Truly great soundtracks don’t come easy. This is what makes the companion to Trainspotting so unusual. Not only does it manage to nail the cultural moment the film portrays (and aurally recreate the film’s story in its running order), but it also escapes the film entirely becoming its own album. It plays [...]
“If you build it, they will come,” or in the case of Yo La Tengo, if they record it I will most likely eventually get around to listening to it — whatever the it may be. In this case, the it in question is a collection of tracks the group scored for various films over [...]
I have to admit, I’m not always excited about the idea of a single artist recording the entire soundtrack to a film. It’s usually not the most career-defining moment for a musician. Sure, there are exceptions – but for every Aimee Mann and Magnolia, there are at least nine or ten Princes and [...]
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Written by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson, Chinatown undoubtedly stands as one of the greatest films of the twentieth century. Classic film noir, on a base level, Chinatown tells the story of private detective J.J. ‘Jake’ Gittes as he attempts to solve what (at the [...]
If the below description of this lost blaxploitation flick’s soundtrack doesn’t pique your interest then I would wager you have never watched Dolemite, The Mack and Superfly back-to-back (which, I might add, comes highly recommended if you’re feeling funky and happen to have an afternoon to kill.)
“He was a pusher that became a preacher. [...]
Earlier this month Goldenfiddle reminded us that the latest Wes Anderson addition to the Criterion Collection DVD series is due out November 25th. Anderson’s first feature film, Bottle Rocket, is finally getting the all-star, deluxe, two-disc reissue treatment complete with: Eleven deleted scenes, commentary by Wes Anderson and co-writer/actor Owen Wilson, the making of [...]
“Stay on the road, stay away from the Moors and beware of the moon.” Sage advice, indeed. Filmmaker John Landis’s An American Werewolf In London (1981) is a lot of things; a maverick comedy, a gratuitous horror flick, an Oscar winner, and one of my favorite examples of the juxtaposition of music and [...]
Still one of my favorite films, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey both turned me on to its accompanying soundtrack, as well as the works of its author, Arthur C. Clarke, who passed away today, at the age of 90, in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. Excerpts below; read the Associated Press obit, [...]
Originally titled Season of The Witch, Mean Streets is both an accomplishment in film in its own right, as well as a blueprint for the themes and motifs Martin Scorsese would later expand on and finesse for the next three decades. It’s all here: Cosa Nostra, religious devotion an doubt, moral contradiction, loyalty, family, [...]
