Last Dance for Donna Summer (RIP)

Goodbye to disco queen Donna Summer who died yesterday at 63 of cancer. She was one of the rare through lines in popular music of the 70s and 80s -- doesn't it seem like disco had its inordinate share of one hit wonders? But not Donna. Hit after hit and her voice defined the era: I Feel Love, Macarthur Park, Love to Love Ya Baby, No More Tears (Enough is Enough) and so on...

Donna was a "special guest star" in the movie, but promoted to top billed for the DVD release despite her small role.

Donna wrote or co-wrote some of her hits but not "Last Dance", the Oscar-winning one. Still, you can bet her indelible vocals helped win songwriter Paul Jabara that naked gold man. As you can see in the image up top Donna became the film's most important selling point retroactively on DVD but in the original poster, she only has a small frame to the bottom left of the poster (also excerpted above). She played a disco diva naturally. It was her first and last appearance in a motion picture.

Here's Donna Summer performing "Last Dance", the Oscar winning song from Thank God It's Friday (1978). I love that opening speech for its sheer retro wtfness... $12 a ticket, Donna? Different era! But if tickets were really only $12 she was working hard for the money. So hard for you honey.

Which song have you been playing in her honor since you heard the sad news?

Related: Barbra Streisand reacts to the news and here's a fine Advocate piece on Donna Summer's complex relationship with the gay community who were the first to embrace her sound.

P.S. Speaking of the gay community. "I Feel Love" with two gay trailblazers after the jump.

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Goodbye, Maurice

JA from MNPP here with very sad news indeed - Maurice Sendak, the author most famously of Where the Wild Things Are but also amongst many more In the Night Kitchen and Outside, Over There (which was the basis for the movie Labyrinth) and the illustrator for thrice as many more, passed away today at the age of 83 due to complications from a recent stroke. His most recent book Bumble-Andy just came out last year, and he made the interview rounds reminding many of us just what a brilliant ornery singular man he was. Here's the first part of a wonderful interview he did with Stephen Colbert just in January, and here's part two. It's must watch.

Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out in 2009, and it was my favorite movie of that year; about it I said that Spike Jonze "scraped up not just the book but everything inside myself that's attached to its memory and he spilled it out on the screen, a torrent of beautiful and horrible feelings and thoughts, jumbled up like rawest adolescence itself." Losing Maurice today is making me feel the same way - like a bewildered and angry child, and knowing that he would have smacked me and told me to snap out of it only makes the loss worse. RIP Maurice.

Adam Yauch (1964-2012)

Michelle Williams, Kelly Reichart and Adam Yauch at a Meeks Cutoff party. Photographed by Nicholas Hunt © PatrickMcMullan.comAdam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, has passed away at 47. I've been reading a few fine obits but I don't have much in a personal way to say. I liked the band a lot though I couldn't call myself a devotee; they (hip)hopped in and out of my life but were often somewhere to be found on my mix tapes (remember those?)

It's a major loss to both the music and movie worlds. Yauch took up many causes in his lifetime from the Right (To Party) to Free Tibet to Independent Film as a founder of Oscilloscope Laboratories. Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams careers just wouldn't have been the same without the fine job Oscilloscope did pushing the moving Wendy & Lucy and the unsettling Meek's Cutoff to audiences.

Favorite Beastie Boys song? I have two.

The runner up is "Intergalactic" and Adam Yauch himself directed the video (under the pseudonym of Nathanial Hörnblowér)

But my absolute favorite of their songs was one that never quite caught on called "Alive". I listened to it incessantly, loved its progressive politics being fused so effortlessly to clever rhymes and beats. The song took on the 1% before it was a thing to do so, and spoke out against homophobia and racism and generally dickery -- "who in the world do you want to fight? it's against the system we should unite" -- this song meant so much to me in 1999.

Yauch directed this one, too.

Well you can shuffle number but facts is facts
So many billionaires while so many lacks
So before the poor decide to react
Well Come on party people and share up your stacks
Now i'm a break it down to the brass tacks
Do the Biz Mark dance and the cabbage patch
You try to turn the key but then you broke the latch
Sneak into my files for some rhymes to snatch
I'd like to have a say i'm the income tax
Don't wanna help build bombs and that's the facts
No money for health care so what's the catch
The man got you locked with no key to the latch
Mike and Adam have got my back
You bring the mics and we'll bring the rap
Turn on the P.A. and rock your shack
Don't smoke cheeba can't stand crack 

Dip dip dive so-socialize
Open up your ears and clean out your eyes
If you learn to love you're in for a surprise
it could be nice to be alive

The Two Maria Von Trapps

The Two Maria Von TrappsTwenty-five years ago today the real Maria Von Trapp passed away or, shall we say, climbed that last every mountain. I recently tried to find footage of her with the other real "Maria Von Trapp" Julie Andrews -- The Sound of Music is so embedded in culture that it's one of those movies that's as real as fiction gets, yes?  YouTube has a bit from the Julie Andrews Variety Hour from the early 70s but it's hard to watch due to the loud buzzing sound on the recording. Pity that because it looks fun.

I've been thinking about The Sound of Music a lot recently since the Captain himself, Christopher Plummer won the Oscar just last month. I want to watch it again right now. Or at least "The Lonely Goatherd" or something.

How many times have you seen it?

RIP Whitney Houston (1963-2012)

Jordin Sparks and Whitney in the forthcoming "Sparkle"Breaking news as CNN is currently investigating the discrepancies within the details but Whitney Houston has died at the age of 48, the day before the Grammys no less. She won six of the music industry's top prizes over the span of her career, the last in 2000 for "It's Not Right, But It's OK".

She'll always be remembered as one of the great voices of the 80s and 90s but her career had been quiet for a decade, plagued as it was with substance abuse. I'll personally never forget that chilling "crack is whack" Diane Sawyers interview but there were occasional intermittent signs that Whitney was on the mend. She had recently returned to acting filming a remake of Sparkle with "American Idol" alum Jordin Sparks. 

That musical is currently in postproduction aiming for an August 2012 release date. Whitney's movie career previously was sparse and short but started with a supernova: The Bodyguard (1992) was a smash hit at the box office and the music was an even bigger deal launching a series of hits and becoming the bestselling soundtrack of all time.

Houston jumped from A list co-star to A list co-star: Kevin Costner to Angela Bassett to Denzel Washington. (I remember being miffed at the time that Angela Bassett had to take second billing but I was a possessed Bassett fan in college and hoping to see her snag a second nod for her literally fiery work in Waiting To Exhale.).

The song everyone remembers from The Bodyguard is of course Dolly Parton's immortal "I Will Always Love You". My fondest memory of the song is actually Dolly Parton related. My friends and I would always be like 'ka-ching. You get that money, Dolly!' whenever Whitney held that crazy note which was, appropriately, ALWAYS ♫ since she didn't seem to need to breathe and the song was always on. Mostly out of loyalty to Dolly and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas where 'I Will Always' was first movie-fied but maybe also because I go weak at the knees for a sparkly headdress or wrap, I was more partial to "I Have Nothing."

Rest in Peace, Whitney Houston.  Your voice had plenty and you gave quite a lot of it to the world.