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The films that defined 2011

2011-12-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

The 11 'Almosts' of 2011

22. Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter)

Fantasy / 15 / 103 mins / Trailer

Norway gets a look-in with a spectacle film. That's what it is. The brilliant use of (a pretty darn good version of) Teddy Bear's Picnic in the UK trailer admits as much. The drama was slightly lacking the evenness to make the film cohere, but we wanted trolls and the CGI gave us more than what we hoped for.

Best scene: the crew are trapped in a cave by an unaware pack of trolls. One man sweats the night away as he admits he's Christian. Fee Fi Fo Fu...

21. Thor

Action; Sci-fi / 12 / 115 mins / Funny Trailer

Huge Marvel action-epic directed by... Kenneth Branagh? Genius decision, as Branagh's Shakespearience proved to be the ingredient that made Thor tick. But it isn't all tragedy and vociferating kings - some genuinely hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy balances everything out creating a huge spectrum of lightness and heaviness. Stunning CGI, too. And please check out the parody trailer if it's the last thing you do (link above).

Best scene: Thor demands to buy a horse at a petshop. Scene

20. Black Swan

Horror / 15 / 108 mins / Clip

The transformation from lovely mummy's ballet-princess to Swan Lake's dual-role dark seductress turns out to be a fairly disturbing one. It's been criticized for being one-note, which it is, but its a bewitching note at that. DoP Matthew Libatique uses deep blacks and virgin whites to create a stunning pallet and Clint Mansell deserves mention for his melding of original music with sampled bits of Stravinsky's own work. Unfortunately tainted with too lurid an exploration of female sexuality. Close your eyes.

Best scene: Nina's final transformation on stage in front of a rapturous audience as she twirls, sprouting black feathers, head raised with pride.

19. Meek's Cutoff

Western / PG / 104 mins / Trailer

Most westerns thrive on action and/or heightened tension, but this nice little gem has none of it. Directed by a woman and told from the women's perspective, a group of settlers led by their headstrong male guide along a short-cut on the Oregon Trail get lost in the barren landscape. Typical man! Not quite. Kelly Reichardt avoids the usual trappings of feminism and creates a beautifully atmospheric film that never bursts under its suspense, but knows what kind of film it is. Even the poster knows.

Best scene: the stand-off from the poster, as the settlers' lack of confidence in their guide finally shows itself. Scene

18. Warrior

Drama; Sport / 12 / 140 mins / Trailer

Two fighting films about two brothers working out their differences - The Fighter, and this. Which one wins? It's a matter of taste. What KO'd Warrior out in the final round were some lasting injuries in the first act when the background-setting drama intended to make us care, but the two estranged brothers were too stroppy and the meandering direction kept it's eyes down too much to think about a sense of humour. Warrior's strength comes in it's fight scenes, which pack one hell of a punch.. With fist-to-bone sound design like nothing heard before, the visceral action gets the movie jump-started and only then does the drama come to life. Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton are brilliant, with Hardy's performance and whole physique in particular showcasing a force to be reckoned with for his next fight... against Batman, in summer 2012!

Best scene: the inevitable, long-coming final match between the two brothers as they work out the hurtful past in front of millions using the full savage force of mixed martial arts.

17. X-Men: First Class

Action; Sci-fi / 12 / 132 mins / Trailer

Possibly the best entry into the X-Men saga, First Class benefits from assured direction with some eye-popping visuals, huge action set-pieces and some of England's best acting chops chewing it all up. The 1960s setting provides a better backdrop than present day for a story of minority tolerance and empowerment, and the Cuban Missile Crisis tie-in keeps the blood pumping even in the final minutes of the overlong run-time.

Best scene: Charles and Erik travel the world picking up willing, grateful mutants. They come across one particular man who has none of it. Scene

16. The Fighter

Drama; Sports / 15 / 116 mins / Trailer

What gave The Fighter the edge over Warrior was the willingness to use the fight scenes only when necessary. Sure they don't deliver the same brutality, but we've seriously bought into the underlying drama. Christian Bale shed the pounds and popped on a bald-toupee for David O. Russell's most conventional film yet, and bagged an Oscar. However it's the brilliant Wahlberg at the heart who pushes the rags-to-riches story through to its woopfastic finale.

Best scene: the final fight, of course. BLAMMO!

15. We Need To Talk About Kevin

Drama; Horror / 15 / 112 mins / Trailer

Tilda Swinton plays the mother of a boy in prison for going on a killing spree in his home and high school, as she comes to terms, in flashbacks, with how she might have been responsible for her sons actions. Family fun! Difficult subject matter has a way of attracting great talent, and Swinton's performance is Oscar-worthy indeed. What lingers, though, is the depiction of the mothers inexplicably unrequited affection for her Damien-esque son and the question of the root of his behaviour. With echos of The Omen and The Good Son, Kevin is highly intelligent film by way of contraception.

Best scene: Kevin's shocking act is finally revealed. He locks the doors to the gym and casually enters with a crossbow. Resonances of the 2011 Norway camp shooting abound.

14. True Grit

Western / 15 / 110 mins / Trailer

An old-school western in every aspect of production and direction, the Coen brothers take on Charles Portis' 1968 novel doesn't seem to fit into the repertoire of the greatest of 2011. However think of it as being among the Coen's repertoire and it fits very well. Soaring landscapes, off-beat characters, lines repeated for comedy, overweight men, and Jeff 'The Dude' Bridges clearly loving it. And let's not forget that amazing trailer with Johnny Cash threatening 'God's Gonna Cut You Down'. A refreshing break during Oscar season.

Best scene: hard to pick one, but for me it would be the final scene as the now 39 year old Mattie walks away from Rooster's grave to the sound of 'Leaning On The Everlasting Arms'.

13. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Action; Sci-fi / 12 / 105 mins / Trailer

Anyone who's seen Rupert Wyatt's phenomenal breakout film The Escapist will understand the achievement of the director who went from billboard-technician to esteemed blockbuster game-changer after just two films. Without doubt the surprise hit of 2011, ROTPOTA looks like a strange drama with a budget and CGI, it's only when we get a huge set-piece on the Golden Gate Bridge that Rupert Wyatt suddenly turbos into top gear and the film becomes a true blockbuster, and yet because we've been driven by the compelling story up to that point, the film doesn't buckle like most big-budget hits do.

Best scene: our main, once lovable ape Caesar, on the verge of revolution with his captive followers, is threatened to get back in his cage. He explodes his first word with a fit of rage - "NO".

12. The Guard

Comedy; Crime / 15 / 96 mins / Trailer

Directed by the brother of In Bruges director Martin McDonagh, John Michael McDonagh, The Guard has a lot to live up to, and unfortunately comparisons can't help but be made. But what it lacks in metaphor and poetry it certainly makes up for with enough of Bruges' Irish potty-mouthed comic shenanigans to make Father Ted blush. Gleeson is clearly having the time of his life as the small-town guard shaken up (or not) by drug-related naughtiness and the sharp dialogue flows from his mouth like a symphony. As well as reaching comic heights, the film digs some emotional wells with a touching ill-mother story. An overlooked gem!

Best scene: "I thought only black lads are drug dealers. And mexicans". Scene

The Top 11 of 2011

11. Take Shelter

Drama / 15 / 120 mins / Trailer

Curtis (Michael Shannon - mesmerizing) is so convinced by his dreams that an apocalyptic storm is coming that he spends all his time and savings building a storm shelter, at the expense of his relationships. Take Shelter makes potent use of CGI but never lets that overshadow its story, itself and exploration of manhood and its responsibilities. The nightmares certainly are deeply unsettling, but when they start to manifest in Curtis' reality, we're made to question, like him, exactly what is real and when will everything else become real. The pace slows a little too often, especially in the absence of the dreams, but the film in hindsight plays like a parable, rich in powerful imagery and driven by an outstanding central performance.

Best scene: Curtis sees his daughter peacefully staring out the window as rain pelts down outside. He slowly approaches the window to find a threatening figure staring back at her who then tries entering. In the middle of the chaos, the storm hits and... all the furniture hovers in the air?

10. Kill List

Thriller; Horror / 18 / 95 mins / Trailer

Toughie, this one, as it's a very hard film to 'like'. With hints of The Wicker Man, The Parallax View and various Tarantino films, Ben Wheatley's second feature is unrelenting in its grimness. What starts out as a hitman drama turns out via the use of three oppressive chapter cards named after the three targets ("THE PRIEST", "THE LIBRARIAN", "THE MP") to morph into a cult horror the brilliance of which we haven't seen since The Wicker Man. Notable for the Sheffield location and the terrifying atonal soundscape-score. Wheatley shows his precise skill during a dinner scene where the unbearable tension quietly seethes, and...

Best scene: ...a chase scene in some tiny underground tunnels, which happens at the point when the genre of the film shifts to outright horror. Here the tension isn't quietly seething, it's screaming in your face!

9. The King's Speech

Drama; History / 12 / 118 mins / Trailer

Even though feeling like contrived awards-fodder, The King's Speech sets itself apart from other Oscar-munchers by being warm and funny as well as artsy and stylish. It's a huge accomplishment to make the contemporary British public feel patriotic. Colin Firth deserved his prize, as did dir. Tom Hooper. However 50% of the Oscar for best score should have gone to Beethoven, whose 7th symphony perfected what could have been a very awkward finale.

Best scene: the pre-war speech nails it.

8. Moneyball

Drama; Sports / 12 / 133 mins / Trailer

The story of the Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (winner of the Best Name Award 2011) and his struggle to create a team by choosing the unwanted misfits of baseball via unorthodox means. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue fizzes, especially on Brad Pitts tongue and even more so on Jonah Hill's, who underplays his role beautifully. Filled with surprising touches and some staple sports-movie moments (fist-punching once again), Moneyball is an unconventional man-with-a-vision movie akin to Jerry Maguire although not quite as mawkish.

Best scene: can the team beat the world record and make 20 wins in a row?

7. Melancholia

Drama; Sci-fi / 15 / 136 mins / Trailer

Kirsten Dunst won best actress at Cannes for her performance of bride Justine succumbing to her severe depression at her wedding but finds peace when rogue planet Melancholia threatens to collide with Earth. The poetic prologue and thunderous climatic finale play out like an apocalyptic nightmare so real that when the screen fades to black, you'll know what the end of the world feels like. Made all the more lyrical by a single, repeating cue from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Most people would scorn the main body of the film because of Justine's relentless debilitating depression. Ironically I'd say to them "get over it"!

Best scene: the end of the world comes as one sister relaxes, the other sobs uncontrollably, both knowing that they have no control. Then that last shot as Melancholia roars closer and closer, destruction ensues, all the while the cinema shakes.

6. The Artist

Comedy; Romance / PG / 100 mins / Trailer

A silent movie star refuses to come to terms with the invention of talkies. The film's hook is the fact that it is itself a silent movie, although it becomes clear from the first moment that it's far more than that. The Artist is the feel-good masterpiece of a director who loves the art and history of cinema. Of course this is 2011, so there are brilliant tricks along the way and the film is tailored to todays audiences. Jolly good show!

Best scene: our star George Valentine starts to hear sound. Before he can realize it's a nightmare, the vacuum of sound that is his world is being attacked by everyday sounds: girls laughing, doors opening etc. The only sound that remains silent is his scream. Then he wakes up.

5. Senna

Documentary; Sport / 12 / 106 mins / Trailer

Senna, like its subject, three-time Formula One World Champion Ayrton Senna, races along at break neck speed. No floating head interviews, just footage after footage from his big-break in 1984 to his sudden death ten years later. One minute into the film and you fall in love with the man accounted all his success to God, fought for safety on the track for other drivers, and always drove for.

Best scene: director Kapadia shows Brazil in political turmoil and third-world desperation and Senna's first home victory in 1991 as the crowds in the stand go wild and come alight with hope. Senna's passion for his country comes across as the in-car camera shows him screaming so hard he passes out.

4. The Tree Of Life
Drama / 12 / 139 mins / Trailer

Which Nazi set the rule that said cinema has to communicate with clear diegetic sense? Why not make every frame speak for itself? Sure, there are no fist-pumping moments and I didn't cry once but Terrence Malick's film puts the troubles of ordinary life against the backdrop of all creation and all time, and humanity still stands the test as the greatest spectacle... plus there are dinosaurs!

Best scene: the creation. Scene

3. Hugo
Family; Adventure / U / 126 mins / Trailer

I want to like Martin Scorsese's films. I just can't. And the title of his latest didn't do much to help. So what the hell is Hugo about? A little boy? No. That would be boring. What then? That would be telling. What the film IS is a very affectionate love letter to the experience and history of cinema, particularly the silent era. Ring a bell? But where The Artist delivered a fine French drama set in America, Hugo delivers a cracking American adventure set in France. Which comes off better? Because the latter is so completely accessible, as well as aided by some fine 3D filming, I'd have to say Hugo.

Best scene: Hugo had seen L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat - one of the first films of a train pulling into the station, which famously frightened the life out of audiences back in 1896. Later he dreams of a train pulling into the station in Paris but not breaking and ploughing straight through and out the other end, frightening audiences in 2011. In 3D.

2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Thriller / 15 / 127 mins / Trailer

My movie stub didn't have enough room for the full title, so it read "Tinker, Tailor, Sold". The stub was being deep. You don't need to get past the intro of the film to be sold. TTSS is subtly riveting, beautifully lensed, and engrossingly acted. Every frame is filled with muted beiges, browns and greys as Alberto Iglesias' atmospheric jazz score fills the soundtrack. Nothing seems to be done with boldness, expect there's a tremor of tension expertly woven into the direction. The most mature film of the year, and the best performance of the year from Gary Oldman.

Best scene: MI6 agent George Smiley (oldman) recalls his first meeting with KGB adversary codename Karla. There's no fancy editing or flashbacks - the camera just holds on Oldman as he delivers the greatest performance of the year.

1. Drive
Thriller; Crime / 18 / 100 mins / Trailer

Drive was a film I approached apprehensively, knowing director Nicolas Winding Refn's penchant for ultra-violence. Even though it still delivered exactly that, it also told the greatest story with the greatest style. Ryan Gosling gave a pitch-perfect performance as the toothpick chewing, Eastwood-esque, unnamed 'Driver' - a rare male hero who: 1) doesn't HAVE to end up with the girl (see Transformers); 2) isn't a lovable geek who needs to discover courage (see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen); and 3) isn't the regular ugly, unemployed & suspicious of his girlfriend idiot you normally see as a 'hero' (see Transformers: Dark of the Moon). With retro cool and

Best scene: the opening getaway in which Driver skillfully navigates police cars and helicopters in the most ingenious ways, whilst listening to a Celtics vs Clippers NBA game on the radio. The first two minutes are here: Scene

The 'Others' of 2011

Honourable mentions:

Life In A Day

Another Earth

Midnight In Paris

Source Code

Animal Kingdom

50/50

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Bridesmaids

The 'Lindsey Lohan SHAME Award' goes to:

The Inbetweeners Movie

The 'Nazi Role-Model Award' goes to:

The Human Centipede: Full Sequence

The 'Inadvertant Cartoon Award' goes to:

Green Lantern

The 'Human Centipede Puke-Award' goes to:

New Year's Eve

The 'Give-Acting-A-Go Award' goes to:

Taylor Lautner for Abduction

I Heart #14... The Bourne Ultimatum's frantic fights

2011-07-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

Why do the fight and chase scenes work so well in The Bourne Ultimatum?

Scene 1:

Film-sound scholar David Sonnenschein recognizes that our eyes have a narrow focus, whereas our ears are capable of registering sound on an infinitesimally broader range. Our ears have an omnidirectional focus. Which is why this fight scene feels original. The ambience track suddenly falls as low as possible and the percussive score leaves us hanging. What we're left with is the foley and the grunts of the actors. But how is what we're perceiving SO intense? The foley is a complex symphony of percussive violence, each punch, swipe and fracture recorded and EQ'd with intimidating precision. But though the foley is panned well in the stereo field, it still remains narrow in our perception because we understand all of the sounds to be within the same 'category'. Not a single word is uttered during the scene, so 'encoded sound' (sounds which must be encoded by our brains - language, speech etc) is completely unaccounted for. Also, because there is no score, no 'embodied sound' (sound which needs no translation - music) is heard. Because no encoded or embodied sounds are heard, the spectrum is narrowed to the 'mid sounds' of punches, grunts, heavy breathing etc. Thus the audio is narrowed to a similar range as our perceptive vision (which itself is zoomed-in and restricted), and the intensity of the fight suddenly balloons out. It's the masterful pay-off of a 15-minute build.

Scene 2:

In the second scene we're presented with New York City - one of the densest population centres in the world. Because the chase expands from the confines of two men in one room, to a whole city against one man, the ambiences return to a higher level in the mix (sirens, civilians, horns, footsteps etc). The music score plays over the action, so embodied sound returns to the spectrum. And there is dialogue inbetween the epic destruction, so encoded sound returns to the spectrum. Our perceptive range of the audio is now omnidirectional again, and we're bombarded with all kinds of sounds - a well-organized chaos!

Here's a diagram of Walter Murch's spectrum of encoded/embodied sound (it is best seen than described):

Instrumental piano scores from The New Romance

2011-07-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

Here are the piano scores for two instrumental tracks from The New Romance (click to enlarge):

Lyrics & chords for Smack Bang

2011-07-16T13:11:00.001-07:00

Here are the lyrics and chords for Cincinnati Steeples. Click to enlarge.

Artwork and tracklist for The New Romance

2011-07-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the finished design for The New Romance (EP)

Just finishing off the last track Smack Bang and mastering everything else. Sounding pretty good. I'm pleased with it!

Track list:

Starlight
[...]
Cincinatti Steeples
An Imprint*
Longing
Smack Bang
You Won't Hear This Song On The Radio
Whisper*

*(from the short film Benjamin)

Next stop - iTunes. Choo chooooo!!!

Lyrics & chords for Starlight

2011-07-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

Here are the lyrics and chords for Starlight (click to enlarge):

Lyrics & chords for You Won't Hear This Song On The Radio

2011-07-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

Here are the lyrics and chords for You Won't Hear This Song On The Radio (click to enlarge):

Lyrics & chords for Longing

2011-07-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here are the chords and lyrics for Longing (click to enlarge):

Cincinnati Steeples - lyrics & chords

2011-07-04T11:33:00.001-07:00

Here are the lyrics and chords for Cincinnati Steeples. Click to enlarge. The second set is in the easier key of C major (capo 1):

I Heart #13... Jon Hopkins monsterous score

2011-05-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

Monsters (2010) - a sci-fi drama about a photojournalist & his boss's daughter trying to get out of alien-infected Central America. It's a straightforward tale of two people falling in love, made on a shoestring budget by first time director Gareth Edwards. A Brit! The film is a miracle. It looks & feels as good as the most expensive blockbuster, partly because of the palatial sound of Jon Hopkins' score. Listen to the main theme below. Layers of guitars soar over reverb-soaked deep drums. Huge warm pads and synths wash over the soundtrack like an ocean. In a film charged with the tension of possible alien attacks on any frame, Hopkins scores the humanity of the story. This is the sound of comfort.

The best of the noughties in film!

2010-12-30T19:00:00.000-08:00

10 years have gone by and here's my take on the best films that I've seen and loved.

28. Punch Drunk Love (2002)

Paul T. Anderson's follow-up to the exhausting tour de force Magnolia is to all appearances a 90 minute rom-com starring Adam Sandler. But Sandler's performance is unlike anything seen before and the symbolism and layered narrative make it completely watchable. Catch my favourite scene from it here.

27. Moon (2009)

David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones made his directorial debut out of nowhere with an intimate drama about a man, alone on the moon, facing his own identity, or is it his identity? Multiplexes ignored it, but those that got word of it sought it out in droves, making it the cult favourite of 2009. Sam Rockwell was robbed of a best actor Oscar - it's worth catching just for that alone.

26. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford(2007)

Sombre, haunting and poetic. Outlaw Jesse James is turned into a tortured soul by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck is brilliantly sniveling as his number one fan with his expectations set high. Perfectly tuned commentary on celebrity... with a kick-ass train robbery sequence!

25. Donnie Darko (2001)

Cult classic of the decade, showing the power of a strong following on DVD after poor cinema-takings. On its release, nobody got it, but that's really what fuels more interest - take Inception for example. Complex and timeless. Kind of funny, kind of sad.

24. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

The modern revenge-western nobody saw. Tommy Lee Jones's big-screen directorial debut had note-perfect performances and a profound sense of truth about it. Gritting, moving and very funny.

23. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Tenderness meets fury in a beguiling fairytale. Set in the Spanish civil-war, a little girl must decide which world is hers - a fairytale world where she must perform three tasks and face horrific creatures, and the real world where she must protect her pregnant mother and brother-to-be from warfare and one horrific monster - her father in law. Brutal moments are complimented by vulnerability.

22. No Country for Old Men (2007)

Again, very brutal, but this time, the violence is complimented with cynicism, making it a hard watch but one that won the Coen brothers the Oscar for Best Picture in 2008. Quiet and subtle... right up until the moments that killer Anton Chigurh gets his cattle stun-gun out.

21. Kil Bill: Volume 1 (2003)

Continuing with violence, there's lots of it in Kill Bill: Vol 1, and most of the time it's style over content but, my my, what style. Every frame brims with colour and passion. Adding tracks "Battle without Honour or Humanity" some Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrman classics to QTs amazing visuals, you get a concoction that can't be missed!

20. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

With tight edits and brilliant sound effects, Pilgrim is a new breed of film. Laughs come from well-formulated acting and editing more than from a clever script. Laugh-out-loud moments aren't as common as in Edgar Wright's previous films Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, however, marvel at the innovation and audacity of film-making, and a geek-chic generation symbolized in Michael Cera.

19. Cache (Hidden) (2005)

A french bourgeoisie couple receive videos of surveillance footage of their home through the post bringing a long hidden, simmering secret to the surface. Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche play their brittle roles perfectly as the security their characters created starts to crumble. A solitary shocking moment catches audiences off-guard every time.

18. There Will Be Blood (2007)

It's epic, the acting deserves huge merit, the score is unique and inspiring, the cinematography and direction are phenomenal, and there are some set pieces which stood up with Jesse James's train robbery, Cloverfield's first attack and The Bourne Ultimatum's Tangier fight and New York car chase as the best scenes of 2007. A true masterpiece.

17. Cloverfield (2008)

J. J. Abrams' movie was shrouded in mystery - a viral campaign that got everybody's tongues a-wagging. When it arrived in cinemas, the monster was truly unleashed. It's a 21st-century film-making achievement - a combination of thumping sound-design, brilliant visuals and emotional heft. I left the cinema shaking.

16. Let The Right One In (2008)

Twilight for the discerning adult. Bullied 12 year-old boy meets vampire girl. Both are desperate for acceptance and both have something to teach the other. It's a heartfelt drama - touching, the get-under-your-skin way.

15. Io non ho paura (I'm Not Scared) (2004)

Coming-of-age story of a boy who meets another boy who's kept hostage down a pit for a ransom. Even though it can't help but touch on a few clichés, Gabriele Salvatores' film is a warm, unique and touching rites-of-passage film. You can see two scenes from it and a scene from Let The Right One In here.

14. Up In The Air (2009)

One of George Clooney's best performances as a state-hopping redundancy consultant. Character study meets comedy with a heap of poignancy.

13. (500) Days of Summer (2009)

A back-and-forth rom-com where the girl is the guy and the guy is the girl. A lot of people associated with the characters, so perfectly played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, sharing true chemistry. It's not a perfect film, but it's so high on the list here because no other film has made me smile so profusely throughout, its life-affirming substance second to none this decade.

12. Toy Story 3 (2010)

Pixar's glorious threequel begins by hurling a train full of troll-orphans off a bridge into a chasm. 12 years had passed since TS2 and the rules of animation films had changed, mainly because of Pixar's other films! Darker in tone and with more to lose, TS3 wasn't afraid to pull some heavy punches, and certainly not afraid to make the grown-ups cry.

11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Michel Gondry has such an eye for wacky creative ideas and Charlie Kaufman is such a deep well of crazy stories - Sunshine was a marriage made in heaven. Jon Brion's score also deserves mention for being perfectly suited and Carrey and Winslet are make the best lovable screw-ups.

10. In Bruges (2008)

A european city stands in worryingly well for purgatory. Colin Farrell hones in his best skills and tugs the heart strings (see the clip) as the hitman sent to Bruges after a hit goes wrong. Carter Burwell draws us in with a elegiac piano score.

9. WALL-E (2008)

Here, most of the dialogue in the first act comes from robot-noises, vocoded semi-dialogue, and the clicks and 'weeees' of a cockroach. It's a masterpiece of sound design. Pixar pulled off a truly amazing stunt, by making a robot romance not only believable, but moving, by teaching the next generation about looking after the planet effectively, and by creating a lovable cockroach.

8. The Wrestler (2008)

An experience not for the faint-of-heart. With a cinéma-vérité style and a maybe too-close-to-the-actual-truth performance by Mickey Rourke as a washed-up wrestler trying to get his life together, the film is a breath of fresh air.

7. Amelie (2001)
A comic and dramatic masterpiece. Amelie discovers that her task in life is to make people happy and in doing so, does the same for us.

6. Mulholland Drive (2001)

The kind of film you need to see more than once in order to put the pieces together, unless you've been spurned in love, in which case you'll feel David Lynch's story like the most poetic opera. Angelo Badalamenti's score and Lynch's acute direction create the perfect dream - literally.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Little-seen drama about a little man who has to drop a ring in a volcano and gets by with a little help from his elf friends. A wizard maybe dies. Not only did Peter-Splatter-King-Jackson defy all expectations, he redefined the fantasy genre which was long dead. It was also the first film I decided to buy on DVD.

4. The Dark Knight (2008)
It was always gonna be the movie of the summer, wasn't it. The Dark Knight is Ledger's movie, but every surrounding aspect of the film bursts with brilliance and an eye for detail and love for truly great film-making! Good job Christopher Nolan!!

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

With all three films shot back-to-back, the second film of the Lord of the Rings anthology was never going to suffer from sequelitis. Revving up the battles Zulu-style, The Two Towers includes some of the most memorable images of the films - Helms Deep, the Balrog opening scene, Gollum's fight with himself.

2. Inception (2010)

The Independent scoffed, giving it 1 star and calling it "lavishly boring". Then on the DVD release, they gave it 5 stars and called it "something of a master class". The project itself relies on incredible directorial skills, the best visual effects workhouse in the world, and some heavyweight acting chops. Hans Zimmer's score and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's corridor fight still send shivers down the spine.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Grandiose in all measures, the final chapter of the story holds the most weight, with the Mount Doom finale, Shelob the spider, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and so many beautifully crafted story-lines to tie up. Rings3 is pure spectacle, pushing fantasy, action, horror, romance and family genres to a whole new dimension.

New Composition - The Messenger

2010-12-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

As the fifth entry into The Bright and Shiny Celestial Tour, The Messenger isn't steeped in mythology - I just saw the opportunity to create something lighter in meaning and quicker in pulse. Mercury was the Roman messenger of the gods - quick on his feet and willing to do the most adverse tasks, so the key word for the piece was 'exigency'.

The Bourne Inception

The main inspirations for the piece were John Powell's Bourne trilogy scores and Hans Zimmer's work for Inception. The theme for Jason Bourne is a simple 8-note pattern written in the phrygian mode (E B C B A B G F) with each note orchestrated with frantic double bows, lending it its urgency. Vibrating a violin string with a bow makes a far more aggressive sound than blowing down a woodwind instrument, so I took that aspect of orchestration style from John Powell and made 15 of the total 25 tracks of The Messenger string tracks. Hans Zimmer's influence on this piece lies in his main theme for Inception - a chord sequence which puts the chills up anybody listening. It's a chain of chords and modulation (key changes) linked by powerful pivot chords quintessential to the 'Zimmer' sound. I took inspiration from that for the fourth quarter of The Messenger with the main string theme.

Traveling by Metres

Something I wanted to play with in order to achieve a sense of exigency was time. I didn't touch the tempo (other than the slower second quarter), but instead took away one beat per bar towards the end, resulting in a change from 4/4 (8/4) to 7/4 to 6/4. If the metre was to stay at 4/4, it might not feel as if the piece was traveling anywhere, traveling being an intrinsic theme to the piece.

You can listen to The Messenger along with some other parts of The Bright and Shiny Celestial Tour here.

New composition - Lullaby: Diana

2010-12-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

My latest addition to The Bright And Shiny Celestial Tour is a piece dedicated to Diana - Roman goddess of the moon, hunting and childbirth, a virgin who swore never to be married. A story of Diana tells of how Actaeon accidentally glimpsed her bathing in the woods near Boeotian, Orchomenus. She cursed him, decreeing that she'd turn him into a stag and set his own hunting dogs on him if he ever spoke again. He called out to his hunting party upon hearing them and was indeed immediately changed into a stag and was chased and devoured by his fifty ravenous hunting dogs. The main inspiration for Lullaby came from this story.

Genre

Lullabies are generally regarded as innocent through childhood, but then there's a moment in life when you think about the lyrics e.g. "down will come baby, cradle and all". I see lullabies as a dark undertone wrapped up with lulling waltz-time, softly sung melody and warm harmony. Plenty of films have used lullabies for darker purposes: Alien 3 (1992), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Wicker Man (1973). My composition had to have the innocence of pure virginity and yet the darkness of a woman who would make your dogs tear you apart with a the frenzy of wolves!

Melody

I wanted to picture the purity and the radiance of Diana, but at the same time her complexity. She's a woman who, for whatever reason, decided to spend life on her own, even though she was so beautiful and desirable. Because Diana's inaccessibility is what enticed her admirers the most, the complexity had to come from the voice of the composition - the melody, the most overt part of the music. The main theme starts out in B minor but transforms into something more modal and mysterious. The middle section (1' 56") is the most complicated as the key keeps changing but parts of the tune stay the same, so where once the melody felt correct, it now feels insecure and dissonant.

Seduction

One of my favourite songs written for film is Willow's Song from The Wicker Man and I wanted to incorporate some of the intense seductive nature of that in Lullaby. To do that I used close-harmony with 6ths and 7ths as extensions tucked into the voicing of the chords to achieve the rich, sumptous harmony. Also, the melody was sung with glissandos and slides, but not to provoke the feeling that Diana was provocative but that she was innocent and not-wise to it. After all, she was a goddess, not a guest artist on X-Factor.

You can listen to Lullaby: Diana here and will be able to download on iTunes later in 2011.

The Songwriting Blog #1: Why 2 verses are better than 3

2010-11-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

Take a moment and think of a song with two verses (meaning sections of song with the same melody/rhythm but different words). It wouldn't take long, because most songwriters have learnt that two different verses is all you need. My theory (and rather interesting marketing tip) is that the details of three or more different verses are to much for the brain to remember. Here's how I arrived at that conclusion.

The Japanese character for the word 'forest' (above) consists of three trees (or 'ki'). It's interesting that the character doesn't consist of a large group of trees, a plethora, a forest - only one... two... three. The Japanese see three of something to be representative of more. Why? Well, there's a scene in the film The Godfather where there are 2.5 conversations being seen on screen: two characters talking, another two characters talking, and one character on the phone. The film's sound designer, Oscar-winner Walter Murch said that if that person on the other end of the phone was actually in the room, we would no longer be able to process all information on screen, it would simply tip the scales. As it is, a human brain can compute anything below three things at once, but at three the brain registers the ordered information as chaos.

It's the same with songs. Some songwriters feel that they need to say more, and for that they'll need another verse, when really their message hasn't been written well enough in the first two. The message of a song is arguably the most important part of a song (I say 'arguably' thinking immediately of "I see you baby shaking that ass" (then again, what message can pop culture truly offer that's worthy of a song)). If so, then the process of writing lyrics must be condensed to two verses (plus choruses etc) in order to preserve the impact of the message.

Any thoughts or comments? Please use the link below.

I Heart #12… Purgatory!! Bruges!!!!!!

2010-09-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Hitmen Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are laying low in Bruges after Ray accidentally killed a boy on one of their jobs. Wracked with guilt and tortured by the medieval city’s purgatorial taunts, Ray tries to take his life, however Ken’s been ordered to kill him.

What I love about In Bruges is its depiction of purgatory. Grey sky, ancient stone buildings, uneasy tranquillity, and art by Heironymous Bosch! Carter Burwell’s score is orchestrated with clarity and minimalism, which fits beautifully with images of swans floating on canals, pristine cobbled streets and the overall simplicity of the city. The score features a lonely piano waltz in G minor as a main theme which scores Ray’s disquiet really well, and it ignores all comedy elements throughout the film and plays to the dramatic core. Also included in the film is the Dubliners’ version of the Irish poem ‘Raglan Road’ (scene) and a German lied written by Schumann which adds dramatically to the films sad alienation.

The featured scene will break your heart. It would be hard to miss Colin Farrell’s performance but watch out for the funeral-march like 4/4 cue at the beginning and the mounting contrary motion of the strings when Ken approaches Ray to kill him.

I Heart #11... music to grow up to

2010-08-16T03:36:00.000-07:00

"We headed home.
And although many thoughts raced through our minds, we barely spoke.
We walked through the night and made it back to Castle Rock a little past 5 o'clock on Sunday morning - the day before Labour Day.
We'd only been gone 2 days, but somehow the town seemed different. Smaller."
- Stand By Me (1986)

The 'coming-of-age' part of a child's life is a moment undefinable by age or chronology, but rather by circumstance and occurrence, which makes the subject a compelling heart to a story. Would Monster House have its spiky sense of humour if its main characters were aged 8 instead of 12? Would the political and societal horror on display in This Is England be accessible if we saw it through the eyes of the older characters? I don't think so. Coming of age is a rite of passage - a moment that opens a child's eyes to the nature of the adult world.

The aforementioned Rob Reiner film Stand By Me, is aided by a soundtrack of 1950s period music and an original score containing an orchestrated version of the Ben E. King title song. The score is scarcely used but it contains the key to this article
- strings. No matter how many strings you write for, be it the 60 of a Philharmonic Orchestra, a string quartet, or even a solo violin, when they're fused with the imagery of 4 boys walking home after stepping into adulthood, an audience can't
help but reminisce.

Reminiscing when watching tender scenes between a bullied teenage boy and a female vampire is harder! That's why swedish horror-drama Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In) (2008) is aided tremendously by a string theme as sweeping as anything Tchaikovsky would have written. Johan Soderqvist's beautiful score provides such warmth in the backdrop of a Swedish winter that it's hard not to associate with some part of th
e story. The main theme in question is Eli and Oskars theme. It's written in F minor (sadness) but seems based around the relative major (Ab) (comfort). The bass line is played by bowed cellos
(warmth/depth) and doubled on pizzicato basses (lightness).

The harmony is completely tonal in a 19th century fashion (humanity) in that it explores unr
elated chords but obeys ever
y rule (e.g. suspended chords being resolved). There are no electronics (drama negating horror) and no other orchestral instruments other than strings (pu
rity). The scene containing this cue is below.

Italian Io Non Ho Paura (I'm Not Scared) (2004) is possibly my favourite of all these films, but I can't seem to identify why. I read a review on its release and wanted to see it, but it was only on limited release and so I never got the chance, and it was forgotten about until I saw it for sale last year. I bought, watched and fell in love with it. The story is of a boy (Michele) who, although excited by his father's return to the village, is troubled by the discovery of another boy kept in a secret hole underneath an isolated farm. Confronting the boy can only lead to the confrontation of some more sinister goings on.

Ezzio Bosso's score is written for the Turin String Quartet, giving the sound of the film an elegance and intimacy that couldn't be achieved with a larger ensemble. The benefit of having a string quartet is that the thin texture allows for greater diversity in string techniques, which are made vast use of: double-stopping; trills; broken chords; pizzicato; sul-ponticello and sul-tasto; etc. There's also a unique relationship between the pure sound of the string quartet and the images of the innocent, sun-drenched fields of southern Italy. It's a film of infinite beauty, caught perfectly by some stunning photography, but encapsulated in a childlike bliss by the score. As Michele stops and watches the combine harvesters come to rob the innocent young fields, your heart might just break.

The video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2QvKXUf6g

Love songs & pieces about war... you know, the usual.

2010-08-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

Two new compositions have just gone up on my website:

You Won't Hear This Song on the Radio

The less known about this song the better - it's very personal! What I can say is that I wanted to play on the title, which I loved, by way of making the song sound very amateur. The intro/verse drums are purposefully cheap and with the help of some narrowing EQ, I made them sound even tackier. The bleeps were inspired by a song on the film Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. The original idea was to keep everything else (vocals, keys, guitar etc) very organic and honest, but somehow the natural vocals didn't quite work as well as the robotized ones. I'm happy with the end result, but I had to finish by a certain date otherwise I never would have come back to it - personally it would have felt like going back to a haunted house to revisit a ghost.

Protector of our Fields

This is the latest addition to The Bright and Shiny Celestial Tour which also includes Venus (Poison Chalice) and Air and Day. Fields follows the pattern of planets and is based on Mars. The main thing that excited me was the opportunity to compose something rousing and exciting - something which doesn't naturally come out of me but can be if needed. Mars was the Roman god of war, but before that he was the god of cattle, livestock and the fields - he was a farmer. As the Roman empire expanded through warfare, Mars was called to war due to his excellence in looking after the fields. The idea of a humble farmer being called to watch over a empires warfare struck a chord in me and the piece grew from there.

The first thing to get layered in was the audio of the air-raid siren. In order to create the huge crescendo at the beginning of the piece, I reversed the sample, so what you actually hear is the reversed sound of the siren dying down over a long time. Funnily enough, the main body of the siren sound is almost exactly the same as it would be in the right direction (a palindrome).

The bass sound heard at 1.10 was a sound I worked on for several hours. I wanted to follow the relief of the end of the opening crescendo with more doom, so I modified a simple kick sound, creating an ominous thud.

I'm very happy with the piece, mainly because I proved to myself that I can do 'epic'. Only problem is, what to follow it up with! I'm thinking about going aquatic with Neptune...

Mr Sausage is here! ('Members Only')

2010-06-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

The short film Empire Magazine made that I composed the score for is now online [click here].

I learnt lots from the experience but the biggest lesson was to not let a deadline make me rush to the point that the quality of the score is lessened or compromised. I'm happy with the end result - it's a complicated, vivace piece for piano involving (as per norm in silent film) lots of mickey mousing (writing music that evokes a sense of movement e.g. a rising scale on a flute when a character ascends stairs). However, because of rushing, I didn't master it well enough and in the end the E.Q. doesn't have enough bottom end. If there were other sounds in the overall mix, I would have gotten away with it, but the score is out there on it's own, so... blow the Fail Trumpet wah wah waaaah. I've learned for next time.

I Heart #10... P. T. Anderson's PERCUSSION ATTACK!

2010-06-11T14:40:00.001-07:00

Paul T. Anderson is not only a genius at writing tight, intelligent scripts that don’t waste a word, but also at directing huge dramatic set pieces that build and build without letting up. At the point in Magnolia (1999) (score by Jon Brion) when all the intersecting characters gradually reach a boiling point of chaos, a cue with strong, sympathetic cellos and pad which lasts for over 17 minutes and simmers underneath the drama and other sounds, creates huge emotional tension.

However, in Punch Drunk Love (2002) and There Will Be Blood (2008), Anderson wanted to use percussion to create different forms of chaos. In the scene below, Barry (Sandler) in Punch Drunk has pressure mounting on him from everywhere, so Jon Brion wrote the scene for different percussive sounds: plastic tubes, rope, muted clock chimes, electronic beeps etc, all panned to different areas of the stereo mix. As the character’s tension builds, Brion adds another sound to the pallet. I love the moment the military snare enters as Barry’s officious sister comes marching into frame (8:04).

Chaos is represented differently in Blood. As the oil derrick gushes and bursts into flame and panic ensues among the workmen, Daniel Plainview’s (Day-Lewis) oil-lust slowly quells the chaos of stopping the fire, even seeing to his son who was injured in the blast. Jonny Greenwood writes a quick two-four cue containing two ordinary simple quavers, repeated over and over again. During the initial chaos of spewing oil, running, and shouting, all instruments mount in one-by-one playing the simple rhythm in their own way, creating a cacophony of percussion and strings. However, as the scene develops and Plainview’s greed at discovering the “ocean of oil” suffocates all other emotions, the instruments gradually come together until they’re all playing simultaneously, and the ordinary simple quavers become so powerful they become horrific.

A few months ago, I did an experiment similar to Greenwood's cue for Blood, but with percussion instruments and lines of a chord sequence both starting in their own times and gradually coming together over the course of the piece. It turned out to be a brilliant piece and extremely hypnotic! Here it is:

I Heart #9... Enlightenment (1983)

2010-03-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Sailing ships presided over by 'Eternals' who have stolen some of us 'Ephemerals' out of time to cluelessly man their ships in order to win a race for 'Enlightenment'. It was the twenty years into Doctor Who's lifetime. It was the first story in to be penned by a woman - Barbara Clegg, and it was directed by a woman - Fiona Cumming. It remains one of Doctor Who's biggest gems. Why?

Unfortunately, the 80's were a minefield for the show, and many serials suffered under poor production values, ill-advised nostalgia, and some rather striking rubber monsters. Die-hard fans relish such stuff, but for the rest of us it sums up what we think of when casting our minds back to the show's whole troubled era. I could say it's a shame, but what it's actually done is produce gems, overlooked and neglected. Diamonds in the rough. Enlightenment is one of those diamonds.

The separation between the Eternals and the Ephemerals is possibly the most stunning aspect of the story, epitomised in Marriner's relationship to the Doctor's companion Tegan, as seen at the beginning of the following clip. He's fascinated by her, but not attracted. He gets lines like "what is love? I want existence". Keith Baron plays Captain Striker, unblinking and unmoved, with his eyes set on beating his competitors to win Enlightenment. He gets exchanges with the Doctor like:

"You are a Timelord, a Lord of time. Are there Lords in such a small domain?"

"And where do you function?"
"Eternity, the endless wastes of eternity."

The score was written by Malcolm Clarke, who brought us farting synthesiser sounds in the stories The Sea Devils (1972), and Earthshock (1982). Here, however, Clarke is perfectly in tune with the needs of the story and production, and instead of opting for his rather interesting Musique concrète approach, he creates slightly off-kilter hornpipes with piccolo, harpsichord and organ for scenes on the Edwardian ship and dream-like soundscapes for the space scenes. What is to be admired about Clarke's earlier scores is the courage. Using acousmatic sound (as opposed to instrumental sound) and experimental synthesiser noises, he created a feeling of dread and other-worldly unease. His scores therefore function somewhere between sound-design and music. Completely unique. It's just a shame that for his next story 'Warriors of the Deep' he went back to farty synthesisers.

Anyway, back to Enlightenment. Watch the clip below for an analysis of a scene from the story. It's annotated, too, so I'll walk you through the scene.

New Empire short film 'Mr Sausage'!

2010-03-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

I've just collaborated with Empire Magazine on their new short film 'Mr Sausage'. Yeah that's as crazy as it sounds, as well as being the biggest honour. Here's the story.

I just happened to have a day free on Tuesday when a tweet appeared on my computer from Empire magazine:

"Help wanted: we need a talented musician to write score for our short film. No fee, sadly, but credit, 1-yr subscription & glory included."

So I immediately respond and later get a direct message from Chris Hewitt, News Editor from Empire asking for a 1-minute sample of 1920's style piano music. After a little YouTube-soak in pianoroll music, I set off composing a little ditty complete with extreme band-EQ, giving it that old gramophone feel. I send it off.

Then I leave to work at the bank. When I got home I'd received an email from Chris saying that he loves the sample and I'm in pole position to get the job.

On Wednesday, I was watching 28 Days Later when Chris phoned me to confirm that I'd got it. He described the film as the story of a man trying to get into a country house after he'd seen a girl and being turned away after each effort, the man was called Mr Sausage, and that's when Chris sang the Mr Sausage theme tune down the phone to me. That took guts!

I completed the work on Thursday and the film will be online soon.

Video for Air and Day

2010-02-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

The video for Air and Day is here. I made it from various shots of clouds, time stretching them, reversing them, desaturating them etc. I'm no video wizard but the visuals are there to aid how you listen to the composition. Please rate it - remember how much you completely love me!

Air and Day

2010-01-28T08:24:00.000-08:00

I've finally finished a big fat 'experiment'! Well, it started out as an experiment but ended up being a full blown composition. It's available here.

It's based on the greek belief in the god Uranus (Ouranos), Father Sky. The ancient greeks believed that Uranus was born of the gods of Air and Day, so I set out to depict the formation of the Sky the ancient-greek way.

Firstly, I created a simple 7-chord sequence in C# minor and distributed the 5 notes of each chord to five different-sounding pads so that each pad contained a line of 7 notes - a melody. I then time-stretched the bottom 4 pads using different ratios so that all 5 pads end up working at different speed but come together near the end of the piece.

I then added 5 lines of percussion playing the same rhythm and used the same time-stretching method I used for the pads. The final result is a piece that starts off as chaos and ends in order as air and day form to create sky.

I Heart #8... the magic minimalists!

2010-01-14T08:17:00.000-08:00

From time to time a global event will change the atmosphere of society, taking the arts with it. Think about how 9/11 has affected franchises like James Bond and Batman. Escapism has been replaced with realism, and spectacle with subtext. Because of this newfound depth in cinematic story telling, composers no longer feel the pressure to deliver epic Wagnerian works because directors aren’t creating the films that need them. Minimalism therefore became the most important trend in film music in the last decade. Here are some of the most notable composers.

Nick Cave, the ruler of raw minimalism, and violinist Warren Ellis have collaborated on John Hillcoat’s two films The Proposition (2005) and The Road (2009) and Andrew Dominik’s sombre The Assassination of Jesses James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). Cave uses intonation and timing faults to create an intentional, unadorned imperfection. Guitars, banjos, fiddles and pianos are quite often out of tune but are presented proudly in amongst sparse orchestration so that the listener knows the intonation exists for a reason. Cave also uses the solo voice as an instrument as Morricone did, writing in whispered poems and wordless cries and utterances. Here’s Cave’s opening cue to The Proposition.

Clint Mansell, the master of minimalist beauty, has scored all of Darren Aronofsky’s films: Pi (1998), Requiem For A Dream (2000), The Fountain (2005) and The Wrestler (2009), and recently Duncan Jones’s debut Moon (2009). Mansell’s scores are notable for their faithful use of a prominent solo instrument. The Wrestler was scored for electric guitar – a single theme of 2-3 oscillating notes giving absorption and depth to an already heartbreaking film. For Moon, a film about a clone coming to terms with his identity with another version of himself, Mansell wrote for two pianos – each the same in appearance but both playing different tunes. This determination to focus on one instrument creates an intimacy that cannot be achieved with full symphony orchestra. Here’s the theme from Moon:

Finally, Carter Burwell, the king of bleak. His main theme for Where The Wild Things Are is a hesitant swing waltz for piano, rhodes, double bass and acoustic guitar. Melody is sacrosanct without being showy, sweeping or stirring – we’re simply allowed to hear and feel it. Watch this soundtrack clip “Medieval Waters” from In Bruges. The purgatorial piano introduction opens to a chamber ensemble of no more than 6 instruments chosen for their melancholy tone (clarinet, cello, pizzicato bass) and strings backing. Again a dancing melody is given reign over a simple 5-note accompaniment.

Also deserving mention are: Jon Brion (Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees); Angelo Badalamenti (David Lynch films); and John Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine).

Film blog #3: No need to feel apprehensive...

2009-12-17T01:20:00.000-08:00

This is it - the biggest film to hit the deck this decade and the one that's going to carry our excited little minds into the next. And I was lucky enough to have landed a ticket to see a preview screening last night. The verdict...

It's an experience like no other. A cinematic phenomena. From the first frame you're transported into another world, gliding over trees that seem like they belong on earth but feel like something very different. Within the first 15 minutes you know everything you need to know about this world and the characters we're going to see in it. From then on it's a journey deeper into the world of Pandora as our hero - disabled marine Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington) carries out his mission to infiltrate the natives world, learn their ways and become on of them in order to persuade them to move house so that the nasty humans can get to their precious ore.

Let's get the negative out of the way - everybody saw the trailer and fumed that the CGI was too video-gamey. It is. But it's trumped by a much much bigger card. The 3D visual experience is simply out of this world - so much so that it immerses every element of the film in an incredible hyper-reality. And don't forget that you're watching it on a big screen - a tiny little YouTube trailer doesn't hold up. High cliff edges become scarily high, hovering insects could almost be touched, and Worthington's stubble could almost impale a cat. You forget any visual imperfections because of such visual perfection.

The question everyone will be asking me? The score and sound?

James Horner's score brings heart and warmth to the films key emotional scenes (like he does) but otherwise feels a little unenterprising. Maybe a deliberate move from James Cameron because the visuals of the film are such a new and alien experience to us that it might have been a tad too much to attack us with innovative new musical styles and techniques. I do think Horner was the perfect choice, however, and commend him for imbuing the beautiful world of Pandora with lush heartfelt orchestral writing. Christopher Boyes' (4 oscars...) sound, however, was more impressive and for stranger reasons. The strange thing is that, like Horner's score, the sound design brought nothing new to the table - we've heard epic soundscapes and effects in films like Terminator: Salvation and Star Trek this year alone - but it felt like we were hearing a new experience as well as seeing one. Here's why I think. The visuals were so utterly immersive that the film felt completely real. This strengthened the relationship between the visuals of Pandora and the sound of Pandora. When Sulley falls to the ground, hitting giant leaves as he goes, we feel every smack. When the enormous mighty beasts of the forest attack, we want to run for our lives. These environment sounds are the sounds in the middle of Walter Murch's spectrum of encoded sound (dialogue) and embodied sound (music) and they're the ones that need no translating or understanding - they're sounds of the world that we're in, so we take them as part of the experience of being in that world.

All in all, this is truly the future for cinema...

I Heart #7... The Conversation (1974)

2009-12-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

Sandwiched between the first two Godfather flms (1972/1974) Francis Ford Coppola managed to create this little masterpiece. The innovations in audio surveillance equipment in the early 70s meant that no life was guaranteed a private life. Any room could be bugged and any conversation could be recorded, and for Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), a that meant a career, and consequentially a descent into paranoia as he forms an obsession with a conversation he was contracted to record between a couple.

What makes The Conversation great is Coppola's intelligent direction, Hackman's performance and the central idea of the story. The opening scene is a slow-zoom aerial shot of a town square where a mime is doing a good job at harrassing the town-folk. Mimicking and (seemingly) mocking people, he stands beside a suited man who was standing quietly alone - a private man we empathise with the second the mime stands next to him. And we haven't even seen his face, just the top of his head. This is our antihero - Harry. In this shot we peer in on him from above, in a later shot the camera has to pan around as he moves about his apartment. It's subtley done but in every frame, we feel like we're part of Harry's journey.

David Shire's score also needs a mention. Beautifully simple and intimate, and written almost entirely for solo piano, it draws us in with major/minor clashes, hypnotic ostinatos, and an unadorned homophonic texture.

And then there's the plot - based entirely on how we perceive communication. Using hardware to clean up the recording of the pivotal conversation, removing background noise and unwanted frequencies, Harry becomes increasingly concerned with the protagonists well-being to the point of sweat-breaking obsession and nightmares. The twist hinges on the emphasis given on one single word and how Harry, in his blind obsession misreads the conversation because of that one word. Of course, saying any more about the twist would spoil the film, but here's a great key scene.

Film blog #2: OH MY GOODNESS I CAN'T WATCH THE SCREEN!

2009-12-01T13:07:00.000-08:00

So I went to see 'Paranormal Activity' today after hearing loads of buzz about it. If you don't know what it's about, then listen up. A gadget-savvy guy (Micah) hears that his girlfriend (Katie) has been haunted since she was 8, and that it's been happening again, so he sets up a camera to a firewire and records the goings on in the bedroom overnight. Cue lots of creepy stuff that happens starting with doors moving back and forth gently. They consult a ghost-whisperer who confirms that he can't help them because Katie is actually being tormented by a demon - very different and very serious, because unlike ghosts, demons latch onto a particular person and terrorise them until... well who knows. As Micah, in a display of unbridled ego, taunts the demon into showing itself, Katie becomes increasingly agitated and the demon manifests itself more and more and becomes more violent.

The film itself is a testament to the power of a simple static shot, an image which is sure to become iconic. A bed in the centre of the frame holding a sleeping couple, unaware of what is going to happen that night, a digital time display on the bottom right of the frame (a place to which my eyes safely spent a fair bit the film), and on the left of the shot, a corridor reaching down to more rooms.

The presence of the entity is heralded by a low hum. Extremely low or high noises are uncomfortable to the ear and are often tucked into a mix so that the audience doesn't know why they are feeling uneasy. But here the sound is obvious, piercing the silent night and signalling the oncoming terror. At one point near the beginning as the demon was giving a hum or moving a door a little bit, Micah did something to taunt it, so that night we hear the hum as normal but then a deafening roar from the mouth of some unholy creature and a massive thud which wakes the sleeping couple.

Chills all over the cinema!

Film blog #1: Io non ho paura (I'm Not Scared)

2009-11-30T16:44:00.000-08:00

Just watched Gabriele Salvatores' Io non ho paura and fell in love with it. It's not a masterpiece but it's completely lovable (the difference between Ricky Whittle and Chris Hollins, Strictly Come Dancing fans (yes I confess I love it!)) and I could watch it three times in a row and love it more with each viewing (the film, that is!) The scorching Italian vistas of endless corn fields bobbing up and down, the 12 year old lead who's you just want to hug, the characterization of the family dynamic.

I do, admittedly, have a thing for coming of age films like this, Stand By Me, and Monster House. The humour is spikey, the stakes are at the perfect size (somewhere between epic adult stakes where it's life/death, and kiddy stakes where it's life/death for Teddy or you're stupid enough to get stung by bees by the end of the movie), and the protagonist is discovering the world the way we did when we were that age.

The score kept the film's scarier moments from veering off into horror territory by staying on the course as a coming-of-age film. Michele finds a boy chained up down a hole, and on his terrifying discovery he pegs it back home. The score here remains upbeat and chirpy, like this kind of experience is vital for us all at this age.

One of the most charming films I've seen, along with Little Miss Sunshine, Happy Go Lucky and......... The Towering Inferno.

I Heart #6... The shootout in No Country For Old Men

2009-10-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

Up to this point in the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winner, the atmosphere track has always been a present force in every scene, whether it’s a gentle desert wind, melancholy traffic noise or a simple room-hum. But here we are presented with a silence so threatening that every gun-click and every burst of Chigurh’s ‘captive bolt’ becomes a vicious staccato piercing the senses. The scene unfolds with balletic precision – the hotel’s dank sepia, the flashes of the shotgun, the ‘spilled milk’ (brilliant), a turned-off lamp answered by turned-off hallway lights – and never lets up until you’ve fallen off the edge of your seat.

I Heart #5... Battlestar Sonatica

2009-09-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

In my experience, when people are asked whether they have seen the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, the most common answer contains the word 'geek'. The people who have experienced it answer with a resounding 'moron', knowing that the basis for their judgement is simply the knowledge that 'it has something to do with space'. One of the factors in its revolution of both drama and science fiction is its use of score. Music for the genre has often remained predictable - Wagnerian with hints of Mahler. It rarely challenges the viewer's conception of characters and situations, and simply acts as intrepid music for intrepid acts. Now, post-9/11 TV and film audiences call for deeper drama and more complex humanity, and in BSG, Bear McCreary composes such profound humanity into each episode that composers will think again before going with the grain.

After the unbearably charged highs of the second series, the third run serves up some interesting turns. As we finally see the workings of Cylons in their 'basestars', we are blindsided by the show's most perfect scoring decision - to cut from mighty Taiko drums and lush world-orchestral timbres to a solitary meditative piano. The effect is like suddenly watching a film in B&W - the attention is drawn right in, and the mind is made to concentrate harder where colour once did all the explaining. The philosophical and religious ambience on the basestars is given breadth by the slow, minor broken chords (ala Beethoven's 'Moonlight' Sonata and brooding melody, and the audience can now identify with the drama of the (seeming) advocates of evil. Genius, McCreary, genius!

I Heart #4... Thomas Newman + Pixar

2009-06-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Newman is known as soon as Newman is heard. American Beauty, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich – quiet often you’ll find yourself unable to recall a main musical theme, but you’ll remember how the music made you feel. The warm, lush orchestration based on piano-written themes. The complex rhythmic structures that never feel dance-like, but mechanical with a unique lightness of character. It’s (partly) because of these attributes that WALL-E (2008) is given so much humanity &, eventually pathos. Credit is also due to Ben Burt’s sound design & the animators’ work, and because of this teaming, WALL-E is able to open with 40 minutes of dialogue free film.

I Heart #3... the theme from Il Grande Silenzio (1968)

2009-04-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

Vast snowscapes and other strong uses of white have been used many times in film to project the coldness of nature or humanity, but it is always accompanied by an aspect of warmth (see Fargo (1996), Låt den rätte komma in (2008)), and in Il Grande Silenzio, it is the depth of Ennio Morricone’s recurring main theme. But it isn’t as simple as that. Like the character of Marge Gunderson in Fargo, it is a complex entity - a melting melody, but in an unforgiving minor key...... rich orchestration, but with frail dynamics. Morricone is, of course, a master of melody, and long after the utter bleakness of the film's ending has subsided, this theme and its synergy with the film's tone will still be haunting you.

I Heart #2... The Radiophonic workshop & its sound design for Doctor Who: Inferno

2009-03-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

The Radiophonic Workshop, which is responsible for almost all the sound for Doctor Who in the 60s - 80s, must be rightfully mentioned. Here, as Jon Pertwee’s Doctor enters a nightmarish parallel world, the sound comes from a place of silent unrest until the moment the first shot is fired. What then builds up is an uneasy soundscape of dissonance and chaos with a precision preceding Walter Murch and Ben Burtt by almost a decade. Gun-fire and clicking percussion pierce the otherwise hypnotic drone of the score and the other-worldly alarm. So much more can be said about the final act here, but it’s best to be seen first.

I Heart #1... Clint Mansell's flippin awesome score for The Fountain

2009-01-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Mansell has never been a composer for capitalist gain, and in Darren Aronofsky's 2006 love-it/hate-it meta-physical sci-fi ponderer, he shows true, sticking solely to the director's vision to he point that the epic story benefits from only two very simple musical themes, and reserved orchestration. The intimate score provides a duality to the narrative (cold/warmth, life/death....) that enriches the film's budget-cut flaws with pathos. The score's marriage to the images in The Fountain provides some of the most breathtaking and heart-stoppingly beautiful moments in cinema's history - a sky-scraping standard to aspire to.