Half-Masked

This one will be shorter than my Games Soundtrack list, I promise. But that’s mostly because I don’t see as many movies as I have played video games.

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The Shawshank Redemption:

Retrocrush.com SAYS they’re doing a list of the Greatest Movie Music Moments(I think Robert Berry is wee-bit full of shit however, as he’s been singing to that tune for a long time). Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of that list belonged to this movie. From the piano composition when Tim Robbins’ character is first introduced and integrated into the shattering prison-life, to the longing music accompanying Morgan Freeman’s character as he searches a countryside for a favour left by his friend, Thomas Newman’s soundtrack takes what is already great film and transformed it into a priceless artifact of the 1990’s. You also have an utterly perfect use of “If I Didn’t Care” by the Ink Spots, and “The Marriage of Figaro”.

It is not always “uplifting” music, nor does it have to be. But when it is, it fucking IS, in part because it is first a haunting score, that shows just how to close these characters are to being crushed between the walls provided to them, and the walls they’ve built for themselves. Redemption comes, but not always, and only barely.

COMPOSER: Thomas Newman

RECOMMENDED TRACKS: “New Fish”, “Compass And Guns”, “Zihuatanejo”, “So Was Red”, “The Shawshank Redemption”.

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The Dark Knight:

I’ve rarely heard such a visceral, powerful theme of sounds in a movie before. The things Hans Zimmer can do never cease to amaze me, and James Newton Howard isn’t exactly a liability here either with his gorgeous “Harvey-Two Face” theme. The Joker’s theme music alone is chaotic magnificence enough to validate buying the CD, and its influence is notable; his music seems to invade many of the other tracks in the score to show his presence.

I can’t even identify half of the sounds being used, but they’re assembled perfectly to get the feeling of terrible, escalating danger better than any overblown brass-orchestra treatment that we normally get in action movies.

Batsy’s new theme is terrific too, an effective send-off for the 2nd film(I like how there’s even a bit of a Vangelis feel to it). It’s not triumphant and uplifting like Danny Elfman’s, instead portraying a collapsing world struggling to stay standing, and at a grim cost that may just overshadow the reward of keeping things from falling apart.

COMPOSERS: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard

RECOMMENDED TRACKS: “Why So Serious”, “Harvey Two-Face”, “Aggressive Expansion”, “Watch The World Burn”, “A Dark Knight”.

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Batman Begins:

As much as I like The Dark Knight’s soundtrack, I love the music in Batman Begins. Whereas TDK’s is more about immediate danger, and a seething violent storm approaching Gotham, Batman Begins’ music focuses more on the tragedy of Bruce Wayne’s life, and the unfortunate state of Gotham City which he tries to improve in his own, strangely therapeutic way. That means it’s more about the characters, their pasts, their motivations, and their attempts to maintain the sanity of their world against odds they know are next-to-impossible to overcome on their own. That’s why there are few selections from the OST that would suit a car-chase scene.

But I LIKE that. In fact, I was disappointed that The Dark Knight only really had two or three songs devoted to these characters, instead of those same characters rushing to keep stuff from exploding. Here it’s the exact opposite. Most of the soundtrack is about these people’s fears, that their way of life has taken a slide into the muck and they may never be able to climb out. The only person who can help them now is a man who has nothing to lose by delving deeper into the waste to pull them out. And throughout, it begs the question: How much can Batman dirty himself to keep his city clean?

COMPOSERS: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard.

RECOMMEND TRACKS: The soundtrack plays out not so much like one giant song, but they still feel connected, like the musical equivalent of Voltron. And like Voltron, separating them into individual tracks would weaken it. So take your pick. There really is not a single wrong piece of music here.

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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within:

This one’s probably the roughest around the edges of the soundtracks listed here. While it’s clear that some parts of the music tend to drag on a bit to meet up with the action occurring on-screen, this is still one of my favourite soundtracks. It’s too bad that Nobuo Uematsu, the series’ infamous mainstay composer, didn’t contribute to it, but Elliot Goldenthaal’s compositions here really worked for me.

Sometimes there’s that overblown brass-orchestra wankery I mentioned earlier, but for the most part, the music communicates a world already conquered, and the conflict between sensibility and faith(except here the unthinking fanatic is on the side of science and technology, and the spiritual types are the ones pleading against damaging ignorance).

COMPOSER: Elliot Goldenthaal

RECOMMENDED TRACKS: “Zeus Cannon, “The Phantom Plains”, “Adagio and Transformation”, “The Kiss”, “The Dream Within”.

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Fantasia:

I totally get why some people are apprehensive about Disney movies. Most of the time they never amount to anything more than tremendously stupid eye-candy. But despite their flaws, I can’t bring myself to really despise their films. And Fantasia(the original, I haven’t seen 2000 so I couldn’t tell you either way about that one) isn’t just one of my favourite movie soundtracks, it’s probably my favourite movie, period. A breathtaking unison of music and animation without the awful, intelligence-insulting lyrics and singing. Watching and listening to it even on grainy old VHS leaves me amazed and stupefied every time.

It’s also probably the scariest thing Disney’s ever done. I’m not even talking about the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, either. The prehistoric sequence and even the opening act were the source of nightmares for me as a youngin’, and not much has changed since then. This also gives it the distinction of being the -awesomest- Disney movie ever(I would have enjoyed The Little Mermaid a lot more if it featured two dinosaurs brutally killing each other, or demons and ghosts dancing around in an orgy of hellfire).

COMPOSERS: A lot.

RECOMMENDED TRACKS: A lot more.

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The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Howard Shore, you do damn-good work.

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~A.H.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.