...with movie scores. I guess it isn't so surprising -- I love everything about movies and I really do mean everything. I love the neat, the weird and the disturbing -- from the fact that the set for the main room in The Shining, where Jack Nicholson's character writes his infamous "novel," caught fire because they used 700,000 watts per window per day to make it look wintery outside and then subsequently rebuilt the set and later used it in Indiana Jones, to the fact that Alfred Hitchcock used to torture the actresses who were cast in his films. Oh, and in the black-and-white days they used to use chocolate syrup in place of blood because it had the right texture and they put milk into the rain so it was visible on camera -- so it was really Singing in the Milk. And Gene Kelly was so mean to Debbie Reynolds in that movie that Fred Astair agreed to teach her to dance and berated Kelly for treating Reynolds so poorly. Neat, huh?
But that's not what has me hooked right now, no. It's the music, man -- the sound. You see, I am not fortunate enough to have completely perfect senses, so instead I have a hierarchy. From strongest to weakest it goes: smell, taste, sound, sight, touch. Strange considering how much I love my sight, but based on capability it's true. And since you can't smell or taste movies (yet!), I let the sounds keep me riveted. From the instrumental background notes during a movie that make those not-so-seamless transitions from scene to scene seem nonexistent to the Foley sounds that get recombined and distorted and shattered to create sounds out of my nightmares and visions -- I'm in love with all of it. Perhaps that's why I fell for a musician last time around :) .
I just finished watching How to Train Your Dragon and for the majority of you who didn't read my entirely unbiased movie review, I'll just say this: Watch that freaking movie! You won't regret it! I'm begging and pleading with you to be a kid again for less than two hours and rent this FANTASTIC flick NOW. Don't wait! I'm writing in freaking Italics -- so you know I'm serious...dragon serious. :-|
All right, now that I've done that, I can say that the music for this breathtaking ride of a movie has lulled me into a completely content, almost Zen-like version of myself that needs nothing in the world except these sweet, sweet notes. On a side note, though, I just learned that the main dragon's sounds were created by combining the voice of the Supervising Sound Designer Randy Thom, with those of elephants, horses, tigers, and even domestic cats. Amazing, no?
I expect only one person of the presumed many who will read this to care, but here's a list of beautiful little diddies available through that impulsive-buying trigger of triggers, iTunes:
Forbidden Friendship - John Powell
Test Drive - John Powell
Romantic Flight - John Powell
Sticks & Stone - Jonsi
In addition I'm also listening to these:
Main Title: Nemo Egg - Thomas Newton
The Gravel Road - James Newton Howard
As the Sage of Potato Hill, Edgar Watson Howe, once said, good music makes people homesick for things they've never had and never will have. And as I say, music also has the awesome and terrible ability to eat at us after we've finished listening to it, like reading good literature does. I hope some of this gets stuck in your mind like it is in mine, so you feel the little nibbles in the homesick part of your brain tonight.
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