mame. Nevertheless, this number is fascinating to watch in a "just... can't... look away" sort of way, from the dull costuming (why is Mame in a nun habit?) to the imbecilic choreography (did they really need to spend half the song "decorating" poor, pathetic Agnes Gooch?). But then Mame dons that creepy as hell Santa Claus death mask and the whole thing is elevated to a whole other level of "WTF".
In this, the like bazillionth filmed version of Charles Dickens' holiday ghost story, most of the familiar Muppets are relegated to minor roles while the juicy parts – namely the three Spirits of Christmas – were "cast" with original creations. So, instead of say, Fozzie Bear as the Ghost of Christmas Present, we get... a ginger bear! Burly, boisterous and vaguely Santa-ish, this jolly ol' fellow (voiced by longtime Muppeteer Jerry Nelson) introduces Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge to the joys of the season, who at one point forgets his miserly ways and gets jiggy with it. Paul Williams, who was Oscar nominated for co-composing the songs for the original Muppet Movie, returned to contribute new Carols for this Christmas.
Fans of this stop-motion animated cult favorite have long argued over "is it a Halloween movie, or a Christmas movie?" This sleigh-belled ballad, written and performed by Tim Burton mainstay Danny Elfman, is a strong argument for the latter. Diametrically opposed to the film's spooky opening number "This is Halloween", "What's This?" is a candy-colored kaleidoscope of Christmasy cheer, with our hero Jack Skellington gleefully discovering all new kinds of tricks and treats. But then again, lyrics such as "There are children throwing snowballs/Instead of throwing heads/They're busy building toys/And absolutely no one's dead" swing the argument back to the pro-Halloween side. So here you have it, the film's whole thematic dichotomy, wrapped up in one catchy three-minute tune.
Voice acting legend Thurl Ravenscroft (of Tony the Tiger and Disney's Haunted Mansion fame) memorably sung this one in the 1966 cartoon classic, but here the Grinch (a heavily made up Jim Carrey) croaks it out himself. Regardless of the fact that there is no actual mention of Christmas or holidays or even snow, "You're a Mean One" (music by Albert Hague and lyrics by Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss himself) has become a seasonal standard anyway, even with its mentions of seasick crocodiles and termite-infested teeth. Fun Fact: The soundtrack album for the animated television special won a Grammy for Best Album for Children in 1968. The recipient of the award? Horror film icon Boris Karloff, who voiced the original Grinch.
The camp of the title is Camp Ovation, a summer retreat for young performing arts students, which prompts the question "how is there a Christmas song in a movie set during the summer?" Well, among the many musicals the camp stages (seriously, how did they afford the rights for all of them anyway?) is the 1968 Burt Bacharach/Hal David stage musical adaptation of 1960's Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment titled Promises, Promises. This Act I closer takes place during the office Christmas party, with three bubbly secretaries (Alana Allen, Dequina Moore and Tracee Beazer) providing the entertainment, which escalates from a perky trio to a full-blown office blowout and climaxes with a hand flailing finale set to the ebulliently incessant belting of "Jingle bells! Jingle bells!". As seen here in Camp, the number is a considerably impressive recreation of the original Broadway "Turkey Lurkey" as frenetic-ly choreographed by Michael Bennett, later of A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls fame.
(By the by, if this list was ranked, this one would easily be in the number one spot.)
As a quartet of... sexy? Slutty? Skanky? Santa's helpers, the "Plastics" (Lacey Chabert as Gretchen, Rachel McAdams as Regina, Lindsay Lohan as Cady and Amanda Seyfried as Karen) slink along to a recording of this pop X-mas ditty (written by Joe Beal and Jim Boothe) for their Winter Talent Show act... that is, until Gretchen kicks the boombox off the stage (um, why doesn't the school auditorium have a sound system?). New girl Cady saves the day though when she starts singing live, and the audience quickly joins in for a merry sing along as the "mean girls" go on to mix and a-mingle their jingling feet. This scene has become so popular that all one has to do is search for "jingle bell rock mean girls" on YouTube to find a bevy of fan-made tribute videos, including a few by "mean boys".
We come full circle for our last and most recent Christmas movie musical number. Like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", this melancholy arrangement of the usually peppier "Toyland" (composed by Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough for their 1903 children's operetta Babes in Toyland) is tinged with forlorn sadness. In the scenes leading up to this moment, sassy streetwalker Alexandra (Mya Taylor, who became the first transgender actress to win a major film award with her 2016 Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for her performance here) is seen tirelessly promoting her Christmas Eve singing gig at a local cocktail lounge. But it is all to no avail, as she ends up performing to a mostly empty bar. Taylor's haunting vocals add to the bittersweet air, yet she seems to gently acknowledge the irony of her situation through such lyrics as "Little girl and boy land/While you dwell within it/You are ever happy there".
Many of us, myself included, prefer singing in the shower to singing on stage in front of hundreds of people. Fortunately, the 270 active members of the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA) have no such fear, especially when it comes to using music to support voice-less and even bullied LGBTQ youth.
GMCLA's 6th annual Voice Awards gala will be held on May 20th at the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles. Featuring a silent auction along with incredible musical performances, the event benefits the chorus's youth outreach initiatives including the Alive Music Project and the "it gets better" Tour. Attendees include a diverse audience of over 700 guests ranging from corporate, entertainment industry and business executives to celebrity friends and noted philanthropists. The gala has raised $1.5 million since 2012 and hopes to add significantly more this year.
Founded in 1979, GMCLA has grown to be one of the largest all-male choral organizations in the United States. It has also become one of the largest LGBT advocacy organizations in the world, boasting a diverse and inter-generational membership. Now under the leadership of new executive director Jonathan Weedman, GMCLA "has a deep history of service within the LGBT community, singing at countless memorials, making and commissioning music that helps the community to mourn, to celebrate, to dream, and to prepare for victory" over social and political forces that still oppose LGBT equality. The chorus's members donate over 60,000 volunteer hours annually to make GMCLA’s mission of musical excellence and community partnership a reality.
The annual Voice Awards honor those who, according to their press release, "advance our world, refute silence, lend a voice to the oppressed, exhibit leadership and give hope to those living under the weight of silence." 2017 Community Leader Voice Award will be presented to Gwen Baba, who has a long history of involvement with both the Human Rights Campaign and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, while the Visionary Voice Award will go to the Logo TV channel.
Renowned composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz will be the recipient of the 2017 Vanguard Voice Award. Schwartz has written the scores for such popular stage hits as Wicked, Pippin and Godspell. He won Academy Awards for the animated films Pocahontas and The Prince of Egypt, and received additional nominations for Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Enchanted.
"I'm very proud to be receiving the GMCLA Vanguard Voice Award," Schwartz told this writer via email. "I had a wonderful experience with the chorus when they performed my choral piece Testimony, which is based on interviews for the "it gets better" project, and it meant a lot to me when they brought performances of that piece into schools around the country. It's not easy for writers to have a social impact, but organizations such as the GMCLA help make that possible."
Indeed, GMCLA operates two innovative community projects that offer education and outreach to over 50,000 middle and high school youth in our public school system. The Alive Music Project is a music education and outreach program focused on LA-area middle and high schools. It will be expanding this year to incarcerated youth throughout Los Angeles. The "it gets better" Tour, meanwhile, educates youth and reduces incidences of bullying and violence across the US where over 85% of LGBT students are physically or verbally abused each year. In addition, GMCLA supports the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, an organization with the mission "to fiercely empower trans and gender-expansive people to love their voices and perform with courage and strength."
Support of the Voice Awards helps GMCLA fund its general operations and continue offering these very important programs.
To purchase Voice Awards tickets or sponsorships or for additional information, visit the GMCLA website.
It's February, which means it's time for the Academy Awards, and this month's Movie Dearest Calendar Wallpaper is whistling a happy tune with Oscar's Best Original Songs.
Love it or hate it, the oft-controversial category has nevertheless honored some of the greatest moments in movie music, sending us over the rainbow and under the sea, lifting us up where we belong with a zip-a-dee-doo-dah day. Sung by the likes of Fred, Bing, Doris, Bob, Judy, Barbra and Madonna, oh what a feeling these memorable melodies gave us, and this is our thanks for the memories.
All you have to do is click on the picture above to enlarge it, then simply right click your mouse and select "Set as Background". (You can also save it to your computer and set it up from there if you prefer.) The size is 1024 x 768, but you can modify it if needed in your own photo-editing program.
The current, quiet in-between time that bridges the end of summer, with its popcorn movies and overall warm-weather frivolity, and the start of the all too “serious” awards season affords me the opportunity to go through the pile of review-consideration media generously provided by zealous PR folks from coast to coast. Here’s what I’ve watched, listened to and/or read recently among new and upcoming releases…
Desperate Housewives: The Complete Eighth and Final Season (DVDavailable now): While the late series never grabbed me, my hopelessly-devoted partner was thrilled when this five disc farewell set arrived. I do recommend its bonus features, which include a “Finishing the Hat” episode commentary by series creator Marc Cherry (who deserves kudos for naming every episode after a Stephen Sondheim song title or phrase), deleted scenes and bloopers, and “I Guess This is Goodbye,” a series of honest and often moving reflections by various longtime cast members. Farewell, Wisteria Lane, at least until Cherry comes up with a reunion movie.
Del Shores: Sordid Confessions (DVDavailable now): Shores, the Southern-born son of a Baptist preacher, is beloved in the gay community for his play-turned-movie Sordid Lives (which also became a cable series) as well as Southern Baptist Sissies and writing for the American version of Queer as Folk. As a standup comedian, however, he doesn’t exhibit the satiric but good-natured aplomb that usually makes his written work so endearing. In Sordid Confessions, recorded in front of a live Dallas audience, he comes across as a wannabe Kathy Griffin and takes mean-spirited jabs at little people, the homeless, and now-conservative former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson. Skip this and wait for his upcoming movie Blues for Willadean (starring Beth Grant and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer) instead. Or even better, re-watch Sordid Lives.
Twisted Romance (DVDavailable now): Twisted is right. This sexually-charged, Spanish-language potboiler by Jose Celestino Campusano isn’t for everyone, but more adventurous gay viewers will find much to admire. These include its provocative plot about a broodingly attractive (or should that be attractively brooding?) teen who begins a relationship with a middle-aged, sexually abusive man; the brave lead performances of Oscar Genova and Nehuen Zapata; and the film’s gritty yet scenic Argentinian setting.
Virago’s Love Over Fear (CDavailable now). This second studio album by female indie-rock duo Virago (a.k.a. Amy Schindler and Maire Tashjian) alternates in tone between fierce anthems and more reflective songs inspired by Schindler’s fight against breast cancer. The collection is generally inspired and inspiring, especially the soulful “To Be With You” and the rowdy title track. Schindler sounds a bit too Melissa Etheridge-esque at times, but lesbian women and gay men alike are sure to enjoy it.
Zombie Cat (bookavailable October 1st from Skyhorse Publications). Yes, you read the title correctly. Just in time for Halloween comes this whimsically ghoulish, vividly illustrated tale by Isabel Atherton of a sweet housecat, Tiddles, who turns into an undead, flesh-eating beast after being bitten by an infected rodent. If The Walking Dead kept a pet instead of eating it, Tiddles would fit the bill perfectly. In the end, though, the kitty still just wants to be loved by his non-infected human, Jake. Despite occasional scenes of Tiddles chewing on entrails, older kids, teens and my fellow twisted adults will get a big kick out of Zombie Cat.
Barbra Streisand’s Release Me (albumavailable now on vinyl and October 9th on CD). While I haven’t yet finished listening to the advance press download of this 11-track compilation of never-before-released Streisand recordings from 1963 to the present, I’ve heard enough to know it’s a stunning must-have whether you are a Babs-aholic or not. Songs include showtunes "Home" (from The Wiz), "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" (from Finian’s Rainbow) and "Heather on the Hill" (from Brigadoon), as well as songs by Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman and Billie Holiday’s arranger, Ray Ellis.
And while I haven’t yet received it, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival in my mailbox of the world premiere cast recording of Carrie: The Musical. The notorious 1988 Broadway production never got a cast album, but a recordingof the recent off-Broadway revival (starring the fabulous Marin Mazzie as the tortured psychic teenager’s religious-fanatic mother) was just released September 25th through Sh-K-Boom and Ghostlight Records. I’m so excited, I might just have to go put on my prom dress and pour fake pig blood all over myself!
In one corner, we have a legendary, Grammy/Oscar/Emmy-winning superstar, Barbra Streisand. Opposite her is young, falsetto-singing upstart Active Child, a.k.a. former choirboy Patrick Grossi. Both are duking it out via new CDs being released today, and darn it if the young upstart doesn't come out on top... artistically speaking.
Don't get me wrong: I've loved Babs ever since her back-to-back triumphs while I was in high school of the movie Yentl and her Broadway Album. Of course, her career began nearly 20 years earlier in New York City, initially as a cabaret sensation and then as the triumphant headliner of Funny Girl, both on stage and screen. Streisand's vocal dynamics, clarity and showmanship have been unmatched. Now, though, she is approaching 70 and — as her new release makes clear — her voice isn't what it used to be.
What Matters Most satisfies Streisand's stated, long-desired effort to record an album of songs exclusively written by her longtime collaborators, Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The Bergmans won Academy Awards for their score of Yentl (with composer Michel Legrand) as well as for the title tune from the Streisand-starring hit, The Way We Were (which they co-wrote with Marvin Hamlisch). What Matters Most opens with Streisand singing another Bergman-penned Oscar winner, "The Windmills of Your Mind." Her diction is as impeccable as ever in this somewhat slowed-down cover, and the orchestrations throughout the new CD are lovely.
Sadly, it begins to become evident on the album's second track, "Something New in My Life," that Streisand should probably stop recording. She's been singing in a lower octave for a while now, which is to be expected as a singer ages and which was put to good use on her last, loungy CD, 2009's Love is the Answer. But here, Streisand's voice sounds harsh whenever she strains to reach a higher note at louder volume. This is confirmed by at least two other songs, "Alone in the World" and "The Same Hello, The Same Goodbye."
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Streisand concludes What Matters Most with the elegiac song of the same name. In it, she sings that "what matters most is that we loved at all." This is presumably directed to the Bergmans but could also serve as a fitting farewell to her longtime fans. While I hate the prospect of never hearing Streisand sing something new after this, a true artist usually recognizes when their best work is behind them but will naturally endure.
As one recording artist enters their twilight, another is emerging. You Are All I See is Active Child's second CD — following last year's Curtis Lane — but the first that I've heard. It represents an amazing amalgamation of Grossi's angelic voice, ethereal music comprised of harp and strings, and 1980's synthesizer-manufactured sound. Active Child can perhaps best be considered the musical offspring of the Thompson Twins and Sarah Brightman, with a little Jimmy Somerville DNA thrown in for good measure.
From the opening title track on You Are All I See, I was hooked. "Playing House," featuring R&B singer How to Dress Well, is a standout, as is "See Thru Eyes." As a matter of fact, every song on Active Child's latest is a winner. Trust me: If you haven't heard of him, check him out. I think you'll be glad you did.
Reverend's Ratings: What Matters Most: C You Are All I See: A
Despite a growing gay controversy over its producers' decision to shoot much of Sex and the City 2 in anti-gay Morocco, I'm looking forward to the femme-centric sequel that opens this Thursday. I watched very little of the original HBO series but 2008's big-screen adaptation won me over.
The soundtrack features not one but two songs performed by gay icon Liza Minnelli: a rousing, Vegas showroom-esque version of Beyonce's inescapable "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" and a cover of Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye." Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson and Grammy nominee Leona Lewis contribute a duet, "Love is Your Color," and Alicia Keys sings "Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down" as well as Deborah Harry's "Rapture."
I really like Dido's exclusive new track, "Everything to Lose." It manages to be simultaneously meditative and danceable. Also included on the disc are Erykah Badu's "Window Seat" (which spawned Badu's controversial music video), Cee-Lo's "Language of Love" and a rambunctious version of Helen Reddy's anthem "I Am Woman" sung by the Sex and the City stars themselves: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon.
But the gayest tracks are three classic show tunes performed by the specially-formed, 16-member Sex and the City Men's Choir. Their lovely renditions of "If Ever I Would Leave You" (from Camelot), "Sunrise, Sunset" (from Fiddler on the Roof) and "Til There Was You" (from The Music Man) are presumably part of a gay wedding that occurs in Sex and the City 2, at which Liza reportedly officiates.
So, why wait until Thursday? Grab or download the soundtrack today, shake some Cosmos and let the party begin!
available now): While the late series never grabbed me, my hopelessly-devoted partner was thrilled when this five disc farewell set arrived. I do recommend its bonus features, which include a “Finishing the Hat” episode commentary by series creator Marc Cherry (who deserves kudos for naming every episode after a Stephen Sondheim song title or phrase), deleted scenes and bloopers, and “I Guess This is Goodbye,” a series of honest and often moving reflections by various longtime cast members. Farewell, Wisteria Lane, at least until Cherry comes up with a reunion movie.
satisfies Streisand's stated, long-desired effort to record an album of songs exclusively written by her longtime collaborators, Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The Bergmans won Academy Awards for their score of Yentl (with composer Michel Legrand) as well as for the title tune from the Streisand-starring hit, The Way We Were (which they co-wrote with Marvin Hamlisch). What Matters Most opens with Streisand singing another Bergman-penned Oscar winner, "The Windmills of Your Mind." Her diction is as impeccable as ever in this somewhat slowed-down cover, and the orchestrations throughout the new CD are lovely.
is Active Child's second CD — following last year's Curtis Lane — but the first that I've heard. It represents an amazing amalgamation of Grossi's angelic voice, ethereal music comprised of harp and strings, and 1980's synthesizer-manufactured sound. Active Child can perhaps best be considered the musical offspring of the Thompson Twins and Sarah Brightman, with a little 
is being released today. I can assure readers that the CD is the gayest music-listening experience since, well, last week's 
(which is fabulous, btw)!