Dec 22
This week’s FSotW is less of a tribute to a soundtrack than a general tribute to the music of the most acclaimed classical composer in the history of everything; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The 1984 movie based on his life received eight Oscars, and to this day people still quote it’s famous line, “Too many notes”. …
Jun 18
Two of my favourite things come together in this movie; Romantic-era Russian music and Woody Allen. Love & Death is a seventies satire on 18th century czarist Russia, full of glaring anachronisms, Napoleonic assassination plots and ridiculous philosophical debates, all rich fields for Allen’s surreal comedy (as well as an abundance of sexual innuendo that rivals …
May 07
Stanley Kubrick’s swansong Eyes Wide Shut, the so-called erotic thriller, perhaps more aptly described as a ‘psychological rape’ of a movie, was released in 1999 only a handful of days before the director’s death. In it, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise (who were married at the time of filming) play a couple who’s love and …
Apr 23
More a classical music compilation than a soundtrack, though some score is present, this selection focuses on the pieces Australian pianist David Helfgott performed at key points in his life. That is, his fictional life in the film Shine, anyway (though I would hope most of the music was chosen because the real Helfgott peformed …
Nov 28
How does one go about representing rape and ultra-violence with music? In 1971, your best bet would have been to use the strange and relatively new instrument called the synthesizer. This is exactly how Wendy Carlos (then Walter) created the score for Stanley Kubrick’s infamous Clockwork Orange, producing a harsh and hypnotic sound collage …
Oct 10
The most famous Vietnam war film doesn’t contain the meatiest soundtrack of the bunch, but certainly one of the most effective, in that it doesn’t fall into one of the two war film traps; 1) using barely any music at all (an all too easy, not to mention clichéd style), and 2) relying on contemporary, …
Sep 19
Set in the illustrious eighteenth century and detailing the exploits of an Irish peasant who, through gambling, fraud, and murder, works his way up into the English aristocracy, Stanley Kurbick’s 3-hour period drama Barry Lyndon is not a light-hearted film by any means. The score, which is solely compiled from pieces of music …