Smashbomb

"A film soundtrack so good no film is deserving of it. I've been listening to this record for 20 years. Eno's one of the forefathers of using the studio as an instrument. He gets credit for that, but actually maybe he reduced what pop music was – produced, studio pop music into its essence, to create this ambient music. He's definitely someone who I fell in love with as I was getting into a lot of new approaches in music, all of his music I really love. Another Green World, Music For Films, Apollo - those are the ones I really took to. There is an odd parallel between this record and the Morricone record for me – because once you really get into this stuff, you think "What film would be worthy of this kind of music?". You can't really imagine it. I don't know how liberal he is about licensing his music, but I wonder if any film has dared to license this music– because that's a tall order."

Source

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Dirty Dancing (1987) in Movies

Sep 14, 2020 (Updated Sep 14, 2020)

Dirty Dancing (1987)

1987 | Drama, Music, Romance

8.1

(55 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

(My partner made me watch it after I forced her to sit through one Hammer horror too many.) Cheese-tastic dance movie. Innocent young girl experiences dance-oriented sexual awakening at a grim holiday camp in 1963. This mostly takes the form of her just standing there looking bemused while Patrick Swayze performs whole-body pelvic thrusts in her direction.

'The ultimate chick flick' (according to her indoors anyway) but looks just like a rather corny terpsichorean melodrama to me, not especially well-acted or directed - very reminiscent of films from the period in which it is set, although with a bit of slightly grittier content. That said, the soundtrack ping-pongs back and forth between the early 60s and the late 80s. In the end I did enjoy it a lot, although probably not for the reasons the makers intended (I particularly liked the moment where a bit of suspect editing makes it look like one guy is playing a sax solo on a trumpet). Silly, harmless fun.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Nosferatu (Eine Symphonie Des Grauens) (1922) in Movies

Jan 28, 2021

Hugely influential unauthorised adaptation of Dracula. Young estate agent's helper Hutter trots off to Transylvania to oversee the sale of a house to the reclusive (and rather repulsive) Count Orlok; Orlok takes a fancy to Hutter's wife; bad things ensue.

Basically just handles the first half of the book, and bolts a different ending on, but you can still see why the Stoker estate sued. Nevertheless, the presentation of Dracula/Orlok as a near-feral atavism is striking (and also much closer to the book than most films get); the film was designed by practising occultists which may explain the carefully composed visual sense of it (also the use of genuine magical script in some of the scenes). Very creepy and effective, though you have to take the age of the thing into account, not to mention the performance styles. Which soundtrack you listen to may also make a big difference (I recommend James Bernard's Hammer-style offering from the late 1990s). One of the great foundational horror films.