The Screengrab : ost

OST: Conan the Barbarian

OST: "Rushmore"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:45:00 GMT

Wes Anderson, whatever his other faults as a filmmaker -- and I, for one, would argue that they're plentiful -- has developed a justified reputation as a consummate crafter of motion picture soundtracks. Unlike other directors who simply leave it to the judgment of whoever's writing the score to make sure sound and vision are properly attuned, with a complementary mood and tone, Anderson personally supervises the selection of the music that goes into his films, painstakingly matching existing songs and original scoring to make sure every scene is perfectly matched, that viewers not only see what he wants them to see, but hears what he wants them to hear. This gift of blending original music, extant pop music artifacts, and film is one that he shares with a handful of other directors of a distinctly post-modernist bent: Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and the grandaddy of them all, Martin Scorsese. All four men have a positive passion for blending rock, pop and other musical forms into a lively mix and then folding them delicately into their movies. Tarantino, the consummate pastiche artist, may be the most adept at this form of cinematic mix-tape, but Wes Anderson may be the most inspired, and both musically and cinematically, Rushmore is his masterpiece.

For a movie as distinctly modern as Rushmore is, it has a curiously archaic quality. The music borrowed from other sources is intensely retro; the finished product sounds like a mix CD put together by a quirkily aggressive friend who's obsessed with the music of the British invasion. And while that might seem pretty odd for a movie about a kid who came of age in the late 1990s, it's less odd than it might seem once you've seen Rushmore: Max Fisher is undoubtedly one of those insufferable kids who's utterly scornful of any band containing people close to him in age, and ostentatiously listens only to music that was composed before the invention of the cassette tape. In the album's liner notes, Anderson claims that he originally wanted the soundtrack to contain nothing more than Kinks songs, but a combination of legal issues and the pleading of his collaborators made him change his mind. It's probably for the best -- such an extravagant gesture would be too relentlessly outre, more in keeping with Anderson's later, crazily idiosyncratic work than Rushmore, a movie that keeps a relatable and recognizable human heart beating beneath its ironic hipster exterior. And while Quentin Tarantino might have cast Bill Murray as some sort of flamboyant bit of revivalism, Anderson, here, does it because Murray is the only actor who can deliver the blend of sly, wicked humor and melacholy that is reflected in the soundtrack.

Of course, Wes Anderson did more in putting the music of Rushmore together than comb through a couple of late-'60s Britpop anthologies. The music he selects ranges from smash hits to rarities obscure enough to stun newcomers and surprise experts. Beyond that, he does break up the monotony of endless pop snippets by allowing the wise presence of a score -- and a score composed by another '70s throwback element, Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh. There are bits and pieces of Mothersbaugh's original music -- mostly burbling, optimistic electronic pieces of the sort that used to show up on bachelor-pad hi-fi samplers in the sixties -- on the Rushmore soundtrack, and they're both brief enough to not be intrusive and skillful enough to not be superfluous. An entire album of them would be pretty intolerable, but used like this -- as leavening for the pop gems that surround them -- they show that Anderson still has confidence in traditional film-music usages, but is clever enough to give them ann interesting twist. Since the making of Rushmore, Anderson's films have gotten more abstract, more arcane, more personal in a way that is almost inaccessible and alienating, and while they still feature some gems (like Seu Jorge's terrific Bowie covers in The Life Aquatic), he's never topped the cinematic and musical magic he displays here.

BEST TRACKS: Aside from a flat track or two and some inessential incidental music from Mark Mothersbaugh, there's hardly a dud in this whole stack. "Making Time" is an absolutely crushing track from the forgotten Creation, a Who knockoff so skillful it could have slipped onto The Who Sell Out without anyone noticing; and the Who themselves are well-represented by one of the slicker, cleaner versions in existence of their charming mini-rock opera, "A Quick One (While He's Away)". Although only one Kinks song remains on the soundtrack, it's an absolute killer -- the quiet, sweetly sinister "Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" -- and two of Cat Stevens' best tunes, "Here Comes My Baby" and "The Wind", make an appearance before the whole thing winds down with the Faces' flawless "Ooh La La".

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OST: Beetlejuice

OST: Pulp Fiction

OST: "Beetlejuice"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Danny Elfman's reputation as a film composer, to put it politely, is mixed. To put it not so politely, there are a lot of people who think he sucks. Though Elfman himself -- a multiple Oscar nominee, a millionaire many times over, and Mr. Bridget Fonda -- probably doesn't pay his detractors any mind, there is a growing consensus that the man who started out as the most unlikely person to achieve success as a composer of scores for blockbuster Hollywood films has turned into a contemptible hack whose name in the opening credits is a sure sign of sonic disappointment ahead. Of course, for everyone who feels that way, there's also those who fiercely defend his scores as memorable, inventive, and distinct; how many other film composers can you name who have gold records for collections of their motion picture scores? Elfman has two of them, and a legion of devoted fans. This kind of vehement disagreement is, in fact, familiar to Danny Elfman: during the 1980s heyday of his band Oingo Boingo, opinion was roughly split between those who found him an obnoxious noisemaker whose danceable, horn-laden compositions were an embarrasment to the punk circles in which he traveled, and those who found his music creative, infectious, and a welcome change of pace from the business-as-usual of L.A. hardcore.

But as Elfman's career as a film composer enters its third decade, those who defend him are growing fewer, and those who attack him are growing more. The time at which his name in the credits alone was enough to make fans line up at the box office for a ticket are long behind him, and it seems the more he embraced his fame as a Hollywood name worthy of dropping, the more he moved from his ludic, sonically inventive early work to a sense of darkness and bombast that never quite suited him to what can only be described as hackwork in films like A Civil Action, Proof of Life and Red Dragon. The sad thing is, it was not always thus: Elfman got his start composing music for the films of his friend, fan and frequent collaborator, the director Tim Burton -- and the early work they produced together really was special. Back then, Elfman geniunely sounded like someone who might seriously change the game when it came to film scores: his utterly postmodern approach of mixing the high and the low, and his keen sense of comic and dramatic timing, which he used to blow the doors off scenes with a judicious application of musical cues, seemed to be indicators of someone who was there to do more than just collect a paycheck.

The best of Danny Elfman's early collaborations with Tim Burton was the fantastic score to Pee Wee's Big Adventure. A more perfect marriage of score and film is hard to imaging, and the opening sequence of the beloved comedy -- with Pee Wee's activities growing more and more absurd as the main theme becomes louder and louder, finally hammering away at a perfect comic crescendo -- is unforgettable. Unfortunately, the commercial release is marred by many omissions, and by being paired on a double release with Elfman's passable but unspectacular soundtrack to the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School. So, for Elfman aficianados who want to show off what the man was capable of before he started sleepwalking through his career, Beetlejuice is the default pick. Not that it's much of a step down from Pee Wee's Big Adventure; they're both showcases for his blend of acumen and absurdity, his sure comic timing, his ability to use odd percussive patterns and polyrhythms to such a listener into the scene, and his deft mixing of cartoonish exaggeration with clever and appropriate instrumentation. The ghostly conjurations of the score proved that Elfman, despite later evidence to the contrary, was capable of sounding sinister without taking himself too seriously, and its magical mixture of catchy melodic elements and almost avant-garde experimental sounds makes it a collection of music worth listening to even outside of the context of the movie -- the true test of any great score. Beetlejuice is the pinnacle of Elfman's work with Tim Burton, for good and for ill: it never got any better, and it would all be downhill from there.

BEST TRACKS: The famous opening theme to Beetlejuice is a perfect example of what Danny Elfman is capable of when he's not just out to make a buck. Its clever folding of Harry Belafonte's "The Banana Boat Song" into what becomes a whirling, sinister piece of music is funny and unexpected, and the rest of the piece plays out with excellent and energetic stings over a rapid-fire death train of increasing tempos. "Travel Music", with its conjuration of 1950s-style on-the-road dynamics and its simple innocence twisted by its underlying nastiness, works very well, as does the hilarious muzak-from-beyond-the-grave of "The Flier/Lydia's Pep Talk". The eerie "Incantation", with its high-strung percussion that blasts out into an explosion of creepy vocal cues, haunted-house organ and propulsive horns, nicely rounds out the score.

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OST: Enter the Dragon

OST: "Pulp Fiction"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:15:00 GMT

We knew this day would come. We knew that eventually, we were going to have to address the man who is arguably almost as famous for his game-changing approach to soundtracks as for the actual movies he directs. Quentin Tarantino, like a lot of smart-ass culture vultures of his generation, is a pop-cult omnivore, as well-versed in music as he is in literature, film, television, and fashion, and it should come as no surprise that in his greatest accomplishement as a director, 1994's Pulp Fiction, he brought his encyclopedic knowledge of pop music to bear on the soundtrack with a geek's precision and an auteur's passion. Tarantino's instincts as a music director proved as profitable to Sony Music as his instincts as a filmmaker did to Miramax: the movie was a huge success, and the soundtrack went platinum almost immediately after its release. Selling over a million and a half units in its first year, it was one of the most popular soundtracks of the decade, and not only launched one career (that of Urge Overkill, the Chicago band who covered "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" on the album) but revived two more (those of Kool & the Gang and Dick Dale, who enjoyed a popular resurgence after two of their best-known songs were featured in the film).

The curious alchemy that took place when Tarantino put the soundtrack together -- and it is no exaggeration to call him the creator of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, as he personally selected every single track, often building entire scenes around a piece of music he felt would be appropriate -- has become characteristic of his films, and has led to his reputation as a director who has an uncanny ability to match up visual and musical elements in his films. And yet, many of his detractors -- and, for that matter, a number of his supporters -- are quick to point out that the story of music in Tarantino's films is one of missed opportunities, and a triumph of metareference over originality. After all, in his soundtracks no less than in his movies themselves, Quentin Tarantino is a pastiche artist. A filmmaker of his caliber is perfectly capable of doing what Jim Jarmusch, another director with a reputation for crafting stellar soundtracks, does: use a few existing pieces of music as ringers, and then commission an original score that conjures its own mood and moment, rather than relying on the emotions generated by preexisting songs to create impact. Just as his films constantly serve as a sort of postmodernist irritant, a nagging little voice saying, hey, do you remember this? Do you get what I'm referencing here?, his film music can be viewed as little more than a catalog of referents, a mixtape to the last half-century of junk culture that's designed not so much the create a thrilling film experience so much as remind you of a thrilling film experience you've already had.

And yet, as reluctant as we are to engage in such dismissive approaches, who cares? When the alchemy works so wonderfully, why pick nits? As long as Tarantino isn't being dismayingly obvious in his lifts -- a crime of which Reservoir Dogs was occasionally guilty -- they come in such rapid bursts (as in Kill Bill) or with such a dazzling degree of clever storytelling techniques (as in Pulp Fiction), the gentlemanly thing is not to notice. Sure, Quentin Tarantino is just a gifted rip-off artist. But he's so gifted, and his rip-offs are so amazingly successful, so exquisitely framed in new viewpoints and new contexts, and delivered in such a supremely confident and technically competent way, that he earns our indulgence the way a lesser filmmaker wouldn't. A Pulp Fiction with an original score might have had more integrity and originality, but it probably wouldn't have been as good. The key to Tarantino's genius, musically and as a filmmaker, isn't that he's showing us something we've never seen before; it's that he's showing it to us in a way we've never thought of, and making it seem new and exciting again. The greatness of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack isn't that he gathers together a bunch of songs we've never heard before, but that he's presenting them in such a way that we now inextricably associate them with the images he chose them to accompany. If this is a rip-off, let us make the most of it.

BEST TRACKS: The most memorable use of an extant song on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack is one of the most memorable in movie history: John Travolta's hitman and Uma Thurman's moll dance wildly and seductively to Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell." It's the purest distillation of Tarantino's genius for matching music to visual, surpassing even the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, and it's so smashingly effective that it's entered our cultural vocabulary in half a dozen ways. But there's plenty of other treats to be had here, including Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man", Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", a devastating use of "Jungle Boogie", and the weird, creepy ode to isolation, "Flowers on the Wall" by the otherwise sunshiney Statler Brothers. I've always found dialogue snippets on a soundtrack to be gimmicky and distracting, but there's plenty of them here for those that disagree. Worth seeking out is the collector's edition to the soundtrack, issued in 2002, which features a brief but generally enjoyable interview with Tarantino, and a handful of dynamite bonus tracks, including "Rumble" by proto-Dalean Link Wray & HIs Ray-Men, and "Out of Limits" by the Marketts, another surf classic.

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OST: "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

If you've been following the "OST" feature here at the Screengrab for a while, or even if you're just familiar with the kind of chicanery that goes on in the music business under the guise of protecting intellectual property, you'll know that an astonishingly large number of movie soundtracks present you with a product that's wildly -- even borderline fraudulently -- different from what you encountered in the movie. The difficulty and cost of obtaining clearance rights to music, especially for small, cash-poor independent films, and the greed and short-sightedness of record companies (or just their willingness to butt heads with equally greedy movie companies over the size of their slice of the pie) has sunk many a soundtrack. Jim Jarmusch's inventive, compelling Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai ran afoul of this very problem, but with a curious endgame: there are, in fact, two available records affiliated with the movie -- one best described as a soundtrack, and the other a score. Both are extremely worthwhile, but neither is completely successful on its own; both are very different in character, although they were written by the same person; and both feature material from the film as well as material that never appeared in it, though only one is available in the United States.

It should come as no surprise that Jarmusch's 1999 pseudo-remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's fantastic Le Samourai features a terrific soundtrack. As befits his image as a New York hipster filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch's movies have always placed music in a prominent position; from the haunting, unnerving guitar wails of Neil Young that formed the basis of the soundtrack to Dead Man to the exotic, emotionally powerful jazz-funk of Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astaque that was featured in Broken Flowers, Jarmusch is one of a handful of directors -- others include Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Sofia Coppola -- who can be counted on to take as much care with the soundtrack as they do with the film itself. After reading that Italian-American mafiosi were fond of gangsta rap, and consulting with his star Forest Whitaker, Jarmusch decided to bring in the RZA, producer and mastermind behind the hugely influential Wu-Tang Clan, to write both the score and the soundtrack to Ghost Dog. This began a collaboration between the two that became deeper and more profound than either had anticipated; the RZA ended up consulting with Jarmusch on some of the language of the street hustlers in the film, helped out with the design and costuming, and even appears briefly in the film (as do Timbo King and a handful of the Wu-Tang Killa Bees auxiliary). The movie and the music are gorgeously integrated on every level, reflecting a realness that couldn't have come about if any other director and any other musician had been behind it: scenes are perfectly broken up by the intrusion of killer hip-hop tracks (all of which the RZA wrote, produced, or both); the scenes themselves feature gorgeous nighttime driving shots of Whitaker's lethal but loyal assassin, accompanied by evocative, skeletal beats also made by the RZA.

Unfortunately, things went awry, as things often do. Epic, which then had a stranglehold of a contract on the RZA's work, saw the release of the film -- which they couldn't have cared less about -- as nothing more than an opportunity to release new RZA-penned singles to the hip-hop market. They saw no value whatsoever in the instrumental score he'd worked so hard on, and which so perfectly complemented the film. As a result, when the licensing deal was penned with Razor Sharp, the company that released the soundtrack, Epic gave them permission only to use the hip-hop songs the RZA produced, and none of the instrumental score. Eventually, an alternate version of the soundtrack -- this time featuring a number of excellent selections from the score -- was released, but only in Japan. The result is the unsatisfying split alluded to above: here in America, the only version of the soundtrack you're likely to find is the one featuring the rap songs -- which, make no mistake, are almost uniformly excellent, but suffer from a lack of completeness. If you're lucky enough to live in Japan, or shell out extra money to import the version available there, you'll get parts of the score -- at the cost of the great rap singles. So, in the end, the Ghost Dog soundtracks remain two imperfect halves of an incredible whole, and are likely to remain so as long as greed gets in the way. Or, to put it another way, forever.

BEST TRACKS: Assuming you're either unable or unwilling to get hold of the Japanese version of the soundtrack to Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, we'll assume that you're listening to the American version, illustrated above. (The score segments are replaced by rather useless "samurai code quotes" from the movie.) Don't despair, though; while you aren't hearing the whole picture, you're still getting some amazing RZA-penned hip-hop. Some of the best tracks here include the Wu-Tang's featured track, "Fast Shadow", a raw-sounding, desperate slice of urban paranoia; "Strange Eyes", a groovy, expressive effort by the Wu spinoff group Sunz of Man; and, especially, "Don't Test/Wu Stallion", an evocative, insinuating dub groove by underrated Jamaican toaster Suga Bang Bang, which slithers from one pole to another over a killer minimalist beat by the RZA, which suggests the score that you're missing.

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OST: Krush Groove

OST: He Got Game

OST: "Krush Groove"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Any conversation about modern music -- and, thus, any conversation about modern movie soundtracks -- has to eventually hit on the topic of hip-hop. That's not so bad when talking about music exclusively, but it can be a minefield when talking about movies, where, with a few exceptions, the music tends to shine while the movies tend to suck. Especially when trying to establish the best of the early hip-hop films, you open up a rather ugly can of worms: do you go with Beat Street, which did such an admirable job in introducing hip-hop culture (including graf art, breakdancing and street style, not just rap music) to the masses? If so, you've picked a soundtrack that was plagued with licensing issues, multiple versions, and a rather noticeable lack of actual hip-hop. Do you select Breakin', which featured a slightly more respectable rap soundtrack, but which was, let's face it, a terrible movie? For our purposes here at the Screengrab, we've decided to go with Krush Groove.

Not that it's going to go on anyone's lists of the best movies of the 1980s. Or the best movies of 1985. Or even the best movies of 1985 involving hip-hop. Krush Groove, as a movie, is as plagued with problems as any other rap movie of its era -- namely, dismal direction and writing (by Michael Schultz and Ralph Farquhar, respectively), a plethora of bad performances, a tendency to overvalue to the musical numbers at the expense of basically everything else, and, of course, the same old 'let's put on a show' plot that served, in one variation or another, as the format for every single hip-hop movie ever until the Fat Boys discovered that it was even easier to just ape the Three Stooges, thus paving the way for the future screen careers of Method Man and Redman. Krush Groove was meant to be a loose, fictionalized adaptation of the rise of Def Jam Records, hip-hop's first mega-successful label; while there's something to be said for the verisimilitude of casting the label's executives, producers and talent as themselves, there's absolutely nothing to be said for a movie in which Russell Simmons is frequently the best actor on screen. Or, for that matter, a movie in which D.M.C. is not the worst actor on screen. While Krush Groove did the world the dubious favor of launching L.L. Cool J's acting career, it also did the world the distinct honor of failing to launch Ronald DeVoe from New Edition's acting career. But before you go and thank Mssrs. Schultz and Farquhar, keep in mind that they also put Rick Rubin in front of a camera for the first time, which, as anyone who has seen his performance as Vic Ferrante in Tougher Than Leather will tell you, is tantamount to a war crime.

Still, there's no disputing that, amongst early hip-hop movies, the soundtrack to Krush Groove shines like the sun. The bland electro-funk of Beat Street and the mild, b-boy-friendly dance-pop of Breakin' simply can't compare to the plethora of talent on display here. Not every single track is a gem (we could do without Force MD's "Tender Love", for example), but for the most part, we're priveleged to hear a hellaciously strong Def Jam roster at the height of their powers. As mediocre as L.L. Cool J was on screen, there's no denying how powerfuly he was on record at only 16 years old; and the rest of the groups are almost as strong. There are some disappointments on the hard-to-find record -- no dedicated Run-D.M.C. track, for example, and some sequencing problems that were never corrected, as the CD version (a big hit at the time it was issued) was never re-released -- but most of these can be rectified by watching the movie, which contains a number of killer singles that aren't on the soundtrack, including Run-D.M.C.'s "King of Rock", the Fat Boys' "Don't You Dog Me", and UTFO's "Pick Up the Pace". Until Def Jam gives the soundtrack a much-deserved reissue, it's worth paying a few extra dollars on eBay or Amazon to pick up the CD, a terrific artifact of hip-hop's first real golden era.

BEST TRACKS: Though it looked as if the Beastie Boys "I'm On It" would be the breakout song here, the underrated Fat Boys, caught just before they went into a huge decline and started doing nothing but novelty remakes, deliver a great jam with "All You Can Eat", which ended up the big hit single from the Krush Groove soundtrack. Kurtis Blow, one of the oldest of the old school rappers, is given a centerpiece here with "If I Ruled the World", and even the non-hip-hop members of the Def Jam roster make admirable showings with Chaka Khan's "Can't Stop the Street" and Sheila E.'s outstanding "Holly Rock". Far and away the best song on the album, though, is the aggressive and totally charismatic performance given by a teenaged L.L. Cool J on "I Can't Live Without My Radio". From the very first verse, he proves why he deserved to become Def Jam's biggest star before he was even 18 years old -- it's a monster of a song that could very well serve as the official anthem of early hip-hop.

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OST: He Got Game

OST: This is Spinal Tap

OST: "Jailhouse Rock"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Lest we forget, Elvis Presley was once a movie star. In fact, as malicious movie writer Joe Queenan put it, Elvis -- in his spare time from being the biggest rock and roll star in the history of the world -- also made dozens of the world movies of all time. Elvis' movie work was noteworthy not only for its poor quality as film (honestly, folks, he turned out one stinkeroo after another; he made thirty-one movies as an actor, and maybe three of them are even remotely worth watching), but for their poor quality as soundtracks. Considering that almost all of his movies were musicals -- because, believe me, nobody was hiring the guy for his acting chops -- they produced very few good songs. Elvis had tons of great singles, but hardly any of them came from his movies. Jailhouse Rock was a notable exception.

Made in 1957 with workmanlike pro Richard Thorpe at the helm, Jailhouse Rock was Elvis' third movie as a leading man, and one of his only tolerable ones. He plays Vince Everett, a sneering yet charming hillbilly who serves a stint in the joint for involuntary manslaughter. While there, he writes the title song, invents a hot dance craze to go along with it, and gets out of jail just in time to romance snooty society dame Judy Tyler. It's pretty standard fare, and plenty hokey at that, but it's at least snappy and enjoyable instead of a joyless slog like most of his movies. (It also had a tragic dimension -- Elvis' co-star Tyler died in a car wreck only three days after the film wrapped, and he refused to see it out of respect for her, thus ensuring he never got to see one of his only decent big-screen appearances.) As Queenan has astutely noted, it's not as if we were particularly robbed of a bunch of great performances by the rotten scripts Colonel Tom Parker foisted on Elvis, but in the early days at least, he was occasionally cast in roles that played to his strengths as a rockabilly performer and allowed him to have fun with his roles. Elvis also choreographed the dance number, basing it not on the formal dance routine called for in the script but his own hip-swinging moves of the day. Citizen Kane it ain't, but if you insist on seeing an Elvis movie, you could do worse. Boy, could you do worse.

But the soundtrack is the real strength here. There are lots of reasons why; first of all, it was written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the two premier hitmakers of the day, who holed up in a hotel room for a week to crank out the tunes on time. Second, rather than releasing the soundtrack as a full-length album -- thus making it susceptible to the kind of bloat that characterized the albums made from his later films -- RCA put it out as a lean, mean five-song EP that left no room for duds. And perhaps most importantly, Jailhouse Rock is one of the only films in which Elvis is backed by the razor-sharp musicians (guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and drummer D.J. Fontana, with Stoller providing the piano licks) that played for him live, instead of a group of passionless studio hacks. That element alone makes it sound like a real record instead of a collection of cash-ins.

BEST TRACKS: As noted, with only five songs on the EP, there isn't a bad song to be found on the Jailhouse Rock soundtrack. (Beware later versions, which add as many as 20 more songs and are typically bloated and tired.) Of course, the title track is a monster, one of Elvis' greatest hits ever, with a killer vocal performance that played to his ripping rockabilly snarl and featured some great performances by Fontana and Moore; and "I Want to Be Free" was a minor hit with a memorable riff from Stoller's piano. But the two tracks not written by the Lieber/Stoller team -- "Young and Beautiful" and "Don't Leave Me Now", both by Aaron Schroeder -- are fine songs, with the latter becoming a regular in Elvis' live repertoire, and the last song on the album is the hugely enjoyable "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care", which was a hit not only for Elvis, but for Buddy Holly, Cliff Richard, and -- decades later -- Brian Setzer as well. The EP doesn't contain another song from the movie that proved to be a big hit ("Treat Me Nice"), but it's still an essential piece of the Elvis experience.

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OST: "Local Hero"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Local Hero is a perfect example of a soundtrack that, in many ways, outstrips the film it was meant to complement -- and in this case, at least, it's a pity. Which isn't to say that the score isn't absolutely wonderful. It is, or it wouldn't be listed here. I'm not normally a fan of Dire Straits or of Mark Knopfler's solo work, but the stirring, sentimental but never overdone combination of blues-influenced electric guitar, sweeping synthesizer stings, and Scottish folk music he put together is perfectly suited to the visual, narrative, and emotional arc of the movie. The soundtrack itself sold more copies than the movie sold tickets, and it became so popular amongst his fans that he began to incorporate some of its better tracks into his solo shows. It's an amazing piece of work; the pity is that the movie has, over time, become far less known.

A movie of good grace, light step, and gentle humor, which pulls at the heartstrings in an exceptionally powerful way without ever becoming expressly manipulative, Local Hero is the lost Scottish director Bill Forsyth's best film -- and his last great one, as well. It tells the story of Mac (Peter Riegert, charming as hell), an American oil and gas executive who visits a remote village on the Scottish coastline in an attempt to buy up property cheap and open it up for drilling. Complications set in, as complications do, as the locals prove both quirky and reluctant, difficult to communicate with, seductive, crammed with local color, and worst of all, incredibly friendly and accepting of the alienated Mac, who more and more begins to think that throwing all of these people out of their homes on the cheap isn't what he wants to do with his life. His dilemma lies in convincing his employer, the oil tycoon Felix Happer -- played with hilarious belligerence by Burt Lancaster in one of his best film roles -- to abandon his drilling plans, into which he's already sunk millions.

The music itself, for all its wistful beauty and nearly trascendental appropriateness to the material, isn't all that divergent from the typical Dire Straits experience; Knopfler even drafts some of his bandmates, including bassist John Illsley and keyboardist Alan Clark, to contribue. But what makes it more than just a record of Dire Straits instrumental tracks is Knopfler's sense of restraint. He understands scoring enough to know the importance of returning to a strong melodic theme that runs through the entire work, rather than following the pop-record temptation of trying to make every track sound distinct; and he throws in just enough elements of traditional Scottish folk music to give the soundtrack a very particular feel, but never beats you over the head with ill-gotten 'authenticity'. The end result is a beautiful, listenable piece of work.

BEST TRACKS: The best-known track on the album is "Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)", which appears in the film as the end credits music but has become a regular fixture of Mark Knopfler's concerts as a final encore. It's a fine piece of music, no doubt, but it's not the best on the record: that honor belongs to "The Ceilidh: Louis' Favorite/Billy's Tune", the song featured at the local dance that forms the movie's emotional high point, for which Knopfler brings in a local Scottish folk outfit, the Acetones, who perform gorgeously. Also of note is the recurring main theme, which appears in various forms as "The Rocks and the Water" and "The Rocks and the Thunder", and "The Way It Always Starts", the soundtrack's sole vocal number, sung by Scottish pop singer Gerry Rafferty (who, curiously, doesn't appear in the film).

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OST: Superfly

OST: Blue Velvet

OST: "Blue Velvet"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:45:00 GMT

We've discussed a few great pairings between director and composer in this space before: the energetic, dynamic films of Sergio Leone, accompanied by the postmodernist, propulsive music of Ennio Morricone; the accomplished, thrilling work of Alfred Hitchcock, paired with the inventive, restless music of Bernard Herrmann; and others. Today we're going to look at one of the great film partnerships at its very inception: the mystefying, surreal films of David Lynch and the eerily gorgeous music of Angelo Badalamenti that frequently accompanies them. Blue Velvet was the first of a creative partnership that would last for two decades (and arguably reach its zenith in the Twin Peaks soundtrack) but this is where it all began in 1986.

Like a lot of the best collaborations, the one between David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti (who, despite the florid name, hails from the Mediterranean clime of Brooklyn) almost didn't happen. Mixing as it did a great deal of original score, all written by Badalamenti, and rights-managed classic rock and pop songs, the soundtrack to Blue Velvet was almost scuttled early on by clearance issues. In particular, the title track, as sung by Bobby Vinton, proved costlier to license than the studio would allow, so Badalamenti recorded his own sound-alike version -- before getting news that Vinton himself was willing to re-record it (albeit two registers lower, thanks to age's effect on his pipes). That didn't quite work out either, and they were faced with the legal and aesthetic problems of going with the copycat, until, finally, the studio decided to finally pony up for the original. Roy Orbison likewise held out permissions for "In Dreams" until the last moment, and Lynch, who'd been trying for months to secure the rights to This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren", eventually had to give up when the band wouldn't budge on giving him the licence. (Ironically, Balalamenti's replacement song turned out to be one of the most moving and effective pieces in the score.)

"In Dreams" is perhaps the finest example of Blue Velvet's stunning use of classic songs given a rich new dimension by out-of-context placement, even more so than the title track. Once seen, Dean Stockwell crooning the number in a freakish lip-synch as Frank Booth rampages in front of him changes the meaning of the song forever -- this a decade before Quentin Tarantino became famous for doing much the same thing. However, it's Badalamenti's original music that's the most powerful and shattering. Lynch, who'd been listening to a great deal of Shostakovich while writing the script for Blue Velvet, used the Russian composer as an earmark to guide Badalamenti, who ended up incorporating quotes from the 15th Symphony into the finished material, but while it has elements of the great Russian musical themes of beauty and tragedy, the score is all Badalamenti -- soaked in atmosphere, powerful but never overpowering, and deeply strange without ever calling excess attention to itself. Combined with the wonderful classic songs on the soundtrack, it makes for a great, if always slightly unsettling, listening experience.

BEST TRACKS: Curiously, due to copyright issues, some versions of the Blue Velvet soundtrack don't feature any version of the title song -- Vinton's or anyone else's. However, it's easy to find one that does, and it combines with Roy Orbison's otherworldly "In Dreams" for one of the most stunning one-two punches in the history of pop on film. Amongst Badalamenti's original score compositions, the standout is "Mysteries of Love", his collaboration with partern Julee Cruse, which replaced (and improved upon) "Song to the Siren". Also noteworthy is the mysterious, brooding main title track, the elegaic "Blue Star", and the screeching, slashing, almost atonal "Jeffrey's Dark Side", which recalls Bernard Herrmann at his best.

OST: "Psycho"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Bernard Herrmann was one of the most legendary film composers of all time. One of his first major compositions was the score to The Devil and Daniel Webster, in which he showed both his innovative approach and his playfully subversive nature by by double-tracking a violin to play a jaw-droppingly complex rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel", and then claiming the solo was the work of a teenaged violin prodigy he'd discovered. He composed a number of memorable movie scores over the years, from the towering, epic sweep of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (his very first project) to the moody, dark tension of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (his very last). But it is with Alfred Hitchcock's name that Herrmann's will be foreever linked.

Hitchcock knew he was playing with dynamite when he made Psycho. The movie that buried noir and ushered in the age of the maniacal slasher was a risky venture for him on many levels: with its shocking violence, infamous mid-film twist, and horror plot, it was a massive deviation from the big-budget hit mysteries that had made so much money for his studio bosses in the late 1950s. Fearing disaster, Hitch -- who was nothing if not determined -- tried as much as possible to make the film on the cheap, and he wasn't afraid to capitalize on personal relationships to do so. Some stories have it that he strong-armed Herrmann, who had turned in incredibly monumental work for him before on such movies as The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, and Vertigo; but Herrmann wasn't one to be cowed so easily. He agreed to work on the soundtrack for Psycho at less than his normal pay, but Herrmann -- a rarity amongst film composers insofar as he retained near-total creative control over the final product of his labors -- made it clear he was going to do things his way. Most famously, he ignored Hitchcock's foremost prerogative when writing the score: the director insisted that, for maximum shock value, there be total silence on the soundtrack during the murders, most especially the infamous shower scene.

Luckily for generations of moviegoers, Bernard Herrmann chose to completely disregard this directive, and, when Hitchcock raised a stink, Herrmann insisted that he view the scene with the music he'd written intact. If Hitchcock didn't agree that the music improved the scene instead of distracting from it, then he'd relent. Hitchcock agreed, and, as has been every one of the tens of millions who have seen Psycho since then, he was blown away by how perfect was the juxtaposition of music and visuals. Since then, it's become one of the true classics in the history of movie scoring; Herrmann's brilliant decision to use only the string section of his orchestra for the music, with the only low-end being provided by bass and cello, was inspired and set the standard for high-pitched, shrieking instrumentation as the default for horror films. It also spawned hosts of imitators and 'tributes' over the years (and none proved more determined than Brian De Palma, who, mirroring his own obsession with Hitchcock, used subtle variants of the music in both Carrie and Dressed to Kill). Very few soundtracks in motion picture history so reflect the personality of their creator than does Bernard Herrmann's work -- unnerving, brilliant, raw, and determined -- than does Psycho.

BEST TRACKS: It's impossible to even discuss Psycho -- the movie or the soundtrack -- without discussing the music from the notorious shower scene. (It's called "The Murder", by the way.) As other critics have mentioned, it's almost unfair to call it a piece of music; it's just the sound made by every string section in every orchestra in the world as they warm up. And yet by placing it in context, Herrmann transforms this ordinary sound into one of the most chilling pieces of music in history, and sets the tone for hundreds, maybe thousands, of future citematic murders. Not bad for a piece of music that's barely a minute long; and it's even more astonishing when you consider that, on an album of dozens of short pieces, it virtually defines the score's less-is-more aesthetic by being one of the longer pieces on the album! Still, this wouldn't be one of the greatest film scores of all time if it was simply one minute-long piece of genius; there's much more to love here, including the memorable title track ("Prelude", in which eerie swirls of strings leap and tangle with one another over the unforgettable Saul Bass title sequence), which is so well-loved that Stuart Gordon lifted it wholesale for the opening to Re-Animator. Other strong tracks include the tragic, melancholy "The Body"; the creepy, tense "Cabin 10", and the wailing, cacaphonous avant-gardeism of "The Cellar". A must-have score from a movie where almost all participants were at the tops of their games.

OST: "Once Upon a Time in the West"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Sergio Leone had to be talked into making Once Upon a Time in the West. He'd moved on; he wanted to make movies in America, and he'd already begun pre-production on a gangster epic he hoped would do to the golden age of crime pictures what he'd been doing to the golden age of westerns for a decade. But a lot of producers had made a lot of money off of his so-called 'spaghetti westerns', and they wanted to make more. So they dangled such a big paycheck in front of him that, in 1968, he agreed to go back to the well one more time. He was going to finally fulfill his threat to totally dismantle the western and rebuild it from the ground up; and he wasn't going to do it without Ennio Morricone.

Though he scored a number of Leone's best films and came to be associated with the 'sound of spaghetti', Morricone is largely still known to American audiences as the author of the memorable main theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And while that's a pretty strange piece of music in terms of traditional film scores, it doesn't even begin to give you an idea of what a truly wierd musician Morricone really is. Capable at any given moment of unleashing nearly cacaphonous serial music, floods of distorted, ultra-loud guitars, haunting minimalist refrains, bizarre and atonal free-jazz sounds, shrieking electronic tones, or simple and elegant variations on traditional folk music. Such wide and varied sounds are in ample evidence in the composer's vast catalogue; many of his best (and strangest) pieces of music were composed as soundtrack music for long-forgotten Italian movies, but put all together in one pot, a service performed by American avant-garde aficionado and punk vocalist Mike Patton on his indispensable Crime and Dissonance series, they represent one of the most restless imaginations of any contemporary musician. With Ennio Morricone, you knew you'd be getting something of quality, but you might not have any idea whatsoever what it was going to be. Such was the case with Once Upon a Time in the West.

Amazingly -- especially given what a total triumph the final product turned out to be -- Morricone's score for Once Upon a Time in the West almost didn't get used. He wrote its major pieces to fit an early version of the script, and by the time the memorably bleak western started filming, the plot -- as well as the cast and much of the action -- had changed and Morricone was no longer available to rewrite. But Sergio Leone, who was always a good judge of talent, knew what a winner he had on his hands with the stellar score, and did something nearly unprecedented in the history of motion picture production: he changed scenes and tailored the action on screen to fit the parts of the soundtrack that had already been recorded. This wasn't always easy, as Morricone's passion at the time was for incorporating ambient environmental sound into his music, and many of the tunes contained strange, if effective, bits of background noise that were hard to fit to the action on screen; but Leone kept at it, and the result is one of the most perfect blends of film and music of its decade.

BEST TRACKS: The soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West -- which, for all its perfection as a compliment to the film, works very well on its own as a listening experience -- starts out with three of the most powerful, precise and stunning pieces of music in all of motion picture scores. The opening theme, named for the film's title, is a glorious, majestic piece of symphonic music, evoking the wide-open spaces of the West and invoking pure Americana as it echoes the intertwining themes of Charles Ives. The second track, "As a Judgment", brings us some perfect gunfight music, ramped up to a maximum of chaotic tension with vibed-out, reverberating, echoey, feedback-driven guitars whose distortion carries in them a mood of hate. And the third, "Farewell to Cheyenne", is a pitch-perfect conjuration of traditional cowboy movie music, with its propulsive percussion and wailing harmonica. The whole score is simply fantastic -- other great tracks include the 12-tone masterpiece "The Transgression", the eerily heroic "Man with a Harmonica", and the subversively folksy "Jill's America" -- but it starts off with nine minutes of utter perfection.

OST: "Cabaret"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Appearing at a time when it seemed the big-screen musical was an outdated relic of the past, Broadway veteran Bob Fosse's clever and accomplished Cabaret caught all of Hollywood by surprise. Sophisticated, playful, adult and remarkably well-made, Cabaret was in, but not of, the classical musical tradition; and while it had many pillars of strength -- outstanding lead performances, rock-solid source material, sure-handed direction, and a unique approach to storytelling -- it wouldn't have been the huge critical and commercial success it became without its dazzling array of songs.

John Kander and Fred Ebb's musical had come along relatively late in the day, and though it proved extremely popular, there were plenty of reasons to suspect that it might not be an immediate success as a motion picture. Its homosexual subtext -- drawn directly from the autobiographical writings of Christopher Isherwood that inspired the play -- and its attempts to fold an energetic romantic comedy into a grim story about psychologically desperate people trying to find happiness during the rise of the Nazi party were controversial and were likely to draw criticism from all quarters if not handled with great care. Facing these issues as well as time constraints, at least seven songs were cut from the Broadway play, leaving only a dozen to make the transition to the big screen. New characters would be introduced, old ones would be cut, and the lead role of Sally Bowles was to be Americanized in order to accomodate the actress who would be playing her: Kander and Ebb's favorite collaborator, Liza Minelli. Fosse made the decision to play up, rather than down, the sense of doomed decadence that pervaded the Berlin social demimonde in those days, and to film in start, contrasting, and muted colors, giving what was a widescreen musical extravaganza a justifiable noir feel. Any of these factors might have sunk the production, but in all, they seemed to perfectly capture the tone, experience and mood of its audience of the day, who helped make it a runaway success upon release.

In what was then an extremely unsual move, only two of the lead actors -- Minelli as the cabaret singer Sally Bowles and the incredibly charismatic (and unnamed) Master of Ceremonies played by Joel Grey -- sing songs. (The rest are assayed by relatively minor characters.) Part of the reason this works so well is because of what Kander and Ebb called 'what if sessions': firm believers in a strong collaboration between author and actor, they would have frequent brainstorming meetings with Minelli and Grey to determine how the two wanted to handle their characters and what emotions and information they hoped to convey in any given song. Kander and Ebb would then would with Fosse themselves to tailor the music and lyric towards that goal. The result is an often seamless soundtrack that never once appears artificial or arbritray, as was often the problem in traditional musicals, but seems to grow organically out of the characters' interactions with one another and their gradually dangerous surroundings. Now, some 35 years later, Cabaret still stands as one of the greatest musicals of its day.

BEST TRACKS: Liza Minelli's showstopper as Sally Bowles, "(Life is a) Cabaret", is justifiably the most famous song in the musical, and went on to become her signature number later in life. Her collaboration with Grey's Master of Ceremonies, "Money, Money", is the play's funniest song, a hilarious meditation on greed delivered in a perfectly over-the-top evocation of pure camp. And while it's hard to pick a single track to stand for the best of Grey's sinister but playful MC, "Two Ladies" and "If You Could See Her" (with Gray dueting with a man in an ape suit!) are two of our favorites.

Poster-Modernism

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The great thing about movie writing is that there's so much to love. Since film is the most intensely collaborative of media, a good move can be appreciated on any number of levels, and even a bad movie might have something to recommend it. That's because a movie isn't one thing, it's dozens: it's a screenplay, a collection of performances by actors, a moving picture, a trailer, a logo, a soundtrack, a trailer, and a dozen other artistic endeavors all assembled into a single production. As you can tell from other Screengrab features like our "OST" soundtrack reviews and Paul Clark's trailer reviews, we love the process of looking at a film not only as a whole, but as the discrete elements that make up that whole. Which is why we're very enthusiastic about "Poster Service", a new feature on the Guardian's film blog.

Enlisting the aid of Paul Rennie, the head of the graphic design department at St. Martins College, the "Poster Service" series takes a look at some famous (their first installment was Gone with the Wind) and not-so-famous (this week features Pink String and Sealing Wax, an Ealing comedy that was a hit in Britain but little-known elsewhere) in an attempt to discern, from a designer's perspective, why some movie posters work and some don't. Referring to the Selznick classic, Rennie observes that "the title of Gone with the Wind immediately communicates an association with the genteel sophistication of the southern U.S. Against a backdrop of the Civil War, the associations of [its] typography alluded to a more luxurious and sensual environment than that of the WASPish north. It's just right for a particular kind of passion romance." Of Pink String and Sealing Wax, he notes, "the Ealing film posters are remarkable on two points. Firstly, and against all the odds, they are recognisable works of art by artists whose work extends beyond the usual concerns of graphic design, cinema and fine art. Secondly, they embrace and give passion to the political dimension of satire and social-realism -- especially rare in cinema."

We're pretty excited to see where Rennie goes from here -- and frankly, we're just as interested, if not more so, in what he judges to be bad poster art than we are the good stuff. What about you, Screengrab readers? What are your favorite, and least favorite, movie posters?

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Back to the Drawing Board

OST: "The Pink Panther"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In the past, we've discussed here in the OST feature how soundtracks often happily combine musicians and filmmakers at the height of their powers in a collision of sound and vision that justifies and enhances the existence of both soundtrack and film. In some of these entries -- especially Nashville, Blade Runner, and Fight Club -- we've seen composers and directors perfectly suited for each other, starting great partnerships or merely cementing a similar vision that would inform their work for years to come. Today, though, we're going to look at an excellent soundtrack that's atypical for both participants: a film score done by a great composer working out of his element and a skilled director whose career would, follwing this film, go into a long, slow decline.

The Pink Panther series marked director Blake Edwards at the peak of his powers. While he would never be considered a great director, he at least would develop, largely on the strength of the early installments of the series, as a competent and sure-handed director of comedies, and with the first of the series -- appropriately named The Pink Panther -- he was at his very best, giving the movie exactly the style, atmosphere and pace that it needed. It's not Citizen Kane by anyone's measure, but it's light-years away from the dross that he would later helm in movies like A Fine Mess, Skin Deep and Switch. Henry Mancini, likewise, was a titan of film music, but it was largely through professionalism and dedication than brilliance or inspiration. He had a reputation as a good, fast worker, capable of quick turnarounds of impressively hook-laden scores; while he may never have taken your breath away, he certainly fought you for its attention. Mancini had an extensive background in jazz, but it was never his speciality; he was too tempted by the sounds of '50s pop and exotica to nail down anything like an authentic sound. If anything, he tended to gravitate towards what was known then as "exotic", a sort of symphonic jazz-lite tinted with hints of what would later be called "world music" and heaping helpings of cheese. He too would decline in power as the decades dragged on, but here, both of them hit their strides something fierce, resulting in a widely hailed comedy classic that produced one of the most memorable figures in cinema, and a soundtrack whose main theme is one of the most recognizable tunes in movie history.

While the soundtrack to The Pink Panther is a mighty fine listen on its own -- cue it up at your next swingin' bachelor pad party and offer everone a round of pink squirrels, you wannabe -- it works best in the context of the film, where, as a unified whole, the combination of music and visual creates an absolutely perfect evocation of Europe at the tail end of the Swingin' Sixties. Listening to it in full, as the immediately remembered but somehow never overworn main theme swings its way into your soul, lets you forget about what comes next and remember the days when Peter Sellers was young, alive and full of prome, Henry Mancini wasn't a shadow of his former self grinding out TV hackwork for the paychekc, and Blake Edwards actually knew how to direct funny movies. Doesn't seem that long ago now, does it?

BEST TRACKS: Of course, "The Pink Panther Theme" -- signifying on screen the appearance not of Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, but of David Niven's infamous jewel thief, the Phantom -- is one of the certified classics of cinema soundtracks. Its slow, sinister build into a rip-roaring lounge jazz number is unforgettable from the first time you hear it, and seems to lose not an ounce from repetition. But there's more here than just that famous number: take a listen for "Meglio Stasera (It Had Better Be Tonight)", a swinging vocal number with a Continental feel written for young starlet Fran Jeffries, which went on to be a big hit for crooner (and frequent Mancini collaborator) Johnny Mercer. There's also the oddly named "Shades of Sennett", a rollicking piano number used in the movie's final chase number, that conjures British comedies and American honky-tonk blues -- but rarely the silent movie era it seems to predict in the title!

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OST: Blade Runner

OST: "Batman Begins"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The Dark Knight is currently smashing box office records with the same alacrity that the Joker makes a pencil disappear, and as with the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie, its soundtrack is provided by two veteran industry hands in the person of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer. While it seems like this time around, their work was heavily influenced by the seething, screeching, atonal score that Jonny Greenwood wrote for There Will Be Blood, it's still highly reminiscent of the work they did for Batman Begins.

The two had their work cut out for them when they accepted the assignment from Warner Brothers to score the rebooting of the Batman franchise. DC Comics' famed vigilante already had a number of memorable pieces of music associated with him: from the jaunty, swinging theme song to the campy '60s TV show composed by jazz veteran Neal Hefti to the brooding, chaotic main theme written by Danny Elfman for the first Tim Burton Batman (which later became the theme music for the celebrated Batman animated series), and even Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus have been associated with the hero in the past. Their goal when putting together a new score for Nolan's reboot of the franchise was to create something that conjured the proper tone of darkness and struggle without too obviously drawing on what had come before. Howard, whose previous work has included The Prince of Tides and The Sixth Sense, took charge of the main theme and the loftier passages, while Zimmer, the German-born composer who created the eerie score for The Ring as well as the memorable soundtrack to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, worked on the incidental music and quieter, more sinister passages. It was imperative that they create something that enhanced the brooding, bleak tone of Batman Begins while never threatening to overwhelm the action on screen or make the psychological development of the characters too obvious.

Happily -- if you can use that word to apply to something so grim-sounding -- they were successful. The soundtrack, while it lacks any songs as immediately catchy as Hefti's famous Batman theme or as universally recognizable as Elfman's, perfectly captures the tone and feel of the Christopher Nolan vision of Batman. The tracks (all of which are cleverly named for various species of bats) exactly invoke the right move, from the slow, magisterial main theme to the ponderous, somber music that accompanies the destruction of Wayne Manor to the mesmerizing, atonal shrieks that go along with the first attacks by the hideous Scarecrow. It's not quite strong enough to stand entirely on its own, except perhaps as mood music for a Halloween party, but it's still a terrific piece of scoring that illustrates the right way to make music and image mesh.

BEST TRACKS: "Verspertilio", the song that opens the film and the movie, shows how the main theme to a Batman film doesn't necessarily need to be bombastic or hummable to work well. "Molossus", which is the music by which the villainous Scarecrow terrifies his subjects, is both fitting and instantly recognizable thanks to its out-of-control slithering strings. And the climactic battle scene is accompanied by "Corynorhinus", which adeptly combines Howard's trademarked heavy, echo-laden piano chords and Zimmer's crushing percussion and taste for non-western tonal dynamics.

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OST: Enter the Dragon

OST: "This is Spinal Tap"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Song parodies are tricky business. Done well, they're delightful, working on their own terms musically, delivering on the joke, and rewarding the listener for spotting the various musical and comedic references. Done poorly, they're about the lowest form of music there is. One of the reasons that the ouevre of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer works so well (and here we include This is Spinal Tap, which, although directed by Rob Reiner, was written by the three performers in much the same way that the later, Guest-directed films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind would be) is that they have some degree of genuine affection for the medium they're skewering. If Guest and company simply despised heavy metal, their parody would fall flat -- their unfamiliarity with or contempt for the music would result in unconvincing musical numbers, and their lack of feeling for the characters and the milieu would come across as patronizing rather than funny. It's an undying tribute to how successful their parody truly was -- and how deeply it comes across as both affectionate and mocking -- that amongst actual heavy metal musicians, This is Spinal Tap is treated with the kind of reverence normally saved for people who play it completely straight. The movie gets it just right, and real metal musicians know it.

One shouldn't minimize Reiner's contribution to the film -- he's a much more technically sure-handed director than Guest, and he did provide some of the funnier lyrics to the fictional group's songs -- but it's never hard to figure out, from the delightfully offhand, improvised quality of much of the dialogue to the fact that Guest, McKean and Shearer not only wrote all the music, but performed it themselves without the aid of the usual ringers, who's responsible for Spinal Tap's success. In a bizarre testament to the power of successful comedy, the soundtrack to This is Spinal Tap -- which, after all, is a movie about a comically incompetent heavy metal band -- became a huge success. Many of those who bought the soundtrack album no doubt did so as a goof, merely to remember the mocking songs of this groundbreakingly awful British hard rock outfit with the constantly rotating drummers. But many more bought it because, intended as a joke or no, these were damn good songs, written by damn good performers, who may have meant them to be insulting, but didn't do so from a position of ignorance. How good were they? So good that punk legend Mark E. Smith of the Fall lifted the riff from "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" in its entirety for his own "Athlete Cured". So good that, when you take into account official releases and fan-created bootlegs, the fictional Spinal Tap has more records available than a lot of really good heavy metal bands that actually exist. So good that the aforementioned "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" is something of a heavy metal classic despite its jokey genesis, and even appears in the video game Guitar Hero II alongside such genuinely legendary songs as "Freebird", "War Pigs" and "Billion Dollar Babies". And so good that the soundtrack itself, almost unique among movies in the musical spoof genre, is strong enough to stand on its own detached from the movie: if you have any affinity at all for the classic heavy metal sound, these are songs you're going to sing along to on your iPod even if you know, deep in your hard-rockin' heart, that they're really jokes at your expense.

BEST TRACKS: Aside from the indispensible "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight", with its merciless bassline and barely legal teen-queen lyrics, there's at least half a dozen stone classics on this soundtrack, even if they contain the seeds of their own destruction: "Big Bottom", the classic ode to fat fannies, has parazlyzingly funny lyrics to go along with its monster hook; "Hell Hole" is a tremendously catchy screamer with New Wave of British Heavy Metal influences so strong you can easily see Rob Halford belting it out instead of McKean's David St. Hubbins; and the Motorheady "Heavy Duty" is crushingly appropriate from a band that sometimes takes to the stage with three bass players. And if for some reason you don't like metal -- like, say, you don't enjoy things that are fun -- there's also the ludicrous hippie anthem "(Listen to the) Flower People" and the dead-on early Beatles parody, "Gimme Some Money". Go, Nigel, go!

OST: "He Got Game"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Although there's no reason that a bad movie can't feature a good soundtrack -- after all, there's plenty of good movies that feature rotten ones -- we've tended to focus, here in the OST feature, on movies that have both. A soundtrack, after all, is meant as complementary; it's an enhancement to a good movie, not a substitute for one. Still, every once in a while, a movie rolls around where the product on screen is pretty lousy, or at the very least forgettable, but which provides us with a soundtrack or score that will provide enjoyment years after anyone's forgotten what the movie was even about. The relatively recent Hollywood trend of propagating otherwise mediocre would-be hit movies with pop songs -- often by bands under contract with the studio's parent company -- has been particularly helpful in this regard, as it can ensure that the filmmakers will be able to recoup at least some of the losses they took from no one going to see the movie from those same people deciding to take a flyer on the soundtrack, because at least it has that one good song on it by Sevendust or whoever.

Which is not to say that Spike Lee's movie on the wicked world of college basketball, He Got Game, is a terrible movie. It's not even a terrible Spike Lee movie. It's just not a great movie. A skillful performance by Denzel Washington gets cancelled out by a pretty dismal one by real-life basketball star and non-actor Ray Allen; a skillful script about a subject of genuine interest is scuttled by one too many over-the-top scenes, and -- surprisingly, given Lee's love of basketball and the presence of genuine NBA stars in the cast -- the sports action scenes generally fall somewhat flat. However, the soundtrack definitely has emerged as a much more worthwhile endeavor than the movie. Originally conceived by Spike and Public Enemy frontman Chuck D. as a straightforward soundtrack to the film, PE's He Got Game eventually emerged as an entire and distinct album by the revolutionary rap group -- and one which came at a time when many critics had written them off as a thing of the past. Taking the thematic elements of the film (basketball, family life, big money, and the temptations of being successful and black) as jumping-off points for their usual firebrand political concerns, Chuck and his crew crunched their lyrics down over the baddest beats they'd used since Fear of a Black Planet -- more stripped down and minimalist than their old Bomb Squad production work, but perfectly suited to the material, and timely insofar as they were heavily influenced by the dense East Coast hardcore style pioneered by the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and others. Although they'd never recapture the groundbreaking immediacy and power of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy -- fronted by a then 40-year-old Chuck D who sounded as furious as ever -- proved that they were still a going concern; the Bomb Squad proved that there was more to their sound than just the busy collage-making that gained them such fame in the late 1980s; and Spike Lee proved that, even with his lesser projects, he was still capable of inspiring those who worked with him to hit new heights. Film and hip-hop have been together since the rap genre was invented, and it's often been a rocky relationship, but rarely has a hip-hop soundtrack so complimented, dominated, and eventually surpassed a movie than in He Got Game.

BEST TRACKS: The track most remembered from the He Got Game soundtrack is the title song, noteworthy for the catchy hook which straightforwardly samples the hook from Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth". But in a lot of ways, it was one of the weaker tracks on the album, overly simplistic and with lyrics that didn't do a strong enough job of selling the hook as relevant to a young black audience. Far stronger, however, are many of the less celebrated tracks: "Unstoppable", which finally pairs Boogie Down Productions' KRS-One with his chief rival from the 1980s, Chuck D, and makes us wish that they'd been collaborating all along; the cutting, incisive and insightful "Politics of the Sneaker Pimps"; the perennially underrated Flavor Flav showcases (the raucous party anthem "Shake Your Booty" and the sinister, insinuating "Is Your God a Dog?"); the nasty, plodding "Super Agent", which, with its rattling percussion and taunting background vocals, wouldn't have seemed out of place on Fear of a Black Planet; and, perhaps best of all, the powerhouse "What You Need is Jesus", which starts off with a mocking Charles Barkley saying "Hallelujah, Jesus, hallelujah!" to the movie's title character and goes on to feature Chuck D kicking some of his fiercest rhymes in a decade.

OST: "Superfly"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:30:00 GMT

When Entertainment Weekly chose Curtis Mayfield's stunning soundtrack to the 1972 blaxploitation classic Superfly as one of the top ten soundtracks of all time, they referred to it as "a textbook case of a soundtrack that artistically dwarfs the film that spawned it". We're not sure we'd go as far as to say 'dwarfs' -- Gordon Parks' film is not without its merits (including some good performances, a real sense of moral tension and ambiguity, and some swell photography), especially when compared with other films of its sort. But there's no denying that the combination of music and lyrics to be found on this release, on his own Curtom Records label, represent a high point in Curtis Mayfield's already-stellar career and will probably stand as an all-time great of 1970s funk and soul music long after the movie's artistic merits have been forgotten. It's an album that belongs on any list of all-time great soundtracks, to be sure, but also on a list of the very best records of all time.

Intended as a combination soundtrack and score to the Gordon Parks film, Superfly also functions as a sort of concept album on its own. The lyrics retell the story that takes place in the movie, in Mayfield's own words; in the hands of someone less talented, this would have been a disaster, coming across as either cheesy or pretentious. But Mayfield's wise, sensitive storytelling gets it all just right, presenting a much more morally complex story than even the movie dares to tell and spelling out the essential tragedies of its characters in his smooth, insinuating soul tenor. The music is likewise unbeatable: a perfect transition from the smooth, hopeful soul of his earlier work (both alone and as a member of the Impressions) and the raw funk that would come to characterize black music later in the decade. It's marked by lovely piano riffs, catchy horns, solid bass and drum work, and of course, Mayfield's unmistakable waka-waka guitar. The movie (financed at least in part by Gordon Parks' dentist) wasn't expected to make much money, and neither was the soundtrack, but both proved to be runaway successes: the soundtrack album produced two million-selling singles which not only gave Mayfield a huge post-Impressions payday, but assured his financial stability for the remainder of the decade as he was given more and more soundtrack work. It's a rare soundtrack that can be appreciated solely on its own merits, distinct from the action of the film that inspired it; but much more than this, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly almost seems to be the score to an another, better movie altogether: it stands alone and succeeds not only for what it is, but as something better than it was ever intended to be.

Due to the runaway popularity and vast influence of the Superfly soundtrack (it's probably the most heavily sampled album on 1980s and 1990s rap singles outside of the collected works of James Brown), it's been issued in a number of formats. If you can, seek out the 1997 Rhino Records 25th anniversary collection, which features demo versions of the songs, additional selections from the underrated score, radio spots for the movie, and an excellent interview with Curtis Mayfield.

BEST TRACKS: Of course, the most recognizable track from the Superfly soundtrack is the devastatingly catchy title track, with its powerful, streetwise beat combined with Mayfield's knowing vocals and a nagging, insistent, unforgettable horn hook. It would be hard to argue that it's not also the best track on the album, but if anything can compete for that title, it has to be the phenomenal "Pusherman", with its nasty, ghetto-lean lyrics, sinisterly subtle percussion, and unstoppable bassline. "Freddie's Dead", a moving lament for one of the movie's most memorable characters, was also a monster hit, and has aged well -- its sneering, catchy guitar line, simple but effective vocal hook, and powerful drum riff has made it fodder for many samples and cover versions. These are the best, and the best-known, tracks on the album, but don't forget lesser-known jewels like the elegant orchestral soul -- tinged with Latin and gospel elements -- of "No Thing on Me (Cocaine Song)"; the stark, street-savvy urban drama of "Little Child Runnin' Wild", and, from the score, the propulsive, jazz-funk masterpiece "Junkie Chase". A must-own album by any standard.

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OST: Enter the Dragon

OST: "South Park - Bigger, Longer and Uncut"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Most critics expected, when the anarchic, devotedly vulgar Comedy Central cartoon hit the big screen, that it would be pretty funny and remarkably foul-mouthed. They were right on both counts, but what few people expected is that it would also be unexpectedly profound (or, well, as profound as a movie featuring Satan and Saddam Hussein as feuding gay lovers could be), with a message about censorship that was more practical than self-righteous, and that its parodic sensibilities would be so remarkable spot-on. In fact, given the direction that the series took -- becoming increasingly more dogmatic and quite a bit more obvious in its political point-making -- it's easy to see the 1999 film as the pinnacle of the South Park experience, where everyone involved really hit their stride.

This is especially true with the movie's exceptionally enjoyable soundtrack. Rather than going for a more contemporary feel, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in conjunction with Hollywood music vet Marc Shaiman -- decided to go whole hog with a big-screen musical parody, tossing everything from Disneyesque ballads of longing to amped-up schoolyard jingles that play like something out of a Busby Berkeley musical to battle hymns juiced with triumphal orchestral swells to big-screen Oscar bait weepers made of 100% processed cheese. The remarkable thing about them was how perfectly the parodies worked: so well, in fact, that the obnoxious bigot's anthem "Blame Canada" actually got itself nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, leaving the show's producers with the difficult question of how to stage a musical number featuring language that wasn't allowed to be heard on television. (They came up with the elegant solution of having Robin Williams sing the live version of "Blame Canada" during the Oscar ceremony, and he's capable of draining the funny out of anything, so nobody complained.) The songs on the soundtrack are pitch-perfect parodies; if you strip away the relentlessly filthy language and the subversive bits of the lyrics, there's almost nothing whatever to set them apart from the cheeseball Elton John melodies in a first-tier animated Disney "modern" classic. It's the pouring on of tons of formal sincerity -- and then the total upending with gobs and gobs of adolescent toilet irony -- that makes the whole soundtrack work so remarkably well.

(One caveat: the praise we heap on the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut soundtrack applies only to the original songs featured in the main story of the movie. The "bonus tracks" on the album, mostly rap and metal reworkings of songs in the film, are largely reprehensible, bottom-drawer, 100% filler. There's some fun to be had with a Violent Femmes cover of "I Can Change", and it's amusing for exactly one listen to hear Rush's Geddy Lee sing "O Canada", but other than that, everything after track 12 can be safely deleted from your hard drive.)

BEST TRACKS: The wildly jolly, almost Vaudevillian show tune that is "Uncle Fucka" -- a horribly profane ditty sung by the Canadian cartoon duo Terrance & Phillip that goes several light-years beyond gratuitous -- gets things rolling early on. Eric Cartman's rendition of a song previously rendered on the small screen as an extemporaraneous schoolyard taunt, "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch", is served up with all the gusto of a Broadway show-stopper, complete with novelty international choruses. "Eyes of a Child" is such a thick, fragrant slice of bogus emotional cheesiness, it's easy to see Michael McDonald crooning it on a lite-rock FM station in your dentist's office, which makes it all the more amazing that they actually got Michael McDonald to sing it here; and if nothing else, "I Can Change" is the only time in cinematic history in which we see former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein crooning a jaunty ditty in order to seduce the Prince of Darkness into going to bed with him. So far, at least.

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