Here’s a suggestion to help you keep the music going until the Winter term of My Pop Choir begins in January and lights up your life once more. Enjoy a movie or TV series featuring a choir and keep on tapping those toes!
Military Wives (2019) Kristin Scott Card is perfect as the stick-in-the-mud colonel’s wife who starts a choir with the goal of occupying the wives on a U.K. military base, while their husbands serve in Afghanistan. While the women’s personalities clash and eventually come together, so do their voices as their sound takes them to a national performance. (Based on the over 75 Military Wives Choirs that now span the world.)
Fisherman’s Friends (2019) Imagination meets reality once again in this uber feel-good flick based on a group of Cornish fishermen who sing traditional sea shanties, eventually achieving the top 10 with their debut album in 2010. You won’t have heard of any of the stars, but you will want to invite them all to dinner when you have finished watching
The Sound of Music (1965) Do I hear equal parts groans and cheers for including this one? I defy you to resist humming along to “Doh A Deer” or trying to hit the highest note in “Climb Every Mountain.” There’s a reason why Julie and the gang reappear every Christmas.
Sister Act (1992) Maggie Smith and Whoopi Goldberg –could there be a more unlikely combination? Not every movie from the ‘90s holds up well, but a mobster versus nun caper was bound to remain popular. And the choir is pretty good too. (Don’t forget Sister Act 2 and 3, if you become a fan.)
As It Is In Heaven (2004) The life goal of this movie’s protagonist is to “create music that will open a person's heart.” In the process, an entire village is disrupted, a love affair blossoms, and a choir comes to life (of course!). Made in Sweden, this film is in many ways a typical Scandinavian effort, quite dark, with lots of soul-searching and an ending that will leave you wondering.
The Chorus (2004) Produced as “Les Choristes” in France. In a not-at-all pleasant boys’ school, a choir is developed as a form of discipline. Success seems guaranteed, particularly as one youngster shines with his stellar voice, but amidst bullying, and an unexpected crime along with arson, a happy outcome seems doubtful, to say the least. Watch and learn.
Pitch Perfect (2012-2022) – Enjoy a capella singing and choral competition, while you binge the first three Pitch Perfect movies. And My Pop Choir has a connection to this franchise in Deke Sharon, of Total Vocal in New York City (where members of My Pop Choir will appear in April 2023). He was arranger, on-site music director and vocal producer for the movie franchise. And December brings “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin,” a TV series based on the movie concept.
Perfect Harmony (2019) - A former Princeton University maestro ends up in a small Kentucky town, where he becomes the sarcastic, grumpy leader of the local church choir. Great singing and lots of laughs in this thirteen-episode series. Bradley Whitford is a perfect curmudgeon.
Soak up some music on the screen once or twice or a week, and before you know it, you will be all tuned up for the Winter session of My Pop Choir!
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