Almost Famous
Oct
19
Videos of the Week: Almost Famous
I haven’t done a Videos of the Week feature in a while and why not bring one back this weekend?
Friday night, Almost Famous played on HBO2 and it’s a movie I fell in love with. I was lucky enough to watch it when the radio station for which I worked had the premiere.
Even though I have the DVD, I had not watched the movie for quite some time. With no baseball to watch and not having the desire to watch Hawai’i-Boise State on Friday, I happened to find the movie after seeing the latest episode of South of Nowhere.
The movie still stands up and it captures a time during which I grew up. The music was fantastic and seeing it again brings me back to a more innocent time for me, at least. I forgot how good the movie was. And Cameron Crowe’s screenplay and direction was just about perfect for me.
One of my favorite scenes, “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!” which supposedly said by Robert Plant.
Of course, you can’t talk about Almost Famous without seeing its signature scene when Stillwater sings “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John on the tour bus and William Miller thinking he has to go home finds out that he actually is home.
This is a deleted scene from the “bootleg” version of the DVD in which you’re instructed to play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” while this scene is playing. First, the scene was cut because it was way too long and second, Cameron Crowe had trouble obtaining the rights to the song for the movie.
Finally, someone put together a tribute video to the Penny Lane character played so well by Kate Hudson and for which she won a Golden Globe.
There you go. My NFL picks are coming in about an hour. Wait for them.
Dec
26
Videos of the Week – Tiny Dancer
As I get ready to do the recap for the Amazing Race 12, Ep. 7, I’ll give you some videos of one of my favorite songs, Tiny Dancer. Originally done by Elton John, it was given some more prominence when Director Cameron Crowe chose it for one of the key scenes in his movie, “Almost Famous” which really brought me back to the 1970′s. For some reason, Cameron gets the feel for his movies just right and when I saw this when it premiered in 2000, it immediately became one of my all-time favs.
So I first give you a performance of Elton performing this for the BBC’s Top of the Pops in 1971 sans band.
But this performance for the BBC also in 1971 without his band is ten times better than the one for Top of the Pops.
The scene from “Almost Famous” when Russell Hammond wants to experience life with William Miller who’s covering the band, “Stillwater” for Rolling Stone. The band finds Russell and he knows he’s back with his mates when they sing “Tiny Dancer” together. And when William tells groupie Penny Lane (played adeptly by Kate Hudson) he has to go home, her reply is the best. This scene brings the movie home and is probably one of the best directed scenes in the last ten years.
And someone made a tribute video to Penny Lane from Almost Famous. Very nicely done.
I have to throw in the “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!” scene for kicks.
Another for good measure. Elton and Kiki Dee in 1976 doing, “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”. Wow.
Wanna see Elton and Kiki in present day mode? Why not? Here’s their duet from recent times and Kiki looks good.
Enjoy.
Howdy. Welcome to Fang's Bites!
Thanks for dropping by! Feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments, and stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed. See ya around!