Celebrity Vinyl

by Kimberly Lindbergs | September 1, 2011

Categories | Movie Reviews, Books, Actors, Actresses, David Hemmings, Richard Harris, Anthony Perkins, Brigitte Bardot, Dirk Bogarde

My latest post at TCM’s Movie Morlocks takes a look at some of my favorite celebrity albums recorded by classic film stars. Did you know Robert Mitchum recorded a calypso album? Have you ever heard Eddie Albert sing a Bob Dylan song? Or listened to Dirk Bogarde talk his way through “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”? These are just a few of the celebrity albums you’ll find if you make your way over to the Movie Morlocks!

- Celebrity Vinyl: Classic Actors Sing @ TCM’s Classic Movie Blog

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The Eyes Have It

by Kimberly Lindbergs | December 10, 2008

Categories | Rants & Raves, Actresses, Elizabeth Taylor, Pamela Franklin, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Julie Christie, Carroll Baker, Isabelle Adjani, Delphine Seyrig, Ursula Andress, Barbara Shelley, Barbara Steele, Ingrid Pitt, Marisa Mell, Florinda Bolkan, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Gene Tierney, Ann-Margret, Natalie Wood, Monica Vitti, Meiko Kaji, Anna Karina, Catherine Deneuve, Edwige Fenech

My blogging buddy Peter Nellhaus over at Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee has asked me to contribute my own list of “20 Favorite Actresses” to a new film meme making the rounds of the blogosphere. Frankly I was just going to blow him off and ignore his request because these meme things tend to make me nuts but Peter is too nice a guy to ignore. I tried to throw caution to the wind and just quickly put together a list of 20 of my favorite actresses, but as usual I spent way too much time thinking about this and managed to give myself a headache in the process. This meme madness must end! But at least it gave me an excuse to post a bunch of fabulous photos of some of my favorite actresses.

Naturally I ignored the rules and decided to post a list of 23 40 favorite actresses instead of limiting myself to only 20. My list could have been even longer and I’m sure I’ll regret forgetting to include a few more favorites but over time I felt the need to keep adding to the list and finally just doubled the size. Some of these talented and lovely women were never offered the better roles they so richly deserved, while others are acclaimed Academy Award winners and celebrated Hollywood legends. They do have a couple of things in common though; they’ve appeared in a lot of great movies and I never get tired of watching them!

So without further blabbering, here are 20 40 Women I Love Watching . . .

Elizabeth Taylor

Monica Vitti

Sarah Miles

Julie Christie

Barbara Steele

Charlotte Rampling

Kim Novak

Anna Karina

Carroll Baker

Meiko Kaji

Catherine Deneuve

Isabelle Adjani

Brigitte Bardot

Natalie Wood

Deborah Kerr

Sophia Loren

Gene Tierney

Glenda Jackson

Ava Gardner

Ursula Andress

Delphine Seyrig

Ann-Margret

Edwige Fenech

Ingrid Pitt

Judy Garland

Florinda Bolkan

Marisa Mell

Katharine Hepburn

Soledad Miranda

Barbara Shelley

< a href="http://cinebeats.blogsome.com/category/bette-davis/">Bette Davis

Pamela Franklin

Barbra Streisand

Claudia Cardinale

Anita Ekberg

Paula Prentiss

Geneviève Bujold

Marlene Clark

Diana Rigg

Jenny Agutter

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Divine BB

by Kimberly Lindbergs | October 14, 2008

Categories | Soundtracks, Composers, French Cinema, Actresses, Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardot, yé-yé

If you’re a Brigitte Bardot fan I highly recommend picking up the latest Cinedelic Book/CD compilation simply called BB Brigitte Bardot. It’s a wonderful collection of beautiful photos of the actress, reproductions of classic movie poster art and music from many of Bardot’s most popular films including En effeuillant la marguerite (aka Plucking the Daisy/Mademoiselle Striptease), Et Dieu… créa la femme (aka …And God Created Woman), Une parisienne (aka La Parisienn), En cas de malheur (aka Love Is My Profession/In Case of Adversity), La Vérité (aka The Truth) and Le Mépris (aka Contempt). The music CD also contains some of the best pop songs that Bardot recorded with French composer Serge Gainsbourg and a complete filmography for the actress who retired in 1973.

“BB is the perfect combination of different notes and chords that all together sound like one perfect melody. Her power of seduction was God’s gift, her posture and famous walk matched her fame, as well as her enigmatic appeal that went far beyond mere beauty: it was more like a sensual instinct able to mesmerize and capture. Brigitte encompassed the meaning of beauty, freedom, transgression and quirkiness, yet the look in her eyes revealed a childlike naiveté of sorts, perfectly embodying the disquieting and mischievous elements of the classic femme fatale. This book is a tribute to Divine BB’s astounding career and includes movie posters, rare on-set pictures, the complete filmography and a CD with original music.” - Cinedelic

Cinedelic has really done a terrific job of gathering together some rare and wonderful material for BB Brigitte Bardot. The 150 page book and accompanying CD is the perfect introduction to the career of this talented actress and songstress, but it will undoubtedly be appreciated by Bardot’s longtime fans too.

Sample images from Cinedelic’s BB Brigitte Bardot Book/CD

I’ve seen numerous track listings for the CD online but none of them appear to be complete. If you’re considering purchasing the set it’s helpful to know exactly what you’re getting so I thought I’d share my own track listing with more detailed information about the composers and film scores featured on Cinedelic’s BB Brigitte Bardot CD. Hopefully others will find it useful.

Track Listing for BB Brigitte Bardot:
1. Poppea - Angelo Francesco Lavagnino from Mio figlio Nerone (Stefano Vanzina; 1956)
2. Strip Tease - Paul Misraki from En effeuillant la marguerite (Marc Allégret; 1956)
3. Scene Sentimentale - Paul Misraki from En effeuillant la marguerite (Marc Allégret; 1956)
4. Et Dieu Crea La Femme - Paul Misraki from Et Dieu… créa la femme (Roger Vadim; 1956)
5. Du Moi Quelques Choses D’Amour - Paul Misraki from Et Dieu… créa la femme (Roger Vadim; 1956)
6. Paris BB - Henri Crolla/André Hodeir/Hubert Rostaing from Une parisienne (Michel Boisrond; 1957)
7. La Parisienne - Henri Crolla/André Hodeir/Hubert Rostaing from Une parisienne (Michel Boisrond; 1957)
8. Theme A - René Cloërec from En cas de malheur (Claude Autant-Lara; 1958)
9. Theme B - René Cloërec from En cas de malheur (Claude Autant-Lara; 1958)
10. Yo Tengo Una Muneca - Xavier-Mitchell Y Su Quinteto from La Vérité (Henri-Georges Clouzot; 1960)
11. Le Mepris/Generique - Georges Delerue from Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard; 1963)
12. Camille - Georges Delerue from Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard; 1963)
13. Contact - Brigitte Bardot (composed by Serge Gainsbourg in 1967/68)
14. Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot (composed by Serge Gainsbourg in 1967/68)
15. Bonnie and Clyde - Brigitte Bardot & Serge Gainsbourg (composed by Serge Gainsbourg in 1967/68)
16. Plaisir D’Amour - Brigitte Bardot (composed by Jean-Paul Martini/Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian/Hector Berlioz; 1780)
17. Sur Le Boulevad Du Rhum - Brigitte Bardot (composed by François de Roubaix/Robert Enrico/Pierre Pelegri for the film Boulevard du rhum dir. Robert Enrico; 1971)
18. Je T’Aime BB - Bebo Best & The Super Lounge Orchestra (tribute song w/Brigitte Bardot vocal samples; 2008)

You can currently purchase the BB Brigitte Bardot Book/CD set at Amazon for $29.98 and used copies can be bought there for about $20.

I like a lot of the songs that Serge Gainsbourg composed for Brigitte Bardot and one of my favorites is the psychedelic space-age pop song Contact, which is available on the new Cinedelic CD. Below is a fabulous music video for Contact with the divine BB that I couldn’t resist sharing. It’s taken from her 1968 French television special Spécial Bardot. In the clip Bardot’s wearing a fantastic dress designed by Paco Rabanne and she looks like she just stepped off the set of Barbarella.

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My Top 20 Favorite Films of 1968

by Kimberly Lindbergs | October 6, 2008

Categories | Horror, Giallo, Comedies, Crime, Westerns, Hammer Horror, Elizabeth Taylor, Alain Delon, Mario Bava, Steve McQueen, Terence Stamp, Jess Franco, David Hemmings, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Burton, 1968, Klaus Kinski, Brigitte Bardot, Joseph Losey, Girl On a Motorcycle, Julie Christie, Peter Sellers, Marisa Mell, Stanley Kubrick, Terence Fisher, Roman Polanski

At the Britannica blog Raymond Benson has finished listing off his Top 10 Favorite Films of 1968 so if you’re interested in the final results stop by and give them a look. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions how much I dislike making lists of favorite films myself since they’re limited by what I’ve seen and are subject to change at anytime. Roger Ebert recently asked his blog readers to “. . . agree that all lists of movies are nonsense.” I agreed with him wholeheartedly at the time, but in the process of watching Raymond Benson share his list favorite films from 1968 I naturally began thinking of my own favorite films released the same year.

Compiling a list of favorite films restricted by their release date without implying that they’re “the best” (whatever that means) started to seem like a fun exercise. And while reading the complaints and reservations about Raymond Benson’s own selections I even suggested that it would be interesting if all the participants of the Britannica blog “round-table” supplied their own list of Top 10 Favorite Films for 1968 so we could compare them. I figured that if we were going to scrutinize Raymond Benson’s selections we might as well scrutinize each other. I also thought that it would probably enrich the discussion. No one else seemed willing or able to share a list of there own picks, but for the past two weeks I’ve been quietly compiling a list of my own favorite films from 1968.

I wasn’t planing on sharing my own list with anyone, but over the weekend I listened to an interesting discussion between Greencine’s David Hudson, Film Comment’s Gavin Smith and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum about the current state of film criticism that got me contemplating my list again. During the discussion Jonathan Rosenbaum smartly pointed out that, “People love lists now because they need to. There’s too much to navigate through.” In my own experience I’ve found this to be very true. Since I started blogging my “Favorite DVDs of the year” lists for 2006 and 2007 have become some of my most popular posts and they’ve generated some lively discussions and lots of email. I think other people appreciate them because they offer a brief look at some films I’ve enjoyed and recommend. And in the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum, the lists are easy to navigate through.

So without further explanation, here’s a list of some of my own favorite films from 1968. I couldn’t manage to narrow all my choices down to a mere Top 10 so I just decided to share my Top 20 list instead. I purposefully left off documentaries so you won’t find any listed and four of the films on my list were also on Raymond Benson’s list. The numerical order doesn’t mean much and naturally my list is subject to change at anytime since I’m continually being exposed to new movies. It also should be noted that after looking at various print and online sources I’ve come across different release dates for some films. As far as I know, the following 20 films were originally released in 1968.

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Contempt (1963)

by Kimberly Lindbergs | June 21, 2007

Categories | Soundtracks, Composers, French Cinema, Blogathons, Jean-Luc Godard, Brigitte Bardot

I love soundtracks. I listen to film scores almost daily and as my last.fm charts show, I never get tired of my favorites. My blog’s name “Cinebeats” is directly tied to my love for films and film soundtracks.

When I heard about the Film Music Blog-a-thon I thought long and hard about the composers that I love and the scores that have left a deep impression on me. I couldn’t decide on one composer or soundtrack to write about, but one particular piece of music kept haunting me and reminding me of the incredible power that a great musical score can have over a film and its audience, and that was composer Georges Delerue’s theme music for Jean-Luc Godard’s film Contempt (a.k.a. Le Mépris, 1963).

Contempt is one of my favorite movies and I can’t think of another film that so perfectly captures that painful moment when two people fall out of love. There are countless romantic movies about couples falling in love, but very few films manage to capture the human anguish and profound sorrow of what it’s like to deeply love another human being and to have that love completely destroyed by one stupid gesture or careless action.

Some might say that Godard uses Georges Delerue’s theme for Contempt excessively within the film and he does. Delerue’s theme music is heard again and again throughout Contempt, but instead of becoming irritating or distracting, Delerue’s beautiful score only adds more layers and depth to Godard’s film as it pushes it onward towards its explosive conclusion.

Is there another piece of film music as perfect and as powerful? I’m not sure that there is and that’s why I couldn’t resist writing about it for the Film Music Blog-a-thon. Delerue’s theme for Contempt completely captivates me every time I hear it and I’m instantly brought back to the film’s complex emotional core and carefully constricted themes.

When I first watched Godard’s Contempt the film completely shattered me. I was a wreck for days after I saw it, but the movie’s incredible beauty also managed to take me to new heights that I’ve never really come down from and I truly believe that’s what a good film score is capable of. Great soundtracks can elevate a film as well as the audience to new unimaginable heights and bring meaning to the mundane.

The theme music for Contempt is part of my Radio Playlist and you can listen to it by scrolling down to Cinebeats Radio and clicking on the song Georges Delerue - Le Mépris featured in the right hand column of my blog. You can also hear it in the film’s trailer which I came across on Youtube.

The soundtrack for Contempt seems to have gone out of print, but you can still find used copies selling at Amazon.

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