Top Ten Tuesday (November 15, 2016)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Visit the hosting blog to see lots of other lists.

Today's topic is a movie freebie, and I chose to list my 10 favourite musicals and music movies.

I love musicals, especially the song and dance kind, but I also love a good music movie. The difference between a music movie and a musical is that while the former contains music that’s integral to the plot, it is presented in a realistic manner, i.e. with musicians performing, while in a musical people are liable to burst into song (and often dance as well) at the drop of a hat and no-one blinks an eye. In fact the spectators often join in. I am only including fiction, i.e. no documentaries or concert movies.

I think I’ll start my list with one of my all time favorite movies:

The Commitments. Music movie. To me, this is the ultimate “let’s get a band together” movie, and one of the things that makes it so good is that it could have happened. Familiar songs: Just about every song.

Með allt á hreinu. Music movie. This is an Icelandic cult film about two rival bands, one all female and one all male, battling it out in the small live music market in Iceland. It was made in the eighties, but nearly all of the music is still frequently heard on Icelandic radio, and several catchphrases from it are still used, even by people who have never seen the film.

The Band Wagon. The ultimate backstage musical with a theatre setting. A has-been Hollywood hoofer played by Fred Astaire is paired with a prima ballerina played by Cyd Charisse. Many good song and dance numbers ensue, both in a stage setting and as fantasy scenes. Most famous song: That’s Entertainment.

Singin’ in the Rain. Another brilliant backstage musical, this time with a movie industry setting, that mixes stage-produced music scenes with fantasy scenes. Stars Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds as the love-birds, Donald O’Connor as the best friend, and Jean Hagen as the villainess (stealing every scene she’s in). Familiar songs: Singin’ in the Rain, Good Morning, Make ‘em Laugh.

Gigi. A rather wonderful musical based on a questionable story. Leslie Caron is luminescent as the titular character. Familiar songs: Gigi, It’s a bore.

Guys and Dolls. Musical starring Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons as one pair of love-birds and Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine as another. Familiar song: Luck be a Lady.

High Society. Musical. Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm star in a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. Most famous song: True Love.

Yellow Submarine. The classic Beatles album as a surrealistic, psychedelic, mostly animated movie.

The Nightmare Before Christmas. Great story and wonderful characters and you can watch it as a cheery Halloween movie or as a dark Christmas movie.

Fantasia. Wonderfully imagined and animated scenes set to famous pieces of classical music.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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