How the soundtrack tells the story
Horror movies make the mundane mortifying, and the same goes for horror soundtracks. How many times have you heard a child’s twinkling music box help build tension in a scary bedroom scene? A song typically known to soothe instead warns of impending death. Its syrupy tones and lightheartedness are undermined and rebranded. Think about how... Continue Reading →
Pop songs in film, if chosen well, can become inseparable in meaning from a film’s text. One of the ways selecting a song can be tricky is when the song comes with layers of historical or socio-cultural significance already baked into it. A song could evoke the artist’s personality or a historical event to which... Continue Reading →
To this day, that opening scene in THE MATRIX is an all-timer. The bullet-time camera freezing Trinity in the air (one year before the airborne CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON). Her unnatural launching up a wall before killing a room of policemen. Leaping across the street on rooftops. All leaving us with one thought: That must... Continue Reading →
"A good song has the ability to continue to reveal itself to you long after you've actually written it. This one's pretty good [for that]." - Nick Cave to Q Magazine in 2007. Like a permanent resident of the Overlook Hotel, a good song in a horror film can make it seem as if it's... Continue Reading →
Hockey on film has a surprisingly good record with pop music. Slap Shot has Maxine Nightingale’s “Right back where we started”, Goon has Sloan’s “Money City Maniacs”, Youngblood has The Supremes’ “Get Ready”, while D2: The Mighty Ducks has “Whoomp! There it is”. But 1995’s Sudden Death has virtually nothing to speak of on its... Continue Reading →
It's a myth that Filter's 1995 hit "Hey Man, Nice Shot" is about Kurt Cobain. It's about R. Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who was convicted of taking a bribe and who, before his sentencing, shot and killed himself on live TV in 1987. Dwyer insisted he was innocent and hoped to express how a... Continue Reading →
Perfectly average. That's the type of song playing in that type of van driving across that type of land in that type of movie. Average. Perfect. You probably remember the film TWISTER from 1996: the cow that twice flies across the screen, Helen Hunt's glorious hair, the drive-in movie complex playing THE SHINING before it... Continue Reading →
I needed to watch FRANCES HA like I needed to add to my student loan. That is to say I didn't want to watch FRANCES HA -- the subject matter still too close to my everyday. The subject a little too familiar. A 20-something who can't go out because drinks are too expensive, who dreams... Continue Reading →
"The guy is a goddamned used car salesman," says Tom Arnold's character. "More Than a Woman" by the Bee Gees is a drippy love song but the use of it in 1995's TRUE LIES is an act of winking brilliance. Bill Paxton's "Simon" is the fake spy, seducing Jamie Lee Curtis's "Helen" when she's bored... Continue Reading →
Tune Spotting 