Movie Song of the Week: "We Go Together"

This week I post the big musical finale from the 1978 movie Grease, one of my late sister's favorite movies. I don't know what else I say about this number save what a pity it is that they don't write lyrics like that anymore.

Movie Song of the Week: "Hopelessly Devoted to You"

It was my sister's birthday yesterday. Grease was one of her favorite musicals as a teenager and Olivia Newton-John was one of her favorite singers. So naturally I had to post this.

Movie and Pop Song of the Week: "I'm Alive"

It's Olivia Newton-John, Sandahl Bergman and company celebrating the fact that they enjoy being a muse in the opening number from 1980's most notorious musical guilty pleasure Xanadu.

Movie Song of the Week: “Summer Nights”

And now a happy song from one of my sister's favorite movies. It's tempting to call this my generation's version of “I Remember It Well” for reasons that should become obvious after you all have viewed the videos. But it works just as well without the Gigi references.

First, a version for my sister and my various English-speaking relatives and acquaintances:



And now, a version for my bilingual relatives:

Reasons to See Grease

Yeah, I know. It's obvious that I liked Grease but I didn't say a whole lot about the movie itself.

What did I like about it?

1. Olivia Newton-John's clean-scrubbed presence. Pobre Olivia never was much of an actress but this is very easily one of her best roles -- perhaps because it plays to her strength as a singer.

2. Stockard Channing's Rizzo. Yes, the critics always liked Rizzo a tad too much... So much that my middle brother used to complain about it. But her tart performance is a great counterpart to Ms. Newton-John's sugary persona.

3. The nostalgia angle. Yes, a lot of the jokes were aging quite badly even in 1978, but I still found it quite fun to see golden oldies like Eve Arden and Sid Caesar hanging in there. If only they had been given more to do.

4. John Travolta. This is very easily one of his better movies even though it's not exactly Oscar material.