1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and....

No this is not dealing with dancing but this is dealing with music this time. Tonight I'm going to talk about some of my favorite soundtracks to movies. When I say soundtrack tonight I mean Original Score. So let me just list a few of my favorite scores and I will defend my opinion, which is open for debate as well.

Gladiator as a movie was amazing. Hans Zimmer was a genius with this score. My favorite song is track 3 and it is titled The Battle. It is a ten minute and two second song of brilliance. When the song is played in the movie it is at the beginning of the movie during that opening battle scene. It starts out slow with fluid strings and percussion in almost a calming sense. It seems to lull you into a sense of security and then there is a casacade of string plucks and a subtle voice in the background and the tone begins to shift and the tempo speeds up. The notes become choppier and more dramatic and time passes. There is a common section of notes repeating in the background with other notes building on top of it slowly crescendoing until it hits you. And you are completely lost in the music with all the different notes bombarding you just like you would feel like if you were in the battle side by side with Russel Crowe. Granted this is only one song but I feel really strongly about the whole soundtrack. It fits the movie amazingly well. When I listen to this soundtrack I can picture scenes from the movie in my mind and I also use it to help me study as well. When I listen to this soundtrack and it hits certain points in each song the information just seems to flow through my fingertips and it's just an amazing feeling.



Ah Inception. This movie blew my mind and I loved every second of it. While sitting in the theater watching the movie I knew I had to have the soundtrack. In fact one of the first few things I said after the movie to my Mom was that I wanted this soundtrack. Granted I say that alot after movies! :) But this score like the other one fits the movie perfectly. Again the composer is Hans Zimmer and I promise not all of the soundtracks listed are by Hans Zimmer. In the trailer for this movie there were the deep bass notes. I love that those were carried into the movie. This soundtrack is so fluid that I can listen to it on repeat for hours on end. Also great for studying I might add. I can pretend in my own little world that this soundtrack can make me smarter because of the movie it is from.

This is another example of a soundtrack I knew I wanted right when the credits started rolling. I turned to my Mom and told her this and she said "I knew you were going to say that". This score was done by Alexandre Desplat. The strings used on the soundtrack are just amazing. The creative mixture of instruments for this soundtrack makes it just as intriguing as the movie itself which is perfect. There is a common underlying stretch of notes that is repeated in certain songs which are key to the movie whenever something big is discovered surrounding the novel. Great movie too by the way folks. I highly reccomend it. It's long but definitely worth it!

Ok criticize me if you want for my selection but the instrumental score for this movie is just absolutely amazing. The music in this soundtrack just moves me. It has my two favorite sounding instruments, the strings and the piano. Others are present in the soundtrack as well but the strings and the piano are my all time favorite sounding. There is something I find passionate aobut the sounds from these instruments that is hard to describe. This score is also done by Alexandre Desplat, which is when I first started paying attention to movies he is involved in. The most recent one that I can think of is The Kings Speech which I would like to see for multiple reasons and the score is also nominated for an Academy Award and so is Inception as well.

Ok this is the last one for the night because I have to get some sleep eventually and let's face it, I could go on for days if I had the opportunity to do so. Christina I know you wil love this picture even though it's isn't an official Fringe photo. But here's the scoop guys. Fringe has an amazing soundtrack. It's not very often that television shows put out scores, but this one is very powerful and beautiful like the show. Yes I will confess I listened to this one while studying for my Neuroanatomy course because they deal with the brain on the show so much. I know that has nothing to do with how I did on my tests but hey the power of suggestion can go a long ways just like positive thinking. The opening credits to this show are so clever that I could listen to them over and over. Oh wait I do, whenever ma petite texts me. This score is writeen by a few people, J.J. Abrams, Chad Seiter, Michael Giacchino, and Chris Tilton. Their collective minds together make this a brilliant mastepiece. I'm ready for season two's soundtrack to whoever may be listening. Please!


Well that was just a small and tiny insight into a few of my favorite soundtracks. I have plenty more and later I'll make a part two or just do one blog once a week about soundtracks. Who knows. But I'll leave you with one question... What is your favorite soundtrack and why?


"Do you think that's a bad sign. That I can say that out loud and neither one of us thinks we're crazy?" -Fringe

Terror at 30,000 feet

So keeping with the theme of randomly picking a movie I gave a friend the task of picking a number between 1 and 300. I'm a messy college student so my movies are not in any kind of order. He picked 13. And so the lucky movie of this blog discussion will be...


Red Eye

Spoiler Alert! If you haven't watched the movie then I wouldn't recommend reading any further! :)





I'm going to go on record and say that this movie was pretty dang good. The idea of a subtle hostage situation on a plane is freaky. Not being able to call out for help for fear of harm coming to your family is just disturbing. I know that I would do anything for my family. I love Rachel McAdams character. She is for the most part calm and cool and collected. Or at least she puts off that image.

Now Cillian Murphy's character on the other hand is pure evil and I'm not gonna lie. I love it. I think he was perfect in that role. His eyes have the capacity to play the role perfectly. They are just the right color to be hypnotizing. His character is just so non-chalant about getting Rachel McAdams to do what he wants. When she first doubts him, he just tosses her fathers wallet out on the tray table in front of them, and BAM!, whoops ya kinda know he's serious now. It's little things like that that make me as a movie watcher say "Oh snap".

 I'm also going on record and saying that I love movies by Wes Craven, which is what drew me into this movie in the first place. I remember seeing opening weekend with some friends of mine. I mean who doesn't love the Scream movies (which I can not wait for the new one to come out April 15th!), the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and Dracula 2000 just to name a few. He definitely knows what to put in a movie to get that startle reaction out of the audience and to bring a sense of fear to the audience that doesn't necessarily have to be gruesome. Because lets face it, not all scary movies have to be slasher flicks.

I love the ending to this movie because after all Rachel McAdams has been through it only makes her stronger. She's had a rough night people lets face it. So telling some annoying hotel guests off, that's just well deserved and funny for the audience. So as far an ending thoughts go I'll leave you with this. Say you are in her position on the flight sitting next to someone who wants and is demanding at the safety of your family to help them with their assassination plot, how would you handle it? Would you do anything differently? What lengths would you go to to protect your family?

"Sometimes bad things happen to good people." -Red Eye

Resident Evil: Extinction

So by spinning around in a circle with my finger out, like a little child, I picked a random movie from my shelf and have decided to talk about it for this next blog entry...

And the winner is...

Resident Evil: Extinction

If you haven't watched this movie yet I would not suggest continuing on. Check back later after you have watched it or for the next blog.





I'm just gonna go on record saying I love this movie and anything Resident Evil. I believe the whole series is just brilliant. I think it's a creative taking on the zombie apocalypse genre of movies. The fact that they blame an evil corporation for everything is magnificent. The fact that everything is underground as well is quite interesting to me because it makes me wonder what could be below the city I live in? Is there some evil corporation biologically engineering a disease that could wipe out all life on our planet? I know that statement makes me sound like a conspiracy nut but think about it. It could happen or be happening and we have no idea.

Also I'm not gonna lie, I find the fact that the main character is a woman, amazing. More girl power. It just proves that we can do things just as well as men. I mean this is the third movie and she has outlast quite a few friends and acquaintances. As hard as this may sound, each loss seems to strengthen her as well. It makes her drive to take down the Umbrella corporation just that much stronger. It seems that it has this same effect with the audience as well. The red and white symbol for the Umbrella Corporation seems to elicit such responses as "aw shit" or "come on" or "not again".

Granted some people believe that the ending to this movie may be a bit unrealistic but to me I just went with it as a warning not to try and mess with things that shouldn't be messed with and took it as that. But the real ending to the movie was like a great "eff you" to Umbrella as a warning and in the next movie you will find out if she makes it to them or not.

Overall I love zombie movies. I also love movies where the lead is a female who can kick some ass. So this movie combines both of those and I pretty much think it's sensational. As far as the music goes for this movie there was just enough mix. There were some actual songs in the movie as well as an underlying score. This type of movie can feed on either. The mix for these was perfect. When the bus splattered the zombie with the wheel spike, the music following was perfect. And for the rest of the movie the score was able to carry the movie. Sometimes you don't need music with words and this movie demonstrates that, even though it takes place at a current or future time. I personally own this soundtrack and listen to it often. It's in my vast collection of soundtracks for a reason.

So I'll end with a question to pose to everyone out there. If there was a zombie apocalypse would you know how to survive? Not that this movie is a how-to-manual on how to survive such a thing because Alice is definitely not your average person, but can we learn from this? What's your take on the franchise?

"We fought the infection. We survived the apocalypse. And now, we face extinction." - Resident Evil: Extinction (trailer)

Thoughts

So I'm just a girl who loves movies and has too many thoughts in my mind and need somewhere to put them down. So this is what I'm going to do. I'll put them out here in the vast cyber space and see what happens.  I love most movies although some movies just put me over the edge. My favorite genre is Horror/Thriller because I have yet to find a movie that has truely scared me to the point I have to turn the movie off or get up and walk away. I'm open to suggestions for movies to watch. Not all these posts will be about movies because that's not the only thing in my life. My favorite part of a movie other than the movie itself is the music. A movie is a failure without great music! But granted that's just my opinion and everyone is entitled to their own.

Well that's it for this post. I've got to get going so until next time I'll end each blog with a quote from a movie I love.



"Our dreams, they feel real while we're in them right? Its only when we wake up then we realize that something was actually strange."   -Inception