I wasn't feeling the opening ceremonies of the Olympics ("wasn't feeling"...man, I'm so hip sometimes :-) so I spent the time watching some of the counter programming. The American Film Institute counted down the 100 best songs from the movies. The list was, of course, flawed and highly debatable...but that was kind of the point. Take any 100 people and ask them to come up with such a list and you would get 100 completely different countdowns.
(And being the AMERICAN Film Institute, they only counted American made movies...which left great movie songs like "A Hard Day's Night", "Help!", and "Alfie" out in the cold.)
AFI's top 3 were:
"Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz
"As Time Goes By" from Casablanca
and "Singin' in the Rain" from the movie of the same name.
Not bad choices. Watching the clips from the various movies was fun and while I was not in agreement with much of it..."Theme from Shaft" (#38)was ranked too low, "Stayin' Alive" (#9) and the insipid "My Heart Will Go On" (#14) were ranked too high, and "Flashdance...What a Feeling" (#55) probably shouldn't have been ranked at all.
Interesting that so many songs on the list were sung by Fred Astaire and Liza Minnelli. And cool that Public Enemy (the incendiary and amazing "Fight the Power" at #40) and Eminem (the Oscar-winning "Lose Yourself" at #93) made the cut among so many former Broadway showtunes and movie love ballads.
Any list eclectic enough to feature performances by Barbra Streisand, Paul Robeson, Bob Hope, Kermit the Frog, Bob Seger, Steppenwolf, Judy Garland, and Marlon Brando (crooning "Luck Be a Lady" from Guys and Dolls) is alright with a fan of all kinds of music like myself.
(Still would it have killed them to give a little love to something from Purple Rain?)
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