The Hills Are Alive With Ambition In The Sound of Music

From the opening scene of The Sound of Music, you know you're about to watch an event. These initial shots make it clear that director Robert Wise is not gonna be playing a restrained game here, whether you actually end up liking or disliking the movie, Wise and everybody in the cast & crew is going to be swinging for the fences and beyond. For those unfamiliar, this extravagant opening scene depicts helicopter shots of the gorgeous Austrian landscape, with the mountains in this region getting particular visual emphasis. Right away, we get a sense that the main characters in this story inhabit an environment that's far bigger than themselves, a clever way to visually foreshadow how these same characters would become swept up in terrifying European World War II historical events that are also bigger than themselves.

Come Sing Along With The Thoroughly Delightful Mary Poppins

I have been a Disney geek my entire life, to the point that my first word uttered on this planet was "Disney". I was doomed from the start to be a total nerd for all things Disney which is a key reason why I have such an encyclopedic knowledge of animated Disney fare and hold the man known as Walt Disney in such high esteem. Despite all of that though, I'd somehow never seen the movie Mary Poppins until just a few days ago. Perhaps the running time had put me off the movie as a lad, or perhaps because I wasn't as enamored with other classic live-action Disney movies as I was with classic animated Disney fare, but whatever the reason, Mary Poppins had evaded my eyeballs for over two decades of my life.