Blue Movies

Welcome to Bluets. Do you like the flowers?
This is the first post on the film theme and it's such a bugger. What to write about, will it be good, what songs? Then it hits you (well, me), we're called Bluets, the theme is films, um, so films with Blue in the title.

What comes to mind then.....The Blue Lagoon? easy tiger. Derek Jarman's Blue? I watched that. Really. The Blues Brothers? Bingo!!
I'm not sure I can write anything about The Blues Brothers that hasn't been said before, well, unless I said it was shit *gasp*. It's not, so settle down. It may not be the greatest film ever, especially if you take the music out, but what it is is the best marriage of music and film that has ever graced the silver screen. I know, no matter how many times I watch it, when the Blues Brothers strike up the chords to Everybody Needs Somebody in the Palace Hotel Ballroom, and Elwood starts talking over it, hairs will stand up on the back of my neck. Hell, even if I'm not watching the film and I hear the song, I get a little shiver.
But that's the power of music and film together, they can enhance each other, a symbiotic relationship if you will. You may never see the film without the music, but if you hear the music without the film, those images come flooding back. Like a double whammy on your senses. Why do you think bands pay so much to have a decent video for their singles?

Speaking of music videos, the previously mentioned Derek Jarman is responsible for many examples of that genre, including The Smiths - Panic, There is a Light That Never Goes Out and The Queen is Dead. All were part of one short film first shown at the Edinburgh film festival in 1986 which was then divided to provide the promotional videos for each song.
In many ways Derek Jarman's Blue is the opposite of The Blues Brothers. Nothing to stimulate the viewer/listener beyond his/her interest in what they can hear. And yet, Jarman made it into a film? It is 80 minutes of blue screen with Jarman's voice and sound effects playing over it. As AIDS ravaged his body blue was the last colour he could see and in the film he relates that colour to his life and eventually his death. So we get a taste of Jarman's life not just through what he tells us, but what we can see. It's hard going, but then so is dying of AIDS.


mp3: The Smiths - There is a Light.......
mp3: The Blues Brothers - Everybody Needs Somebody

Buy: The Blues Brothers CD/DVD The Smiths Derek Jarman

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