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Author
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Topic: They Shoot, They Score (September 2001)
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Kevin Ott
True Believer
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posted 10-10-2001 01:11 AM
   
This month's Music update is now online. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 10-10-2001 01:11 AM
I'm really surprised Kevin left the theme from Chariots of Fire out of one of his categories. Frankly, I think it deserves a category of its own: So Damn Annoying That You Would to Gnaw Your Own Ears Off If That Were Physiologically Possible. Yes, I know it's supposed to be inspiring and uplifting but I really don't like the film and I've heard the music so many times that I'm fairly certain by unborn descendants are sick of it.
That said, there's plenty of good movie music I can talk about instead. For example, Kev mentioned Danny Elfman. I think his music brings the movies to a whole different level. Try to recall any scene from Beetlejuice without getting that score in your head. It's impossible. Same thing with the first Batman movie. Incidentally, he did the theme for the first Batman Animated Series well, which I still hold as one of the best television show themes ever. While Kevin was writing this, I was lying on the couch in the other room (marveling at how my impending bundle of joy could wreak such destruction on my gastrointestinal tract) sitting through a fine example of how trying to be cute with a soundtrack can go too far. If you've never seen Sleepless in Seattle, I'm not going to try to stop you. It can be enjoyable if you're in the right mood. Finding the right mood to endure both Meg Ryan (Tom Hanks is infinitely more bearable in this than she is) and the five pound bag of sugar tone they were trying to set with the music is too much for most people. I had to turn it off when they started playing "Stand By Your Man." Surely, there's a happy medium for romantic comedy soundtracks between dull and diabetes inducing.
[This message has been edited by Pattie Gillett (edited 10-10-2001).] |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 10-10-2001 01:12 AM
I have never seen Say Anything, but I know the scene Kev’s talking about. And I’ve always liked “Solsbury Hill” more than “In Your Eyes,” but they’re both really good songs, and “Solsbury Hill” probably wouldn’t have worked nearly as well for John Cusack. So it was probably a good call on the part of the producers. I have no idea where I’m going with this, other than the fact that Cusack obviously recognizes the importance of music in films, given his work on Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity. You know what movie could’ve been really screwed up by poor musical choices? O Brother, Where Art Thou?. You set out to do a musical reinterpretation of Homer’s Odyssey, you better know what you’re doing. Fortunately, the Coen brothers did, and I’m still trying to figure out why I don’t own that soundtrack yet. The chain gang’s song and the Sirens’ song totally capture the mood of the moment, which can be really hard to do in a song with lyrics. (Exhibit A: Titan AE, which for some unfathomable reason had a character in the fairly distant future listening to twentieth century rock music, and not particularly good rock music at that.) It’s also funny how music can stick in your brain when nothing else about the film will. For the last week I’ve had this fragment of a cover of Crowded House’s “Better Be Home Soon” running through my head. I know this cover version was used to conclude some sappy movie I saw in the last six months, playing over the touching final scene of a wayward character rejoining his or her loved ones . . . but I have no idea what the film was or what the actors in said scene looked like. It’s really driving me a little bit crazy. I should also mention that Billy Bragg’s “You Woke Up My Neighborhood” would be the perfect song to accompany a wry, wistful drama about the end of relationships or stages of one’s life. Just a thought. |
slgorman
One of the Regulars
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posted 10-10-2001 02:01 PM
My friend and I play the "pick the most appropriate classical music with which to score _______ film" all the time. That's what happens when you are in band together, I guess. [Insert riotously funny American Pie band camp, flute joke here. Not.]My favorite Danny Elfman score is from Edward Scissorhands. I remember when I heard he scored that I was amazed. I'd listened to Oingo Boingo since I was in 5th grade and was awed by his musical flexibility. Hell, I still am. Pattie, I hear your pain on the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack. It's so very hit and miss. I adore the all Harry Conick, Jr. soundtrack to When Harry Met Sally. I even have the CD and the tape to that. Just in case, you know. As for TV, while it grated on me initally, I'm warming up to the theme for Philly. It's disjointed melody parallels the characters interestingly. |
Stephanie
One of the Regulars
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posted 10-10-2001 02:20 PM
Sl, I agree with you on the Harry Connick, Jr. "When Harry Met Sally" soundtrack, it is very good. I just think it's funny that I have a tape recording somewhere I made from Pattie's copy of the "Sleepless in Seattle" soundtrack. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 10-10-2001 03:04 PM
Steph, I do have the SIS soundtrack though I don't recall where I got it - and on their own some of the the songs on there have a place. I'm just saying that having them all strung together is a bit much. A good soundtrack should be good with the film and good on its own for listening and I can't listen to that soundtrack all at once. Sl, I do think the WHMS soundtrack did a far better job at creating the mood of the film. I think by the time SIS came out, the effect sounded more contrived. That's just my take. For the record, I like Harry Connick, Jr. as much as the next person, well maybe not Hope Floats, but that wasn't his fault. |
slgorman
One of the Regulars
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posted 10-10-2001 03:32 PM
In the vein of full disclosure, I do own the SIS CD. I bought it for wedding music. Which should, right there, explain the sappiness that it exudes when listened to end to end.For me, a good source music soundtrack (using existing songs or covers of existing songs) must *not* beat the theme of the movie into the ground. Anvils I like not. Hence, the failure, IMVHO, of SIS's soundtrack. |
Earl Green
True Believer
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posted 10-16-2001 02:15 PM
I'm not the biggest fan of "songtracks" - soundtrack albums which primarily comprise pop songs which may (or may not) have featured for about six frames of a given movie or TV show - but I thought I'd bring up the soundtrack from the surreal 1991 flick "Until The End Of The World," which I don't think I've seen since 1991 come to think of it. There are some canny song choices in there, and they're placed well within the context of the story. Some of the songs include Depeche Mode's "Knocking At Death's Door," R.E.M.'s "Fretless," U2's "Until The End Of The World," and a bluesy little T-Bone Burnett number called "Humans From Earth." I also have to thank whoever compiled the soundtrack for interspersing these songs with many short snippets of Graeme Revell's score, which is heavy enough on cello to achieve a kind of mournful-by-default sound. All in all, highly recommended.Oh, and I just thought I'd take a moment to speak up once again in favor of the song being used as the theme for the new Star Trek spinoff, Enterprise. Apparently there's already a fan petition to get the song replaced, but for once I have to agree with a statement from one of the show's producers, even though it displays a typical contempt-for-the-audience that I find a bit distasteful: "Turn the volume down while the song's playing." |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 10-18-2001 10:36 PM
Man, I had forgotten about 'Fretless.' Thanks for the reminder.I can't really think of any songtrack that I really got into, although I do want the O Brother disc. Mostly I've noticed that Matthew Sweet tended to wind up on a bunch of them in the mid-90s, surrounded by a bunch of songs I had no interest in. Another argument for MP3 downloads, but that's another thread. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 10-24-2001 12:34 AM
While we're on this subject, we gotta talk about Aaron Sorkin and his tendency to end episodes of Sports Night and West Wing with music in the foreground and little or no dialogue. I flipped past an episode of Sports Night last night, and Sorkin closed out the ep with a few verses of Neil Finn's "She Will Have Her Way." It took me a minute to realize that I was listening to a song that had an existence outside of the show -- a song on a CD I own, by the way -- because it really just carried the emotion of the scene so well. Now I can't stop listening to the darned song.Damn you, Aaron Sorkin, and damn you, Neil Finn! Damn you in the keep-producing-more-cool-stuff sense of the term! | |
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