and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Pete Townshend was also nominated for an Oscar for his work in scoring and adapting the music for the film. Tommy's father, RAF Group Captain Walker, is away fighting the Germans in World War II. His plane is shot from the air even before Tommy is born. His mother, Nora Walker, receives the news while at work in a munitions factory filling bombs with ball bearings. Mrs. Walker faints and brings boxes of the ball bearings down with her. Mrs. Walker then gives birth to a baby boy, Tommy. Tommy's mother believes her husband is dead for nearly six years. She meets Frank Hobbs at a holiday camp and starts an affair with him. However, Captain Walker had survived the crash and returns home one night, Tommy follows him to the bedroom where Walker sees Mrs. Walker and Hobbs in hot passion, Hobbs kills Captain Walker by smashing a vase on his head, which is witnessed by the young Tommy. Tommy is then told in a violent manner that he "didn't hear it, didn't see it" and "won't say nothing to no-one," and as a result becomes deaf, mute, and blind. Hobbs and Tommy's mother turn to such characters as the preacher (religion), the Acid Queen (drugs), and doctor (medicine) for cures to Tommy's condition. Tommy's only stimulus seems to come from a long mirror that he stands and stares into. Led alone into a junkyard at night by a vision of himself, Tommy comes into contact with a device that will change his life forever. A pinball machine scattered among the scrap metal allows Tommy to rise to national prominence and fame. Tommy's pinball prowess transforms him into a cult hero. Filled with guilt one day, Tommy's mother throws him into the mirror he is staring into, which wakes Tommy into normality once more. He uses his new awareness to try and bring enlightenment to people. He starts giving talks at church and hosting special dinners, Tommy's stepdad exploits him to make more money by starting more church talks and dinners etc. Tommy eventually sets up his own Holiday Camp for his followers, where he gives them dark glasses, ear plugs and mouth corks to make them temporarily deaf, mute and blind like Tommy and he gets them all to play pinball. However, mercantile exploitation by Tommy's family and the tough and/or unreasonable demands of his cult cause the disciples to revolt against him and abandon him. His mother and stepfather are killed during the riot. Alone and abandoned by everybody, Tommy achieves new enlightenment, this time about other people (previously, he had only been enlightened about himself). The film version of Tommy showed a few changes from the original 1969 album. One such change is the date in which the story happened. The movie takes place in the post World War II era as the album takes place in post World War I. For example, in the song "Overture 1921" where on the album the line is, "got a feelin' 21 is gonna be a good year." the movie changes it to "got a feelin' 51 is gonna be a good year"' for the film. This allowed Russell to use more contemporary images for later scenes. In the album, Captain Walker returns to find his wife with a new lover and proceeds to murder the lover. In the film it is flipped around; the lover kills Captain Walker. This is perhaps (though not necessarily) the cause for a different treatment of the title character. In the film, Tommy's fame as pinball champion is exploited by his mother and Hobbs, who use it to give themselves a much more lavish lifestyle. Unlike other films of rock operas (such as Pink Floyd's The Wall) the album is never dubbed over the film; the different actors -including Nicholson and Reed, neither of whom were known for their vocal prowess - sing the songs instead of The Who. Because of this, all the songs are rerecorded and some shuffled around. A large number of songs have new lyrics and instrumentation. Notably: "The Amazing Journey" has almost completely different lyrics, and the "guide" from the album is shown as being Tommy's murdered father. Pinball Wizard has a few extra lyrics. References to pinball are removed from "Christmas". Several new songs were written, including "Prologue 1945", "Bernie's Holiday Camp", "Champagne", "Mother and Son", and "T.V. Studio"* "Underture" is not present (however, parts from it can be heard as Tommy is found playing Pinball); Only a few brief segments of "Overture" can be heard. The visual part of the film involves many messages. It may be interpreted as containing a kafkaesque commentary on the rich and on the commercial, consumerist side of modern society in general (notably the famous scene with Ann-Margret bathing in the pool of beans).

The end of an amazing concert!! Well done Elton I really enjoyed it!

this year, I was on the site joox.net and I found the movie Tommy. I thought it was some kind of classic horror film (no joke) so I went to imdb.com to read the summary of this movie. What I got from it, it was a musical by the Who and it was about a boy that later became a pinball champaign that the song Pinball Wizard was about in the Who song. That got my interested piqued, and I began to watch the movie. It wasn't that interesting at first but I kept watching hoping it would pick up. I watched the entire movie and my breath was taken away with a smile on my face. I want to do a movie review on my blog someday of this movie but that will have to wait until I am ready. The movie is a musical about a man going to war and a young wife getting his posessions and solidiers telling her her husband was shot down in a dog fight. She finds out she is pregnant right after that and has to raise Tommy by herself. When he is aprox. 6 years old she starts dating his Uncle Frank and they eventually get engaged and married. And then a tramatic event causes Tommy to become deaf, dumb and blind (I am not telling you about that part!) and the rest of the story needs to be seen in the movie. This is one of my favorite movies now, it reminds me of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, just a random, sick musical with a dark sense of humor in some parts. If this scene is interesting and what I just told you makes you curious then definitely see it. And there are some huge stars when they were a lot younger in this movie as well. Ann Margaret, Oliver Reed, Roger Daltrey (he plays the adult Tommy) Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Jack Nicholson to name a few.