Mary Poppins

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I can't believe it hasn't a thread of it's own. I rewatched Mary Poppins recently for the first time in ten years, and it was even better than I remembered. The individual scenes are funny as hell (especially the ones inside the painting), and the movie works fine as a whole too; the moment the father finally realizes what a cold bastard he had been brought me to tears.

Anyway, what's your opinion on the film, favourite scenes and songs, etc? I like "Feed the Birds" and "Let's Go Fly a Kite" the most, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Chim Chimeny" are the obvious hits, but they're both a bit too la di da di for my tastes (they work well within the film, however).

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking about this film in the shower the other day. I realized I had not seen it in its entirety in like, 15 years at least. I really want to see it!

― jill schoelen is the queen of my dreams! (Homosexual II), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 18:22 (twenty years ago)

I was just thinking about this yesterday, but this might be one of the most often spoofed films ever.

"A Spoonful of Sugar" is one of my favorite songs from a movie musical of all time.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

I own this, so I've seen it many times. Hard to pick a favorite "bit" - I like the incidental characters best really, Admiral Boom and Ed Wynn's laughing uncle routine in particuler.... its great how the film seems completely mired in the themes of Brit psychedelia, even though it precedes that movement by a couple years.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

"A Spoonful of Sugar" is one of my favorite songs from a movie musical of all time.

Yeah, and the scene which accompanies is fab! All that stop-motion animation!

Really, I was genuinely surprised how good the film was, I remembered it being a lot more syrupy than what it actually is (not that syrupy is necessarily bad).

I think I've never seen it in cinema though, I hope our local film archive will run it one day.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

DANCING PENGUINS

― Jimmy Mod Knows You Eat Your Own Farts (ModJ), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:44 (twenty years ago)

Damon Albarn as Dick Van Dyke!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:49 (twenty years ago)

I've only quoted STEP IN TIME on about 30 different threads, wtf ppl.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:51 (twenty years ago)

Tombot as Damon Albarn! (Which fits in with Ally's crush o' shame.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:53 (twenty years ago)

watch the new dvd with dick van dyke and julie andrews commentary! its sweet!

― charleston charge (chaki), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

I remembered it being a lot more syrupy than what it actually is

compared to the books it's killing diabetics at 100 metres

― kit brash (kit brash), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)

there are Mary Poppins books?!?

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)

Stoners. "Oh let's go to uncle Albert's for a tea party on the ceiling!" HASH party more like.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 22:46 (twenty years ago)

Yes, there are a whole series of Mary Poppins books. I have them sitting on my shelf for a project on which I'm working. They're written by British mystic P(amela) L. Travers, and are of a generally excellent quality. Each chapter is basically a self-containeed moral tale in which the children act-up and are transported (somehow) to a strange half-magical universe for an adventure which Poppins later denies. My favorite of these - "Jane's Bad Day" has Jane being sucked-into a porcelain plate and almost kept-there by the satyrs / bad children / ghosts she finds there, IIRC.

There's word new Jennifer Lopez movie might be made in Los Angeles about Mary Poppins.

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:14 (twenty years ago)

wow I had no idea. sounds pretty great actually! why are the British so much better at children's lit than Americans...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:16 (twenty years ago)

I mean you guys have A.A. Milne, J.M. Barry, the Wind in the Willows, Roald Dahl... we have.... um.... let me think, here...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:17 (twenty years ago)

beverly cleary, judy blume, gary paulsen, robert cormier!

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:21 (twenty years ago)

but that stuff's more adolescent-oriented, realism-based...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

yeah, that's true. beverly cleary though? a genius, I think.

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:27 (twenty years ago)

POX American Children's Writers"

L. Frank Baum
Eric Carle
Beverly Cleary
Joel Chandler Harris
Madeleine L'Engle
Daniel Pinkwater
Richard Scarry
Maurice Sendak
Dr. Seuss
Shel Silverstein
Chris Van Allsburg

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:28 (twenty years ago)

I'm not saying I don't *like* those writers, all are pretty great - just that they aren't targeted at the same kind of pre-adolescent, bedtime story milieu that the Brits seem to excel at. A lot of the stuff you list fall into different categories - like picture books (Seuss, Van Allsburg, Silverstein, Sendak) or adolescent fiction.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

T/S: Mary Poppins vs. Bedknobs & Broomsticks

"SUBstiTUtiary LOcoMOtion!"

― kingfish, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:35 (twenty years ago)

actually the closest American parallel I can think of to the British, episodic, humorous, gentle morality tale style is The Great Brain books...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:36 (twenty years ago)

True 'nuff, Shakey Mo. and Mary Poppins obv, kingfish.

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:36 (twenty years ago)

The Great Brain guy apparently did a bunch of really bizarre memoirs, too.

― same initials (initials), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:38 (twenty years ago)

my first major MAJOR crush was on mary poppins, i'd dream of meeting her, running away with her, taking her. one summer i was staying at my grandparents and my aunt, who was only eight years or so older than me, came rushing into the room and said 'mary poppins mary poppins! she's here she's outside! hurry!' and so i rush outside and then i hear from the window 'james it's mary poppins! i'm inside - hurry!' and so i rush outside and my aunt says 'o you just missed her - she's outside now hurry hurry!' and then i'd rush outside and repeat jim thome repete style until my aunt said 'o that's too bad, she's gone now, she had somewhere to go' and i cursed the fates that somehow mary poppins would happen to drop by my grandparents house but i would somehow blow my chance at meeting her and true happiness. a few years later i figured out my aunt had probably been lying the whole time.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:39 (twenty years ago)

anytime i see this movie now i feel SO BAD for the dad.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:41 (twenty years ago)

my first major MAJOR crush was on mary poppins, i'd dream of meeting her, running away with her, taking her.

hee hee. Are you Opus?

― kingfish, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

also, a great non-sequitor to fuck up a band onstage: "I don't want to save my money; i want to feed the BIRDS!"

― kingfish, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 23:51 (twenty years ago)

a few years later i figured out my aunt had probably been lying the whole time.

"Probably"...

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 21 April 2005 04:13 (twenty years ago)

he's holding on to hope, Tuomas.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 21 April 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

Mary was a dime, no doubt.

― ()ops (()()ps), Thursday, 21 April 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)

"Feed the birds" never made any sense to me as a kid but it's probably the song I remember best (or fondest).

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:00 (twenty years ago)

"Feed The Birds" is a song about feeding the birds. It's not exactly Wittengstein.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)

or even Wittgenstein.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)

Marcello, this is from an American point of view, which Casuistry and I share. When I was six or whenever I first heard the song, I was wondering what the fuck 'tuppence' was.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:08 (twenty years ago)

It wasn't what the song meant, or what "tuppence" meant (although I'm sure that's where I learned it), it was more "why the hell are we stopping to listen to this song about feeding the birds when we could be jumping into sketches or floating on a ceiling?"

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)

"why is she saying, 'toppings a bag?'"

― kingfish maximum overdrunk (Kingfish), Thursday, 21 April 2005 05:18 (twenty years ago)

PL Travers is one of those people who I always assume must have died 40 years ago, and am always surprised about when I hear that she's still alive.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 21 April 2005 06:52 (twenty years ago)

Mm, except she's not. 9 years ago rather than 40 though :)

Mary Poppins is really all about Mr Banks.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:07 (twenty years ago)

Bah.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:08 (twenty years ago)

Mary Poppins is all about the fear of the working classes. Those weird people, their boyfriend is a chimney sweep! But they aren't exactly official! They congregate in strange houses/pubs. Fine for them, but not for your kids, right?

And yet, they are way more clued up than the 'posh' nannies they would rather employ.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:14 (twenty years ago)

i loved marcello's essay from an old 'church of me' that compared and contrasted this film with fight club and american beauty (and, correctly, found MP to be the best and most honest of the three).

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:27 (twenty years ago)

Why stop for a song about feeding the birds? Well, because the boy wants to spend his tuppence on food for the birds as opposed to depositing it in a bank. It's a treatise on the relative moral virtues of High Tory philanthropic capitalism as opposed to post-Friedman unrestricted free market economics.

PL Travers died a couple of years ago.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:31 (twenty years ago)

Adam's right, it's all about getting stoned. Tea party, jumping through pavement, flying a kite, um... feed the birds/tuppence a bag is in fact about CRACK not BREADCRUMBS.

― beanz (beanz), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:55 (twenty years ago)

Thus it is the ancestor of "Just Say No" by the Cast of Grange Hill Featuring Zammo.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 21 April 2005 07:58 (twenty years ago)

Ned said fuck.

― Nellie (nellskies), Thursday, 21 April 2005 11:53 (twenty years ago)

My Favourite Song; Let's go fly a kite.

― Nellie (nellskies), Thursday, 21 April 2005 11:53 (twenty years ago)

Ned said fuck.

I've had my moments.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 21 April 2005 11:54 (twenty years ago)

In a Mary Poppins thread? That's like saying 'christ bugger me' in a church.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 21 April 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

i heart miry pippins so much, i was so distraught when i realised we left it out of the top 100 films last year...

the stage version on in london at the moment is apparently more like the books than the film was.

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Thursday, 21 April 2005 12:21 (twenty years ago)

The books are teh darkness, IIRC. MP much less cosy (not that she is a picnic in the film either of course). I think there was a good documentary on Travers on telly over Xmas, or was that just my booze-addled imagination?

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 21 April 2005 12:52 (twenty years ago)

Yes. South Bank Show special (though oddly enough I remember watching it on Boxing Day afternoon).

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 21 April 2005 12:53 (twenty years ago)

Perhaps it was a repeat, re-scheduled to go out pre- or post- traditonal Xmas Mary Poppins showing?

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 21 April 2005 12:57 (twenty years ago)

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