It’s too late in the game to bloviate about the film and its merits and/or flaws. I’m late to that particular party, and I’m certain I don’t get along with many of its guests. But since I gravitate to all things musical, I thought I’d share a bit of the score, which was once again put together by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, the kids responsible for Lola’s musical pulse. And in this film’s peculiar and oddly moving climax, their music is what, for me, keeps the film from tipping into an failed sort of lunacy.

Heil, Klimek and Tykwer – “The Perfume”

on the web: ebert’s praise for the film, Radar article on the composers

Since I have to post form work, and that generally requires that I have some free time, I’m unable to post at all. At least not with any real substance. That’s why I’m all about the video posts these days. So here’s another. The trailer for the new Coen Bros. movie is online and not only does it look like classic Coen material, it kicks off with “Grounds for Divorce” by Elbow, about whom I just blogged. Remember? Nice use of the tune, naturally, which is why I’m posting about it. Synergy and all that.

Enjoy.

I caught the season finale of Bones tonight. It’s weird having a new “show,” you know? I haven’t had a show since Buffy and Angel went off the air. So I suppose it’s fitting it’s another Boreanaz vehicle, but yeah, I thought I’d check it out. My friend, Ryan, thinks my fandom is insane, but as I’ve already laid out, there’s some stuff to dig about Bones. I still reserve my usual complaints about realism and transparent storytelling, but overall, it’s amusing stuff. The season finale was oddly disappointing, however. And yet somehow, it managed to make me love it by throwing a curve ball that I would have never predicted in a million years…

…or at least a month or two of serious guessing, anyway. Give me a moment to ‘splain.

From an objective standpoint it was just fine. A big, plot-heavy episode was what we expected from a lot of shows whose mid-sections were neatly excised by last Fall’s WGA strike, but this story, which involved the return of the “Gormagon Killer” (the show’s intermittent Boogie Man) was loaded with emotional potential that never quite pays off. That’s the sort of thing I can occasionally live with in a show I like; I’m always furiously rewriting these shows in my head as I watch them, anyway. But while the episode loitered in the lobby of greatness, it never took the elevator to the top floor. It never, as a way of comparison, came close to matching the average Buffy episode.

But a shocker in the final act was what stunned me into TV-love. The surprise came in the final act. No, it’s not the big character reveal about which the BonesBlogs are buzzing. This one comes just afterwards. A big action-y, revelatory scene unfolds. The FBI runs pell-mell in pursuit of a solid lead (for once without Dr. Brennan tagging along.) Guns out, tension rising, flashlights whipping about. Music playing…. And what music did they secure to go with it? Avenged Sevenfold, perhaps? Velvet Revolver? Hot Chip? She & Him? Nope, nope, nope…

Music spoiler after the jump.

Michael Hedges. “Aerial Boundaries.”

Billy Gottlieb is credited as Music Supervisor. If he’s really responsible for this, I hope he’s got a lot more of whatever it is he’s smoking.

Michael Hedges – “Aerial Boundaries”

on the web: live-blogging the finale, EW blog post, Hedges on YouTube, RS article about Hedges’ death

Gung Ho

This was Ron Howard at his best, when he was still doing comedy, before he thought he was a serious director. Newman’s score for the film is as varied and energetic as ever, often, as in the case of this track, within the same cue. He goes from quiet subtle tones into rollicking, guitar-driven passages and then drops right back into quiescence. I haven’t seen the movie in years, so I don’t remember how this piece of music was used, but it’s the quintessential stuff of comedy.

Less Than Zero

People remember this soundtrack for its hip, funky collection of tunes. Chiefly, there was the Bangles’ cover of “Hazy Shade Of Winter,” but artists from Glenn Danzig to Roy Orbison jumped into the fray. Lost in the party was Newman’s hunting, synth-driven score. The film was, at its center, devoid of heart, a hollow, glittering shell. Somehow the music, especially this particular piece, both augments and counteracts that emptiness.

Phenomenon

I never did see Phenomenon. And I probably never will, unless I’m in, say, a Tulsa motel one night, with the television on, the remote out of reach and unable to use my legs. Why Tulsa? Whatever, I don’t know. The score is typical of Newman’s mid-Nineties output, with plenty of double reed wind instruments, melodic strings and a Quilt-y strummed guitar. It’s mostly innocuous, but since the original soundtrack issue contained only a token Newman track, it’s a nice addition to the collection.

Okay, I’m done with Newman for a while. Enjoy.

on the Web: wikipedia, newman fan site, youtube collection of Less Than Zero cues

In the process, I find myself short-handing some selections. For instance, one of my fallbacks is this piece, by Alberto Iglesias. It’s from his score for the film, Todo Sobre Mi Madre. Even if I weren’t a devout CW (that means credit-watcher, y’all) this moody, gorgeous bit of music, which rises at the film’s end, would have kept me rooted to my seat.

It might actually be too moody for quiet background music. At a wedding, I mean. With it’s string-drenched swells and that muted trumpet, it’s perfect for a dinner party. But a wedding wants something a little more tinkly, like Monk, or Dave Brubeck. But then, I’m not your typical wedding DJ. And I’m not getting paid for this gig. I’m doing it for friends. So I’ll play what I please.

And just hope I still have friends the next day.

Alberto Iglesias – “Todo Sobre Mi Madre”

on the web: Amazon (the disc is out of print)

The Man With One Red Shoe

Starting at the beginning, this piece of music (as discussed here) was the first time I noticed Newman’s work. I was a movie theater drudge in Santa Fe. The year was 1985. My coworkers and I would crank the monitors during the end credits up in the booth/office when The Man With One Red Shoe wrapped each showing. This was why. It’s a rolling, laid-back piece of instrumental music, easy-going and saxy. Ask most people if they remember the film and you’ll get a blank stare. Ask me, however, and you’ll have to listen to me wax enthusiastic for half an hour.

Those Secrets

I never saw this film, but of the legally-issued Thomas Newman scores, it’s one of the harder ones to find. An eBay search today shows a range from $10 to $85 bucks for the CD. The tone of this piece is closer to Men Don’t Leave in style, and hints at his more string-laden compostions to come. But that percussive element that I love so much is still very much evident. It’s a worthwhile acquisition for fans.

The Lost Boys

Alternately bombastic and moody, this is one of those atypical Newman scores that finds him dabbling in sounds we’re not used to hearing from him. It’s the only “horror” film he ever scored, so I guess we can chalk that up as a reason, but here he’s using electric guitar, large scale organ and rapid-fire percussion to build to that Santa Cruz Carnival of Horror that we all remember so well. The original soundtrack contained very little of the actual score and was geared, instead, to people who wanted to get their hands on Tim Cappello’s sax-drenched cover of The Call’s “I Still Believe.” Uh, no thank you.

Cookie

Man, remember Emily Lloyd? She was the flavor of the year when this came out, thanks to Wish You Were Here, that button-cute comedy from 1987. Here, she gets Italian on us and slinks about in a Nora Ephron-penned mob comedy that failed to make an impression when it came out. The score is funky and jazzy and seasoned with a wheezy accordion sound, entirely befitting the smoky atmosphere of a neighborhood Trattoria, but there’s some of the trademark Newman sparkle as well, as evidenced by this short cut.

There’s more, but I’m out of time today. actually, it’s not that I’m out of time. I just can’t take the heavy oppressive marine-layer gloom that’s covering Redondo Beach today. I’m going to retreat somewhere warm and bright and get some work done. I’ll drop some more cool bits into the schedule for next week, so stay tuned.

Now that’s creepy. Or at least Bryan Bertino thinks so.

Proving the old, tired adage, that the way to the director’s chair is to start as a grip, Bryan Bertino’s directorial debut, The Strangers, hit theaters next month. Bertino also wrote the script, which is about Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler and how they love each other very much. Oh, and there are three masked weirdos intent on busting up the love affair. I caught the trailer the other day. It’s a reasonably creepy affair, and impossible to judge, but its sweetest moment comes just after the minute mark. Tyler and Speedman are in one room of their remote cabin, fretting about stalkers and strange noises and income tax when in the other room, someone sets the needle down on Joanna Newsom’s “The Sprout & The Bean.”

ZOMG.

First of all, we applaud the hip couple. Nice going. Joanna Newsom on vinyl. Then things get hairy. Axes come through doors, there’s screaming, there’s blood. Someone bumps the record player. The track gets stuck in a groove, the record skips. As the action gets more intense, the record skips faster and faster until…

The Strangers. Coming soon.

While the whole thing seems calculated, and the effect itself doesn’t make any sense (why would the record skip faster?) I love it anyway. I’m always interested in the creative use of music in film, and if it takes a contrivance to show me something creative, I’ll go along. I dunno if it’s enough to make me see the movie, but… but I… but…

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’ll see it.

Interesting side note: the tune in the trailer is “The Sprout & The Bean” until it starts skipping, at which point it’s clearly no longer Joanna Newsom. I wonder if that was part of the rights deal? They could use then Newsom song, but they couldn’t distort it?

There are things for me to learn about Music Supervision…

I got two hours of sleep last night. Insomnia visited my room like a big ol’ buzzard and pecked at me from the headboard. So today’s post is not only late, it’s bound to be a bit cantankerous. But it might have been anyway, really. I caught the pilot of Bionic Woman the other night via hulu.com and there were problems. I want to expound.

I’d been meaning to check out the show, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I was, of course, a childhood devotee of The Six Bit Man and his distaff counterpart, Jamie Summers, and this is the age of Women-Who-Kick-Ass, so I’m front and center for this kind of thing. But I was underwhelmed.

Now, I’m not gonna kick the show on the basis of the single pilot, though. It’s early yet and it would be brutally unfair to dismiss it on a solitary viewing. I haven’t met a character I like yet and the tone and characterization within that first hour were wildly uneven, but given time, it might just grow on me.

Instead, I’m going to pick on the way they use Sia Furler’s “Breathe Me.”

First of all, they shouldn’t have. Two years ago, Six Feet Under did it. As Sia herself described, it pretty much brought her back from the dead, which is a funny thing to say given the premise of the show. And they used it at the most pivotal, heart-wringing point in the entire series’ run — its final six minutes. Viewers were already primed and emotional. That coupled with the gorgeosity of the tune folded into an emotional haymaker than people talked about for months.

“Breathe Me” is a powerful, emotional song. But it’s not a crutch. You can’t use it to prop up a scene that otherwise seems forced and awkward. That’s what they try to do in Bionic Woman. After Jamie escapes from the military hospital where she finds herself after a horrific accident, she finds herself at home, confused and fearful about what she’s become. The plot, which had been screaming forward at a breakneck pace, skids to a halt. She considers suicide. Maybe. It’s hard to tell. She ends up on the roof (will she jump? won’t she?) She makes a decision. And all the while, Sia’s purring “Breathe Me” in the background.

I appreciate the moment. I recognize that she has to go through something like this. But we have to understand it through the character and the motivation. Not the music. Please don’t try to trick us into feeling something. Give us a reason to care and then blow us away with a thrilling and unexpected song choice. Give us synergy.

Just not Sia. That’s been done before.

[Note: The song is in the series trailer as well. I still think it's the wrong choice, but in this context it works much better. I actually like the contrast between the violence and the melody. ]

That’s a pretty huge claim. So today I thought I’d better back that up. See for yourself. First the original:

Then, the soupy version. Love the triple synth hit right when Jason Dohring’s name pops up:

And before you try to tell me I’ve got too much time on my hands, this took all of four minutes to post.

Okay I’m going back to building my fleet of paper airplanes. I’m gonna invade the neighbors. I might stop in later today to talk about British Sea Power.

Then by sheer coincidence, WNYC’s excellent Radio Lab show devoted an entire piece to Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The episode is called “The Ring & I” and it examines the enormous hold the 20-hour operatic series holds on its devotees. Sigfried’s Funeral March is part of the cycle, called Götterdämmerung, or, Twilight Of The Gods.

Me? I know it as that incredible music from the end of Excalibur.

To this day, there are few films that move me in their final minutes as much as Excalibur does (Hal Hartley’s Trust also comes to mind, as does Caroll Ballard’s Never Cry Wolf.) In the case of the Boorman film, it is almost entirely because of the music. Boorman knew he was working with the stuff of myth and legend, so wisely, rather than use the work of a modern-day composer, he went straight to the classics and peeled bits of both Orff and Wagner to get the job done (possibly even Mozart’s Deis Irae if memory serves–or wait, maybe that was the trailer for Cliffhanger.) Remember the bit where a dying King Arthur instructs Percival, one of the last surviving knights of the round table, to take Excalibur and hurl the blade back into the lake? He rides and rides and decides he can’t do it. He returns to Arthur, whose dying plea is to return and try again. So Percival rides back to the lake and hurls Excalibur. The slender, sliver-clad arm glides from the lake and catches the sword. Holds it for a moment. Then retreats into the water, signaling the death of a king and the end of an era.

That was true Wagnerian stuff. The Twilight of the Gods. Götterdämmerung.

The Radio Lab episode is remarkable. Listen to it here. As for a definitive recording? Apparently, the Georg Solti version is the high watermark. And as long as we’re talking Excalibur, who could forget the remarkable art by Bob Peake for the one sheet?

The scene itself is on YouTube (of course.) I’ll post it here until the inevitable cease & desist knocks it out of commission:

And finally, the piece itself, as I heard it that night in the throes of insomnia:/>

Wagner – “The Death of Siegfried, Funeral March”