Movies outside - it must be summer!

I went to the movies again tonight. Only tonight it was the outdoor cinemas, or the 'Cinematheque Outdoors', as they call it, at the National Film and Sound Archive. In the summer they run a movie series in their outdoors courtyard - think Screen on the Green, but posher. The tickets are $8, but you get to sit in fancy laid-back Adirondack-like chairs, all nicely set up and waiting for you. And they were stripey! I wouldn't mind one for my courtyard area.

Tonight they screened 'The Apartment', with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray. They have 2 old projectors, and show the movies in their original 35mm format. It was fun to hear the clunking of the projectors behind us as we watched the movie.

It was a great movie, and Jack Lemmon is actually pretty cute! Fred MacMurray plays the 'bad' guy, which is weird, but he does it pretty well. The guy from Damn Yankees is also in it, as a supporting character. Shirley MacLaine is great too... I love movies that actually have dialogue and presume some intelligence in the audience.


As we waited for the sun to set, they were playing some benign lounge-type music that sounded like Sinatra or Tony Bennett. It didn't really register with me until I heard the words of one of the songs. "I wish I was special. So very special. But I'm a creep." Wait just a moment. Did Radiohead cover a Sinatra song that I'd never heard of? Weird. I was all ready to dash off to goggle to see what was going on and then the next song sounded familiar too. "I like the way you make me feel, you really turn me on, you knock me off of my feet, my lonely days are gone." Isn't that Michael Jackson? But it sounded like Sinatra. So, I went and asked what the heck was being played. Because it couldn't be who I thought it was.

Turns out they were playing a guy named Frank Bennett from Melbourne, who was really big in the early 1990s here in Australia. I checked out his website www.frankbennett.com and it appears that his albums are no longer available, except at a price. Which is too bad, because I'd love a copy! I think 'Creep' is my favorite one, but 'With or Without You' was pretty good too. It was fun to try to figure out who the original artists were when the tune was completely different.