November DVD Spotlight: Musicals and Music Films

This month, we're shining our spotlight on movies that celebrate song and dance in a variety of different ways.  We've included traditional musicals like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965) alongside more recent genre staples like Rent (2005), but we've also featured movies that, while they are not musicals, focus on music as part of their central story.  There's Christopher Guest's hilarious folk music-centric mockumentary A Mighty Wind (2003), and Jean Renoir's lush Technicolor masterpiece French Cancan (1955).

Other featured titles include:

Copying Beethoven (2006)

Ed Harris gives a commanding lead performance in this fictional account of the last years in the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, as he mentors a promising young composition student.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)

Notoriously twisted Japanese director Takashi Miike's darkly comic musical has been billed as "The Sound of Music meets Dawn of the Dead."

Sholay (1975)

This Bollywood classic has everything: it's a western, a love story, a buddy comedy, a revenge film, an action epic, and, of course, a musical.

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

One of the best films ever made, this love story set against the backdrop of Hollywood's transition from silent movies to "talkies" is so much more than just that iconic shot of Gene Kelly hanging off a lamppost.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

This animated reinterpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana is set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

An early sound-era Hollywood musical from the great director Ernst Lubitsch, this charming romantic comedy features Maurice Chevalier as a military officer caught up in a love triangle with a musician and a princess.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

There's no place like home, as you'll learn from this perennial classic about Kansas farm girl Dorothy, who is magically transported to the land of Oz.

Stop by the library and check one out today!