Blue Screen

pleasantville_miles_ql.jpg

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis's landmark album Kind of Blue, the gang at Slate combed through the best and worst uses of the record's smoky, mid-tempo jazz. Among them: Dexter, In the Line of Fire and Pleasantville, the latter of which best adheres to the theory that "the album tends to be used to achieve a particular effect, often showing up when a character is experiencing a transformation." The Runaway Bride, alas, doesn't fare well with "the most obvious, and most obviously wrong, Kind of Blue moment on film." Can't really argue there; don't let Garry Marshall near these songs for Valentine's Day. [Slate]