Tag: soundtracks

What’s your favorite soundtrack?

It COULD have been West Side Story…

AmandlaGreg Burgas, who I’ve only known online for a couple of decades, wrote as as his Question of the Week: What’s your favorite soundtrack?

Then he started coming up with RULES. Old-timey bloggers like Greg (and me, to be sure) always have RULES. His include that he didn’t consider movies where everything is sung. He notes “my absolute favorite soundtrack of all time if I considered this is the score to Jesus Christ Superstar.” My love for Superstar is well-documented, though it goes back to the album prior to the movie.

He also eliminated straight musicals, e.g. The Music Man and The Sound of Music. I like the former but my love of the latter, and also West Side Story, is massive.

Greg continues, “Finally, I narrowed it down to a few. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? has a killer soundtrack. It’s a bit too close to an actual musical for me, though.” Yes, a tremendous collection, and that would have been my pick but…

He ended up with Singles as his favorite. Since I have never owned it, I can’t consider it.

Moi

I’m going to try on a few choices:

A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles’ first movie has some great songs, including the title track, created at the last minute.

Easy Rider. If it wasn’t the first movie to take previously recorded songs as the soundtrack, it was very early on. Songs such as Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild became strongly affiliated with the film.

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is a 2002 documentary film depicting the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of Apartheid through the use of music. The film takes its name from the Zulu and Xhosa word amandla, which means power. I dare say Greg would bounce it for the singing by the participants, yet note the context. “The freedom songs heard in the film have an important historical context…In South Africa, the songs take on a different meaning, referring to a unique collection of songs tied to the struggle for racial equality during the 20th century. ” There are a lot more songs besides these.

Cold Mountain. I’ve never seen the movie, yet I have the soundtrack.  From Wikipedia: Cold Mountain: Music from the Motion Picture shares producer T Bone Burnett with the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a largely old-time and folk album with limited radio play that still enjoyed commercial success, and garnered a Grammy. As a result, comparisons were drawn between the two albums. Burnett brought in musician and scholar Tim Eriksen to teach the performers Sacred Harp singing, which features prominently in the soundtrack.”

Ultimately, I’m going with the Fab Four. It was the first soundtrack I bought with my own money, though I saw the film Help! begore HDN.  

Titanic- that sinking feeling

Back to Titanic contains a mixture of previously unreleased recordings and newly-recorded performances of the songs in the film.


On the 14th of April, 1912, Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and quickly sank. Many people were lost due to insufficient lifeboats. Yes, I know; everybody knows. Is there a non-war-related historical event more familiar than this? Not many.

Amazing what a little 1997 film can help to do. (Not that Titanic was the ONLY film on the topic, but was clearly the most successful.) It “achieved critical and commercial success. It equaled records with fourteen Academy Award nominations and eleven wins, receiving the prizes for Best Picture and Best Director. With a worldwide gross of over $1.8 billion, it was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark, remaining the highest-grossing film of all time for twelve years.” And it was just re-released in 3D, which Roger Ebert reviewed.

I think it succeeded because it was a kitchen sink film that appealed to a lot of people. There was this love story that touched some, not so much for me. There were the class issues, which I found more interesting. There was the hubris of the boat builders, applicable in other settings. And then there was the disaster itself, which, if you didn’t think too much about the ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO DIED, was rather spectacular. (SamuaiFrog revisits the film.)

Another issue was the music. I have the original soundtrack, composed, orchestrated, and conducted by James Horner, and I found it a bit too much of the same feel. But, I also have Back to Titanic, “which contains a mixture of previously unreleased recordings and newly-recorded performances of the songs in the film…Horner created a new suite of music, comprising light and dark sections from the score, which represents the ‘soul’ of his music for the film.

“In addition, several of the source numbers from the film were included into this second album. From ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ to the raucous pipe and drum rhythms heard in the Irish folk music played in the lower decks, these selections recreate the most poignant moments in the life and death of the great ship. ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ was played on the deck by Wallace Hartley’s small orchestra and lifted spirits as the ship settled, lights blazing, into black oblivion. And ‘Come Josephine, in my Flying Machine’, which Jack Dawson briefly sings for Rose DeWitt Bukater and Rose sings when she is waiting to be rescued in the freezing seas. The song was a top hit song the year before the sinking.”

The second album, to my ear, is vastly better than the first, because it’s more eclectic, and frankly, more representative sonically of the film as a whole. Though I can avoid the bit when Celine Dion’s huge hit ‘My Heart Will Go On’ is interspersed with movie dialogue; that’s the reason for the skip button on the CD player.

See what Neil deGrasse Tyson got James Cameron to fix for the re-release of Titanic.
Then watch the video, which has nothing to do with Titanic, but a lot to do with my own growing up.

Pretty much everything you need to know about the Titanic.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial