movie talk updated

Argh, when I was listing Movies With Surprise Endings that Don't Work, I forgot to put in two of the most irritating examples I've come across. Supplemented, then, and I'm trying to be provocative, since many of these are well-loved movies:

1. Movies where the surprise ending comes out of left field and doesn't fit with anything that's been established earlier. Examples: The Empire Strikes Back, The Usual Suspects.

2. Movies where the writers deliberately mishandled the script to hide that in this story the surprise ending was not possible. Example: The Sixth Sense, Psycho.

3. Movies where the surprise ending depends on the manipulating characters having impossibly certain knowledge of exactly what other characters will do so as to fall into their plan. Example: Arlington Road. Also, season 2 of Orphan Black.

4. Movies where the surprise ending is just too stupid to be believed. Example: The Village, The Prestige.

English suites no. 5

This is one of the suites that I had in mind to present to you when I started this series. It's by Hubert Parry, who was Vaughan Williams's composition teacher (and one of Holst's too). Though he was respected by his students, Parry is rather forgotten today, at least outside of Britain where he's remembered mostly for his grand choral setting of Blake's "Jerusalem", but he was one of the bright names of British music of the late 19C, along with Arthur Sullivan, and unlike Sullivan he survived a ways into the 20C.

The English Suite is a late work, not published till after his 1918 death, but it's an absolute charmer, with an especially cheerful finale. The movements are Prelude (0:00), In Minuet Style (3:48), Sarabande (6:44), Caprice (10:00), Pastoral (12:38), Air (15:16), and Frolic (17:16).

Watch on YouTube