The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What is your favorite movie ending?

And the hard ones don’t let up, do they? Really, most of these “favorite” things would likely change next week if you asked me again. And I notice there are a few more of these types of questions coming up that are just as elusive.

But the first film that came to mind for this question is the Irish film Once, a wonderful blend of realism and music in an untidy indie-movie package. The actual ending isn’t on YouTube, and I wouldn’t recommend you watch it if it were, if you haven’t already seen the film. Of course, that’s true of a lot of great endings – this is pretty much an inherently spoilery question! But anyway, the end of Once is not Hollywoodized in any way, but remains romantic in the truest sense of the word, and is the absolutely fitting way for the film to end. This trailer gets across the mood of the film nicely, even if it isn’t the end, and watching it gives me the same feeling I had watching the film itself, so it will have to do.

Time off school in August meant non-required reading yay! For the record, a lawn chair by a lake in Minnesota is a good place to read in August. Especially after 100 degree heat in St. Louis and Texas. After the jump, reactions to The Shining, The African Queen, Hannah and Her Sisters, Becoming Jane, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Dancer in the Dark, Zodiac, INLAND EMPIRE, Stardust, Le petit soldat, The Thirteenth Tale, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, and more.

Click here to read on!

I almost made it “Tuesday Tunes,” but that would’ve been stealing Jennifer‘s alliterative idea.

This week I’m sharing a couple of songs off the soundtrack to the movie Once. Sort of a movie-and-music-in-one post. Once is an Irish film about a Dublin man working in his dad’s vacuum repairshop by day but spends his nights performing as a street musician, hoping to eventually record a demo CD. He meets a Czech woman one night, and they become friends–turns out she’s also a musician and they team up to record the demo. It would be common for the film to turn into a romance at this point, but it doesn’t….really….and that’s actually incredibly refreshing. Once doesn’t follow any of the standard moviemaking formulas–there’s too much music, there’s no sex, there’s no great conflict–and yet it works tremendously well. It’s joyful, it’s fresh, it’s bittersweet, and I want to watch it again right now, but I can’t, because it’s still in its very successful under-the-radar long-running theatrical release (but not in Waco) and thus not on DVD yet. Seriously. I saw it the second week of August after it had already been playing for a few weeks, and it’s STILL playing in St. Louis (at Plaza Frontenac). So, yeah. Go see it.

But first listen to these songs from the soundtrack. The leads are Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who are both musicians in their own right. Really, watching the film feels like being given a very special glimpse into real people’s attempts to realize their dream–it’s not some sappy, inspirational thing, though. It’s very much just a snapshot of the few days when these two people met, recorded a CD, and that’s it. Simple. And simply wonderful. “Falling Slowly” is the first song they sing together in the film; he’s on guitar, she’s on piano, and he’s just taught it to her chord by chord. To give her a chance at the lead vocal, I’ve got “If You Want Me,” which within the story is a song for which he’s written the music, but has been unable to come up with lyrics. He gives her the music on a homemade CD and she writes the lyrics. And sings them, obviously.

Once – Falling Slowly
Once – If You Want Me

(As a postscript, never underestimate the fun of listening to someone speak English with an Irish/Czech accent. I mean, either accent is cool enough on its own, but both? Awesome.)