There’s a high standard to meet “The Greatest Film of All Time.” Though it’s sometimes not #1 on lists, Sansho the Bailiff has been called “The Greatest Film of All Time,” “Perfect” and many other things and when it’s not considered the single greatest, it’s often on a very short list. It’s even harder for …
Tag: 1954
Rock Around the Clock (1955) by Bill Haley and His Comets
It’s really hard to know what to do with this record. It’s one of the earliest rock and roll records to chart and it contains many of Haley’s early rock and roll songs, so it gives you a pretty good idea of their sound. But it is a compilation. Worse, it’s a compilation which contains Shake, …
Rock With Bill Haley and the Comets (1954)
Legend has it that this compilation of Haley’s early singles is the first ever Rock and Roll LP. There is a huge problem with that statement but, if accepted on face value, it makes this record seem like a very big deal, perhaps one of the biggest albums of the 1950s.
Chikamatsu monogatari (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Aka The Crucified Lovers aka A Story by Chikamatsu This is one of those Japanese tragedies where two lovers are prevented from living happily ever after by the strictures of society. Yes, this is a universal story, but the Japanese have a lot of these stories and there is a particular tenor to the Japanese …
Jacques Brel et ses chansons aka Grand Jacques (1954)
I don’t normally listen to foreign language music for my podcast. But for some reason I made an exception this time. Perhaps it’s because Brel is so famous. But I didn’t know what I was in for.
The Two Towers (1954, JRR Tolkien)
The Two Towers has many of the same issues of its predecessor, but is also a superior read, just from an entertainment point of view. So though my rating at Goodreads is the same, it’s actually half a star higher because I found Books 3 and 4 to be much more of the page turner …
The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) by JRR Tolkien
Full disclosure: I am not a fantasy fan. I don’t know that I can tell you how many fantasy novels I’ve read in my life. Off the top of my head, I know The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was read to me when I was young, but I’m not sure I’ve read anything …
Carmen Jones (1954, Otto Preminger)
This is a weird one: a film of a Broadway musical based upon Bizet’s Carmen, but which has only been adapted in terms of plot, not in terms of the music (really). Why is that weird? Well, an all black cast, set in North Carolina and Chicago in the ’40s, and they’re singing…French opera.
The Best of RPM and Kent Recordings (2011) by BB King
This disc compiles some of King’s A-sides for both the RPM and Kent labels throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.
The Definitive Collection (2008) by Billie Holiday
Full disclosure: I do not like vocal jazz (as you know). This is a compilation of 22 tracks over the course of Holiday’s career. I have no idea how definitive it actually is, as I do not know her at all, beyond her reputation as one of the great singers of the century, and “Strange …
The Egyptian (1999) by Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, performed by Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by William T. Stromberg
Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis is a laugh-out-loud novel about what it’s like to feel like a fraud teaching at a university – something I can sort of relate to – while you hate your (sort of) girlfriend, hate your boss, hate your subject matter and generally hate your life – and that hate manifests …