My friend Sarah and I have been having a fairly regular weekly “movie night.” Really it’s an excuse to get together and chitchat without spending much money, but lately we’ve been trying to watch a variety of classical music movies, combined with a funny movie too. The thing about movies is that they are long, and since we live in the iPhone age, it takes a lot to keep our attention. (Something shiny! The internet! Look, it’s a cat!)

Last night we watched most of “7 Psychopaths” before turning it off (well, I don’t know if it was most, it felt like a lot though) and then we watched “Carnegie Hall.” I ordered this movie from Netflix after seeing the video of Jascha Heifetz (my previous cat’s namesake) playing the Tchiakovsky Violin Concerto and couldn’t resist. Spoiler: the movie is both awesome and terrible. It’s awesome because there are some fantastic musical performances from very old musicians. It’s terrible because the plot is both confusing and fairly non-existent, and the acting is bad. I highly recommend it.

The other noteworthy performance was Artur Rubinstein performing a couple of pieces on piano. Sarah and I were struck by how high he lifts his hands while playing (we are terrified to do that on the piano because we would likely hit all the wrong notes on the way down.)

We thought this was hilarious. I’m not sure if you had to be there, but I had to share it with you.

I found the video of him playing the entire Ritual Fire Dance on the youtube as well.

Anyway. Like I said, full nerd. I won’t even tell you about our lengthy conversation about the russian bow hold versus that of the franco-belgian school and the evolution thereof, because you would point and laugh at me.

So—what are some good classical music movies and good funny movies that will be good for future movie nights? We want suggestions!