TV and Movie Soundtracks

[EricMontreal22]

Vito Russo credits Thank God it's Friday as the first disco movie to show gay couples--but you can't tell from here The Advert is classic.

[Sylph]

Here's the Adagio from Landscape in the Mist (Topio stin omihli):

Here's a track from the universally praised Ulysses' Gaze (To vlemma tou Odyssea):

[Sylph]

You can read her biography here.

[Sylph]

BTW, I don't know if any of you are interested, but...

This is for James Cameron's Avatar.

[JackPeyton]

Rosweel has a great soundtrack

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks Sylph--I love both orchestral tracks, but that adagio is particularly gorgeous!

[Chargeman]

Transformers:The Movie. Great soundtrack. Awesome 80's music

[Sylph]

Bond themes: Can nobody do it better?

Jack White is a classy recruit, but the wait for a killer Bond song must go on

Dan Cairns


The question “When was the last classic James Bond song?” is not, many would argue, one designed to start a debate — unless you can call three or four seconds of consideration followed by an emphatic answer a debate. Duran Duran’s A View to a Kill (1985), co-written by the master, John Barry? Great verse, yes; but the chorus is a screeching Simon Le Bon shocker, so let us not linger there. Today’s Bond producers would like our answer to be “The new one, for Quantum of Solace” — but Jack White and Alicia Keys’s Another Way to Die (you can see why they steered clear of the film title, can’t you?) is, to judge by fan sites and message boards, unlikely to join a roll of honour that began in 1964 with Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger and arguably ended when Carly Simon sang Nobody Does It Better in 1977. Purists would contend that the sequence of greats concluded earlier, with 1973’s Live and Let Die. A Wings song that ticked most of the Bond-song boxes — melodrama, bombast, sonic explosions, a hint of cheesiness — it was so good, we forgave Paul McCartney the grammatical howler “In this ever-changing world in which we live in”.

The White/Keys collaboration continues the producers’ recent track record of seeking to sex up the Bond brand with star names, both in the songwriting and singing departments. Bono and the Edge writing GoldenEye (1995) for Tina Turner to perform must have seem like a match made in marketing heaven, but the song was a stinker, not least for Bono’s risible lyric “It’s a gold and honey trap / That I’ve got for you tonight”. Garbage failed to breathe much life into 1999’s The World Is Not Enough (Shirley Manson as a singing torso-less robot in the video was far more memorable). Dear old Madonna vocodered her way through Die Another Day in 2002. Her blustering and beyond-bad contribution included the unforgettable “Sigmund Freud, analyse this”, with the unwittingly hysterical implication that Madge had something to teach the father of psychoanalysis. Sheryl Crow sounded barely awake on 1997’s woeful Tomorrow Never Dies, an example of another bizarre aspect of the producers’ approach: they often choose the wrong piece of music. For both The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies, they opted for inferior songs to open the film (A-ha for the former, Crow in the latter case), relegating much finer performances — the Pretenders’ If There Was a Man and kd lang’s Surrender — to the closing credits.

The Garbage and kd lang tracks were both co-written by the film composer David Arnold, who has been scoring Bond films since Tomorrow Never Dies. (Shaken and Stirred, his 1997 album of Bond covers, with singers such as Jarvis Cocker and Iggy Pop, attracted the attention of John Barry, who recommended him to the film’s producers.) Arnold contends that any aspiring Bond-song writer needs both to honour the canon — and its sonic staples of brass and strings — and to throw away the rulebook, which he concedes can be a tricky task. “I don’t think you can completely escape the history of these songs,” he says. “Not only have many of them become standards, they have been around as part of the British musical landscape for more than 40 years. It’s something to embrace, rather than dismiss, but in doing that you immediately draw comparisons with the greats.” As for the brass-and-strings trademarks, he argues that “those elements are one of the things the public feel defines the sound of a Bond song”.

Thus, White chucks a small arsenal of effects at what is essentially a very weak melody, its one moment of excitement — a jagged and portentous bridge — detumescing into a non-chorus that seems to mark the point where he ran out of inspiration. Keys turns in a rock vocal of extraordinary and intriguing power, but she can’t save the song. It’s by no means the worst Bond song — that title would be claimed by Crow, Madonna, Rita Coolidge’s All Time High (for Octopussy) or Sheena Easton’s wan and witless For Your Eyes Only — but it is nowhere near as daring and inventive as you might expect from two such bold artists. It’s as if White strode confidently into the recording studio, only to be gripped by the same self-consciousness that has hampered other Bond-song composers before him.

Arnold believes the question of public expectations imposing limitations on a songwriter — and a song — is part and parcel of the whole Bond brand. “In the films, there is an expectation that you will see action, adventure, violence, girls, gadgets and guns,” he says. “If you don’t see them, you may feel you’re not really watching a Bond film. And if the equivalent musical elements are missing from the song, it isn’t considered a Bond song.” That sounds creatively pretty stifling to me, but Arnold is too canny, proud or diplomatic to say so.

He hints at the complex process arriving at a singer and a song can be. “I am just part of a group of people who makes these decisions,” he says. “The studio, the music department, the producers and the director all have a say. I look at each film as like casting a role. Each film has a certain identity, and part of the challenge is finding the right singer for that film. I may love the idea of Björk or Alison Goldfrapp, for instance, but if it doesn’t feel right for the film we’re making, it would be foolish to choose an artist for the wrong reasons.”

Amy Winehouse was originally mooted to perform the lead song for Quantum of Solace, co-writing it with the producer Mark Ronson. This was abandoned, with the Bond team rumoured to have looked askance at her drug and drink addiction. Then someone, somewhere, presumably in a meeting involving discussions about budgets, marketing reach, demographics and “youth”, suggested White and Keys. Will that suggestion pay off? Well, the song will chart, certainly, so the cash registers will ping. Is it a match for Goldfinger, We Have All the Time in the World, You Only Live Twice? Oh, I think not.

Another Way to Die is out now on Sony BMG


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article4907847.ece

YouTube link for the song.

[Sylph]

Some upcoming soundtracks (not soon, though):

• Howard Shore will score Doubt starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
• Alexandre Desplat will score Frears's Cheri
• Danny Elfman will score The Wolf Man
• Hans Zimmer will score Angels and Demons (of course) and The Burning Plain
• Jeff Beal will score Who Do You Love
• James Newton Howard will score Love Ranch and Gnomeo and Juliet
• Christopher Young has now signed a deal for The Informers
• Aaron Zigman will score The Proposal
• Thomas Newman hired to score Brothers
• Steve Jablonsky will score Friday the 13th
• Theodore Shapiro will write music for Jennifer's Body

[Cat]

I disagree with that article on recent Bond themes. The Tina Turner Goldeneye one was brilliant! As close to a Shirley Bassey classic as I've ever heard. And For Your Eyes Only was a soft but still stirring Bond theme.

The Garbage one was digestible but Sheryl Crow and Madonna reeked! (I used to love Madonna once upon a time, but apart from Confessions on a Dancefloor, I can't even listen to any of her stuff anymore. That 7 seconds song with Justin Timberlake -- another overrated little pipsqueak -- was excrement).

I'm not sure about this latest Bond song, even though I like Alicia's voice and the White Stripes (and have a crazy crush on Jack White, even though he looks like a tubby matador).

[Sylph]

I loved Tina Turner's song, too! And I liked The World Is Not Enough.

But the rest... Pure trash.

P. S. Tina's song did have cr*ppy lyrics.

[Cat]

Anybody ever see the Roman Polanski movie Chinatown? Well, the music to the movie -- by Jerry Goldsmith -- is amazing.

[Cat]

Yeah, it did. But she sang the hell out of them! "A golden honey trap" actually gave me chills!

Moonraker had some OK lyrics but that's because they had nothing to do with the film. "Where are you? Why do you hide?" so far, so swoony. But then this stinker pops up: "Where is that moonlight glint that leaps to your side?" Huh? What? Shirley, what are you talking about?

Let's face it, it is always going to be difficult evoking in songsome horny-yet-effete secret agent pursuing a dumb-ass villain who has an invisible car and World Freezing Machine, y'know?

The biggest disappointment was the song for Casino Royale. Given the amazing chemistry between Daniel Craig and Eva Green -- and the fact that their love story is the lynchpin on which the Bond identity is based -- that movie should have had a haunting, powerful, sad love song. They should have written John Barry a blank cheque to come up with... anything.

[Sylph]

She sung it perfectly, no doubt about it. It's a great Bond song.

I love Shirley's Diamonds.

I found Casino a terrible movie, all the more since the oh-so-acclaimed Haggis had a writing role. And I expect to be disappointed again. Then again... I don't watch Bond movies because they're supposed to be good. I watch them for gadgetry, Judi Dench, and the overall dumbness of it all. Hilarious.

[Cat]

Ugh. Haggis makes me think of Crash... a movie with arguably THE WORST MUSIC in cinema. Loud, overbearing and forcing you to FEEL at every SCENE! You must cry! This scene is telling you Very Important Things about the state of race relations today! OMG, really?

So I was prepared to hate Casino Royale. But I didn't. Largely because of the action sequences and Vesper Lynd. Plus Craig can wear (and work) the hell out of a tux. That's my criteria for a Bond film right there.

(Oh, and Judi Dench goes without saying. I liked her in The World is Not Enough when she got a bit of extra story and somewhat meaty scenes with Sophie Marceau. But they ruined that film the moment Denise Richards appeared).