Caravan By Juan Tizol (As Featured in the INCREDIBLE 2014 Film WHIPLASH)

Yesterday afternoon, George & I continued our Best Picture 2015 Oscar nominee homework by seeing Whiplash at The Landmark in West LA. We've seen 4 Best Picture-nominated films in the past 10 days (with only Selma & The Theory of Everything left to go before the 2/22 awards ceremony) & my current rankings of the 6 films I've seen so far are as follows:

1 - The Grand Budapest Hotel
2 - Whiplash (which is DANGEROUSLY close to #1 because it was SO incredibly good!)
3 - American Sniper
4 - Birdman
5 - The Imitation Game
6 - Boyhood

Whiplash is absolutely stunning...and a lot bloodier than expected! The music, the acting, the directing, the writing, the plot & the nonstop intensity are all pure perfection. J.K. Simmons & Miles Teller are both brilliant. How Miles Teller didn't receive a Best Actor nomination is beyond me! Do yourself a favor & go see Whiplash immediately!!



Per Wikipedia, "Caravan is a jazz standard composed by Juan Tizol and first performed by Duke Ellington in 1936. Irving Mills wrote seldom performed lyrics. Its exotic sound interested exotica musicians; Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman & Gordon Jenkins all covered it. Woody Allen used the song in two of his films, Alice & Sweet and Lowdown. The song is also heavily featured in the 2014 film Whiplash as an important plot element. The Mills Brothers recorded an a cappella version, making the instruments' sounds with their voices. There are more than three hundred and fifty recordings of this song by Duke Ellington's orchestra, the great majority of them now in the public domain."