Film (movie) Music

[Cato]

A Wall Street Journal article on the Academy Award Nomination for Best Score this year:

This year's Oscar flap concerns Antonio Sánchez's score for "Birdman," which was ruled ineligible by the Academy's music branch. According to a note to Mr. Sánchez from the branch's executive committee chairman, Charles Fox, that was reprinted in part in the Hollywood Reporter, the score violated an Academy rule against pre-existing music and the predominant use of music by more than one composer.

Cut to images of stopwatch-wielding music-branch bureaucrats tsk-tsking as they screened "Birdman" to evaluate Mr. Sánchez's propulsive original music that rose from improvised drum solos. When appealing the judgment, Mr. Sánchez, a veteran jazz percussionist and composer, told the branch that the goal of his music was to "embody the emotional aspects of the film in a very accurate way." No one who paid to savor the experience of "Birdman" would deny he had done just that.

See:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/music-bureaucrats-nomination-abomination-1421882372?autologin=y

[vandermolen]

I watched the movie Noah on DVD last weekend. I thought that the film was a bit mad but really liked the music which I have ordered, quite cheaply from the USA:
[asin]B00IPGGEVU[/asin]

[Bogey]

A Wall Street Journal article on the Academy Award Nomination for Best Score this year:

See:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/music-bureaucrats-nomination-abomination-1421882372?autologin=y

Sounds similar to what happened to the Master and Commander music.  I am still miffed about it.  Brilliant music , but no love.  So, with this line of thinking, should there always be only one producer getting a statue?

[Bogey]

Giacchino is really beginning to get my attention.  His efforts above are fantastic!  Nice themes throughout and music that I remember.  I also enjoyed his nod to the original tv theme at the end.

[TheGSMoeller]

Beautiful and haunting piece composed by Hanan Townshend for Terence Malick's film To The Wonder. It very much reminds me of something Georges Delerue would have composed for a Truffaut film. 


https://www.youtube.com/v/Wd853D6XHRQ

[TheGSMoeller]

A Drop Filled With Memories by Hirasawa Susumu from the Anime film, Paprika. This piece fills me with calm. My 5 year old is also in love with this tune.

https://www.youtube.com/v/cDp5WmdUn5I

[Maciek]

A new movie called Mr. Turner about the English painter has a score by Gary Yershon, which has been favorably reviewed by the Wall Street Journal (as was the movie itself).

Thanks for mentioning this. I found the CD on Spotify and it is a very interesting score indeed! Is it alluding to Berlioz (Scene aux champs), or is that just me?

[Robert]

I watched the movie Noah on DVD last weekend. I thought that the film was a bit mad but really liked the music which I have ordered, quite cheaply from the USA:
[asin]B00IPGGEVU[/asin]

He also did an excellent soundtrack for "Requiem For A Dream"

[vandermolen]

He also did an excellent soundtrack for "Requiem For A Dream"

Oh thanks, must look out for that one.

[Abuelo Igor]

I read somewhere that the percussion in the "Requiem for a dream" soundtrack music was actually sampled punches from Bruce Lee movies. Fascinating little fact that I wanted to share with you.

[Bogey]

I read somewhere that the percussion in the "Requiem for a dream" soundtrack music was actually sampled punches from Bruce Lee movies. Fascinating little fact that I wanted to share with you.

Sounds like something Jerry Goldsmith would have used.

[Bogey]

A wonderful score here.  I thought the movie was ok, but the music....man!  Check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SagTkN19veU

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Pokemon 2000 movie score.

In comparison, two different but almost equally beautiful Lugia's songs, original japanese and english dub version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWlwo0DBEE



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqpXrDuLqE0

I usually like the original japanese better in most cases but this is one of the exceptions. The dub Lugia's song is even more divine than japanese one.

[Cato]

Today's (June 5th) Wall Street Journal  has an article on Roy Webb, "house composer" for RKO Studios in the good old days:

...Webb is best known for scoring Val Lewton's horror films and, a few years later, virtually every top-flight film noir released by RKO in the '40s and '50s. Two of the latter will be shown on Turner Classic Movies this month, Edward Dmytryk's "Murder, My Sweet" (June 12) and "Crossfire" (June 19), both of which helped establish noir as a major Hollywood genre and to which Webb contributed scores of the highest quality. But his expressive range was much wider, enough so to comfortably encompass screwball comedies like "Bringing Up Baby," six-hankie weepers like "Love Affair," costume dramas like "Quality Street," even tall-in-the-saddle shoot-'em-ups like—well—John Wayne's "Tall in the Saddle." A consummate professional, he could do it all, not just competently but with a truly personal touch...

found his voice in Lewton's "Cat People" (1942) and "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943). In these low-budget, high-impact shockers, incomparably directed by Jacques Tourneur, nothing is shown and everything is suggested. As a result, they necessarily rely on music for much of their dramatic effect, and Webb obliged by ratcheting up the suspense with biting dissonances, leavened with a yearning tenderness that came to the fore in his Ravel-influenced score for John Cromwell's "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945). In addition, he had an unexpected knack for Coplandesque lyricism that would later be heard to powerful advantage in "The Lusty Men," Nicholas Ray's melancholy 1952 study of the bleak lives of rodeo cowboys.

But Webb was at his best in film noir, above all in "Out of the Past," Tourneur's 1947 masterpiece, in which all of his stylistic traits were fused into a tightly unified score. Robert Mitchum plays a small-town gas-station owner whose violent past catches up with him at last and sweeps him into a deadly whirlpool of big-city turmoil. Unlike less perceptive composers, Webb sensed that film noir is rooted in a bruised, disillusioned romanticism, and so the main-title theme of "Out of the Past," which is woven throughout the film (Mitchum even whistles it), is not a piece of pounding musical excitement but a warmly outdoorsy theme whose unexpected changes of key hint at trouble ahead. Once the rural scene is set, we flash back to Mitchum's secret life as a private eye, and the tone of the score changes....

See:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/film-musics-forgotten-man-1433444717

[Karl Henning]

I worked with a zombie once . . . .

[Cato]

I worked with a zombie once . . . .

That pretty much describes one of my 8th Grade classes last year!      

I will need to check Out of the Past.  In the good old days, one of the TV stations in my hometown showed a collection of RKO movies (King Kong was a favorite, along with Danger Lights, a railroad epic with Jean Arthur) on Saturdays.  The station especially showed the horror movies, but the "noir" movies were not often broadcast.

[vandermolen]

Discussed this in the Vaughan Williams thread but thought I'd mention it here as one of my favourite CDs of film music. I enjoyed every work and have listened to the CD over and over again. There are a number of excellent releases on this label including Auric's 'La Belle et La Bête' and Sainton's 'Moby Dick' (just reissued on Naxos).
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[asin]B00YCAU3LK[/asin]
[asin]B00000464E[/asin]

[TheGSMoeller]

The Lone Ranger was a monumental bomb at the box office, but who cares, it was fun and unique and I liked it  . Hans Zimmer took time away from scoring everything else in cinema today to score this film, and several of the tracks are very good. For the final battle of the film he took the famous William Tell theme and reworked it into a 9+ minute romp with Zimmer's signature bombastic action-score tied in.
The second one is titled Home, possibly the most beautiful piece Zimmer has ever composed.
Third is titled Absurdity, fun track with interesting instrumentation and typical Zimmer flair.

https://www.youtube.com/v/9eUIc-7jDSs

https://www.youtube.com/v/6egCpojTCU8

https://www.youtube.com/v/LX5KUlKSvDE

[Bogey]

The Lone Ranger was a monumental bomb at the box office, but who cares, it was fun and unique and I liked it  . Hans Zimmer took time away from scoring everything else in cinema today to score this film, and several of the tracks are very good. For the final battle of the film he took the famous William Tell theme and reworked it into a 9+ minute romp with Zimmer's signature bombastic action-score tied in.
The second one is titled Home, possibly the most beautiful piece Zimmer has ever composed.
Third is titled Absurdity, fun track with interesting instrumentation and typical Zimmer flair.

https://www.youtube.com/v/9eUIc-7jDSs

https://www.youtube.com/v/6egCpojTCU8

https://www.youtube.com/v/LX5KUlKSvDE

Great movie (my favorite from that year) and terrific soundtrack! 

[Bogey]

Giacchino is really beginning to get my attention.  His efforts above are fantastic!  Nice themes throughout and music that I remember.  I also enjoyed his nod to the original tv theme at the end.

OK, geek movie music take of the year:

My best friend who works in the movie business recently met Giacchino.  I guess Giacchino at one point met Jerry Goldsmith who gave him the present of a metal bowl and THE horn (The one you hear during the hunt) he used on the original Planet of the Apes movie soundtrack.  My friend got to hold them and even try the metal bowl.  But get this, the guy who actually played them on the original soundtrack was there and discussed how they were used.  Now THAT is a movie music geek's dream for some of us!