Does anyone have any suggestions for good films about music or musicians?
The sort of things I am thinking of are films like
The Pianist
Shine
Hilary and Jackie
The Red Violin
Mr. Holland's Opus

The television is rubbish in Austria (sorry but it's true - though the wall to wall ski coverage in the winter is fab) and so I have developed a bit of a DVD habit. I buy two or three DVDs from Amazon each month and have "film evenings" where I get to watch something decent.
Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Amadeus
The Beat that my Heart Skipped
The Chorus
Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky
Elgar
Farinelli il Castrato
Immortal Beloved
The Piano
The Piano Teacher
The Page Turner
The Soloist
The Sound of Music (!!!)
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
Three Colours: Blue
Tous les Matins du Monde

Not really the same, but I just bought the OH "Nadia Boulanger - Mademoiselle." If you're interested in composition it might be worth a look.

This film is in French but trust me, is amazing,


La Vie En Rose

Some great ideas there. Thanks very much :-)

On my shelf, as yet unwatched, is Le Concert - basically it looks like a "getting the band orchestra back together" adventure. In Russian

^ seconded, this is brilliant

Brassed off
Un coeur en hiver
Raising the wind (very light but fun)

Diva

In my unmusical opinion, possibly the best musical themed film in the world ever (and this from someone who has been known to watch Amadeus 3 times back to back on a bad day.)

Promenade sentimentale ... sob ... sigh ...

That's the one I was trying to remember!

Copying Beethoven

Green Card - not strictly about music but one of the two central characters is a composer

Crossroads (no, not THAT Crossroads) from 1986

Basically The Karate Kid (Ralph Macchio) outplays the Devil's favoured guitarist (Steve Vai) by resorting to a classical riff which his opponent can't emulate.

The rest of the film is basically pants, but The Duel is all good fun. In fact Vai composed and played both parts for the soundtrack.

You can watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CAJtu2nHLw

He is so obviously not playing that guitar!

Les Choristes?

I remember once reading a review (but can't remember if it was for a book or a film ) for something about a cellist in Eastern Europe (Sarajevo?) which looked interesting.

Said that one already!

Truly Madly Deeply has a musical theme (although not the main focus of the plot), and Death in Venice is full of Mahler.

Can't remember the title, but it was based on a real teacher in down town Harlem. Meryl Streep starred as the saintly violin teacher, and, as these films go, it was reasonably authentic. And the young violinists certainly had the 'aaahh' factor

' Ladies in Lavender' has Dame Judi, Dame Maggie, and rather a lot of violin playing.

Yeah the Streep film is "Music of the Heart". That one I have already and Ladies in Lavender - both good films with lots of violin

If we expanded to films with a decent musical score then there'd be a lot more.

Or films-of-operas. One of the favourites of my youth was Don Giovanni (with Kiri te Kanawa y Ruggero Raimondi).

Back to the musically themed films, there's Intermezzo (Leslie Howard as a concert violinist who has an affair with pianist Ingrid Bergman)

Chen Kaige's "Together" is on my list to see...

Then there's all those classic musicals such as An American in Paris and Shall We Dance (Gershwin scores)...