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Films and the music


Mike

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Getting back to the basics of this forum ...

I (as many of you as well) watch and have watched alot of movies over the years, hundreds, thousands!

Years ago, the music was all "orchestral" (Breakfast at Tiffiny's) or folksy (The Flim flam Man).

Then the Epics such as Rogers and Hammerstein films, James Bond, and of course Sound of music stands out. Then acoustics - (e.g.The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) Jazzy, (Dirty Harry) and so forth. Then things got contempory "raindrops keep falling on my head" (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid).

Now it's rock and roll, pop music and more mainstream type music.

So what's next, will it recycle? I know there is still some remaining today, but not as much. Will we see a return of the mamoth music scores of the previous generations?

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80's alternative as John Hughes starts making movies again. I hear Molly Ringwald is playing a mom in his next movie and the plotline revolves around her family forgetting 'mothers day', because her oldest son was serving Saturday detention for taping a guys butt cheeks together, the younger son crashed the family car in the backyard, and their estranged uncle was put in jail for illegally fixing a horse race.

"Here's a quarter, go downtown and have a rat knaw that thing off your face."

I miss John Candy

Was I just the right age for the John Hughes films, or were they really as good as I remember? I can't imagine a soundtrack ever being better than "Pretty in Pink", so many good bands.

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John Candy was fantastic, too bad he "retired" early, sad.

Summer Rental and The Great Outdoors are favorites in my house.

You ever notice in the suspense movies, thrillers, how important the music is? Especially instuments like the cello, tuba, violin etcetera? Wow, next time you are watching one, mute it and un-mute it... it's an incredible difference!

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I am being cynical here, however I have to think that a good soundtrack with popular songs provides one more item that can be sold for a profit. They have ads at the beginning of rental videos now trying to sell you the soundtrack to the movie you are about to watch. I'm sure that most of the instrumental soundtracks are not as lucrative. I can't imagine the movie industry (or whoever gets the money) will be too eager to give up those profits!

I would love to see the "mamoth scores" return. They're often as epic as the movies thmeselves. Who doesn't like, nor instantly recognize, the Star Wars music?

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Whatever happened to big movie theme songs? It seems like the 80s were full of them (Footloose, I'm All Right, Highway to the Danger Zone,-hmmm all Kenny Loggins too!)

The last big movie theme song was My Heart Will Go On. Now it seems movies don't have big, epic songs written expressly for them.

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I actually prefer scores over songs. A good song can help illustrate a point, but usually it takes my mind off the movie. I watched "Love Actually" recently and there were so many songs that it was hard to concentrate on the movie for the singing (and of course I have to sing along). You shouldn't notice a score, it should just enhance the movie experience.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I actually prefer scores over songs. A good song can help illustrate a point, but usually it takes my mind off the movie. I watched "Love Actually" recently and there were so many songs that it was hard to concentrate on the movie for the singing (and of course I have to sing along). You shouldn't notice a score, it should just enhance the movie experience.

You should notice a score because when it is absent, your viewing experience will be much different and altered - usually with bad results. Just imagine Superman without his theme or Star Wars or something as strange and trivial as strings together to create that "wree wree wree" sound in Psycho suddenly gone - the scene loses its effect drastically. It will seem like there's some sort of psychological subtext missing.

It's the bad and mediocre scores that aren't noticeable. The good ones will leave you wondering long after the film is over.

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Good point. I could never imagine watching 2001:A Space Odyssey without Richard Stauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.

IMO the most profound movie soundtrack.

One thing I'll say about movie sountracks, IMO, they are infinitely better if they are unrecognized by the audience for the first time. I'm not really crazy about hearing popular songs as soundtracks. To me, they completely alter the song so far as feeling goes. Kinda my belief that TV commercials shouldn't use popular songs.

The best sountracks are unknown at first but become the staple of the movie, sometimes even more so than the actors. Of course, there are exceptions. What would the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs have been like without the popular Stuck in the Middle with You?

The intro to the Rocky soundtrack is another I think which was the foundation of the overall feeling the movie released. Or what would Halloween have been like without John Carpenter's score? Who ever listens to Tubular Bells and is not reminded of The Exorcist?

What would Jaws have been without the soundtrack?

One of the most frightening movies I ever saw was the scene in Hellraiser when the cenobites (demons) were unkowingly summoned. Most of the impact of that movie was the shocking, original concept of the villians. But they would not have had no where near as much impact without the magnificent score composed by Christopher Young, a very talented composer.

Listen to Hellbound. The overall feeling which the score gives is that of, IMO, impending doom. Just click the link and scroll down to the sound samples.

You Opened It, We Came

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