The Four Lads (Not They Might Be Giants)

Here's a bit of a leftover from when I watched Mona Lisa Smile on Thursday night.

I had always thought -- had no reason not to think -- that the band They Might Be Giants were responsible for the humorous novelty song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

You know the one:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul not Constantinople
Been a long time gone from Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

The ditty was perfectly in keeping with the wordplay-heavy cuteness of TMBG's work. That's not a backhand compliment. I always really liked their work, particularly the 1990 album Flood, on which "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" can be found.

Alas, it's not their song, a truth I figured out pretty quickly when it played in the 1953-set Mona Lisa Smile.

In fact, the song dates back exactly to 1953. The lyrics are by Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon, and the song was first recorded by a band called The Four Lads, whose years active on Wikipedia are listed as "1950 to present." (Yeah, somehow I doubt that, unless some of those lads are still performing in their nineties.)

Although it's always useful to learn the truth of the matter on things like this, I can't help but be a little disappointed. I would not call "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" my favorite track on Flood, or maybe even one of my top three, but it had always served as sort of a proof of concept for me. Like if I wanted to quickly explain to someone the essence of They Might Be Giants and what made them great, this song would be a good Exhibit A, a proof of concept. Whereas "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and the 47-second "Minimum Wage" don't accomplish this as succinctly.

At least no one better tell me that "Particle Man" is not a Giants original. 

As a bit of a side note, the use of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" in Mona Lisa Smile was a good case of the movie being accurate with its history. By far the worst movie I saw over the weekend, the aforementioned Fear Street: Prom Queen, played fast and loose with the year Roxette's "The Look" came out, and don't think I didn't notice. 

I enjoyed the sequence where all the prom queen contenders participate in a choreographed dance to the song -- it was literally the only thing I liked in the movie -- but I couldn't escape the feeling that 1988 was a bit early for Roxette. True enough, when I looked it up later, I found that the song was not released as a single until January of 1989, three months after the album came out. So while somebody did enough research to figure out that the song existed, just barely, in the latter part of 1988, they didn't consider that of course May is prom season, and so in May of 1988, it was still just a twinkle in Roxette's eye. 

Mo coincidences

Think of that "Mo" like in Spike Lee's Mo Better Blues, though as you will see there's a reason I chose those particular two letters.

Let me start by saying I'm sick. That's only been an explanation for the five-day gap between posts for the past day or so, though I'm ending the gap on a sick day from work, so it doesn't seem like much of an explanation at all. Really, a five-day gap between posts is fairly commonplace during the movie "low season." But, I'm telling you this to let you know this post will be short.

Finishing the movie I started but didn't finish on Wednesday night, then as the perfect viewing for when you're sick, I watched Molli and Max in the Future and Mona Lisa Smile yesterday.

When I added these to my big movie list that is now rapidly approaching 7,000 movies, and is likely to get there next month (these were #6,980 and #6,981), I noticed that they were only four titles away from each other alphabetically, which seems funny for a list that long. The only movies between them are Molly's Game, Mom and Dad and Mommy. 

Now, I can't totally hoodwink you there. There is likely an explanation for this.

Although I had never heard of Molli and Max in the Future until I came across it on Kanopy the other night, I think the reason I thought to watch Mona Lisa Smile next must be because it came up in the search results when I went to watch Molli and Max. However, I did add Molli and Max to my watchlist at the time I first noted it, meaning I wouldn't have had to search for it, so it may be a true coincidence and Mona Lisa came up on Kanopy some other way.

Here's the verifiable coincidence.

When I went to add these movies to my year-by-year lists this morning, they both came in adjacent to a movie called Monster. 

Molli and Max in the Future is from 2023, the same year personal favorite Hirokazu Kore-eda put out his most recent movie to establish him as an heir to Yasujiro Ozu, which I saw at MIFF and ranked my #4 of that year. 

Of course, when adding Kore-eda's Monster at that time, I was reminded of Patty Jenkins' Monster, the film that won an Oscar for Charlize Theron. That came out in 2003 -- the same year as Mona Lisa Smile.

While I have you, I should say that I liked both of these films quite a bit. Although Mona Lisa Smile is indeed the perfect "sick day movie" -- in that it is not very challenging in most respects, and I thought there was a fairly reliable ceiling to how much I could possibly like it -- Mike Newell's film did exceed my expectations by enough to nearly eclipse its designation as a "sick day movie." There are a lot of actresses I like in that cast and it was nice to see them doing their thing a full 22 years ago now.

And Molli and Max I liked even more. It's a real charmer, essentially a two-hander between Zosia Mamet and a guy I'd never heard of before, Aristotle Athari. Michael Lukk Litwak's debut is shot basically entirely against virtual backgrounds of various outer space locations, something I thought would seem cheap, but really grew on me. Especially since the two leads are giving such great romcom performances, and all the stuff about interstellar travel in the future is funny and light. I've always been interested in Mamet but I've never seen her cut loose and have fun like she does here.