Mary Poppins is my
favorite movie ever. I say stuff like this all the time, so I suppose I should
add a caveat. Mary Poppins is
certainly my favorite Disney Movie starring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, and
Mike Tomlinson from 1964. But it’s probably just my favorite movie from 1964.
(For other examples of wild movie claims, see right here. Sinbad is the best movie of 2003. Do you see it on Ebert’s list
here, or imdb’s list here? Though, to be fair, I haven’t even heard of, much
less seen anywhere near half of Ebert’s list, and about the same for imdb’s.
Does this mean I’m ranking Sinbad
over Return of the King? Yes, yes I
am. And Finding Nemo. And the first—and
best—Pirates. That’s just a sampling
of the kind of asinine things I’ll say about movies. And yes, I honestly enjoy Sinbad more than any of those movies.
Deal with it. Yes I’m aware Sinbad is
an Arabian nights type tale and this version greekifies it—yes, not a word, yes
I know there’s a word that describes what I’m saying perfectly, and no I can’t
remember what it is at the moment)
Whoah. Massive side-track there. But do you get my point?
(It’s possible that the only lesson here is that I prefer animation to
live-action and more traditional animation over CGI animation) And why did this
point need to be made? I don’t know. Because, except for possibly My Fair Lady, I’m not sure there’s
another film of 1964 that could compete. Goldfinger,
Dr. Strangelove, and A Hard Day’s Night might deserve
honorable mentions—the final only because it’s The Beatles; I’ve seen it and it’s
boring—but nothing else here jumps to my mind. But here I see The Pink Panther, which is an obvious
oversight.
And in researching this stuff, I found just another in a
long line of reasons to love Mary Poppins—you
know, besides that she’s practically perfect in every way, just like a certain
friend of mine and if you read this you know who you are—Robert Louis Stevenson
the famed deceased author directed it!! (He’s also known for his posthumous
writing career as R.L. Stine) I’m kidding of course. The Director is really
just credited as Robert Stevenson, but his middle name could be Louis (I’m not
going to look it up so don’t burst my bubble for me).
Other reasons I like this movie? How about Walt Disney, Julie
Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, the Sherman Brothers, Mike Tomlinson, P.L. Travers,
whoever the excellent script writers are, the child actors (I’ve obviously
stopped looking things up at this point), the stage crew—I’d also like to take
this moment to thank the Academy and wish for World Peace (not Metta World
Peace, just world peace). A little overboard there? Yeah. I seem to be a little
all over the place today. Just a little bit.
Honestly, this is one of the movies I watch for a lot for
the music, but I greatly enjoy other parts of it too. How about the
juxtaposition of moving from Mrs. Banks’ number “Sister’s Suffragette” followed
by Mr. Banks (Mike Tomlinson) singing “The Life I Lead,” which contains the
line “This is the age of men.” That might be something I picked up from
listening to the soundtrack, which includes the Sherman Brothers talking about
the writing and creative process they went through. How about the incident of
the children following the kite into the park starting the film—off screen of
course—and then ending with Mr. Banks flying a kite with his kids, and the
awesome number “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” Talk about coming full circle—I wish
there was some way to obliquely reference the awesome Kurt Bestor/Sam Cardon
album by that name, but apparently subtlety is not my strong suit today.
I guess my point is, I really love Mary Poppins and I watched it today so it’s on my mind. (I
definitely didn’t just write this post so the 2-year anniversary of this blog
would find this month the second highest number of hits it’s ever got. It’s
definitely not that, because if it was, I’d just finish any of the other three
posts I have started, or that other writing thing I need to do. Though that has
nothing to do with anything. Okay, I’m done. I promise)
Comments
Post a Comment