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Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Boring

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

While this short film from Segundo de Chomon is decent for the time period, anyone who knows the French Cinemagician Georges Melies's work will recognize that this is partially a rip-off of his themes and ideas. This is common in Chomon's career, because a couple of his other films used ideas from Melies. In this case, the director borrows the old "heads as music notes" idea from Melies, who used it before in his "The Melomaniac." However, Chomon also adds some other ideas as well, such as miniature people appearing in the music notes, and such. In the end though, the theme proves that Chomon was strongly inspired by Melies's work, or at least in this case.Julienne Mathieu, Segundo's wife, stars in here as the bandleader. After she throws some of their heads up as music notes, she has them march behind a music banner, and they disappear behind it. They then appear as miniatures on the notes on the poster, and the bandmaster holds up the banner and the miniatures march out from behind it. Not a complete imitation of Melies, but it borrows some ideas from him. The effects work well, though.

Segundo de Chomón was a very good early director and some of his films (especially his comedies) are classics. However, like many other directors of the time, he was not above 'liberally borrowing' (stealing, actually) from his competitors--mostly Georges Méliès. Because of this, often you'll find films you think are from Méliès but they are not. Sometimes these Chomón films are just inspired by the films but sometimes they are just deliberately copies.In the case of "Music, Forward!" you see elements of several of Méliès' films strung together (such as the disembodied heads that are tossed up on the giant staff like notes to some music--and they then sing). To me, this one comes off as poorly executed in its 'homage' as instead of doing one or two tricks well and sticking to a plot, this one keeps tossing in new tricks. They are executed pretty well but the overall effort is far from pleasing and seems a bit cacophonous. Not bad to watch but not a strong effort.

Segundo de Chmon, the leading general in Pathé Frères' efforts to knock Melies out of the competition, directs a variation of Melies' classic and, by this time, slightly archaic LE MAESTRO DO-MI-SOL-DO. A lot could change in a year in the movies back when it was little more than a decade since they had begun commercial production.As a result, if his handling of the material -- mostly achieved via lens masking and varying the distances between camera and subject -- is more mechanical than Melies, lacking the joy in performance, Pathé could afford the inherently more difficult and thus more expensive techniques of having several more people in the shot -- more people, more shots, more coordination required and thus more chances of fouling up and having to do everything over again. Also, De Chomon had access to a better color stenciling process. His bosses could outspend, and, inevitably, run the competition out of the business.But I still think that Melies' effort was better.