Final Music
The Thin Blue Line
(1988; dir Erroll Morris, music Philip Glass)
2001: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(dir. Ang Lee, music by Tan Dun) -won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Score
Cinema Paradiso
(dir. Giuseppe Tornatore, music by Ennio Morricone) -a film that exoticizes the past and normalizes life in a post WWII Italian town -the music plays a major role in a study of multiple contexts: real life vs filmed life, Italian film, and how movies in general can create a believable yet fantastic world
minimalism
- a style originating in the USA in the 1960s in strong opposition to modernism -pared-down means of composition -no sense of time-oriented direction: stasis and repetition replace the melodic lines, tension and release, and climaxes of conventional tonal music -a reaction against modernism: minimalism is tonal or tonal or modal where Modernism is atonal, rhythmically regular and continuous where Modernism is aperiodic and fragmented, structurally and texturally simple where Modernism is complex
Bollywood films, contrasting with Indian "art cinema," operate at the levels of narrative and of spectacle
- in a cinema tradition that prioritizes emotional engagement over realism, there is no need to legitimate musical performance through such elaborate devices as a show within the film, as in some Hollywood musicals - the scale of a dance number can symbolize the degree of a hero and heroine's love for each other - Bollywood song picturizations strongly influenced by style of MTV, which arrived in India in 1993
preexisting songs used in Wong's Fallen Angels
-Because I'm Cool -Only You -Go Away from the World -Speak My Language -Wanj Ji Ta -Simu de Ren
shifting movie genres from Hong Kong
-Cantonese opera -detective Charlie Chan movie series -martial arts films -1960s and 1970s: rise of the superstars (Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan) -1980s: action films (John Woo) -1990s stylized art-house movies by Wong Kar Wai and Ann Hui
audience interaction
-Philip Glass Ensemble: brass, winds, singers, and farfisa keyboards -film influenced later commercials and music videos
For Americans, filmic-musical exoticization began in the 1950s
-biblical and distantly places epics (Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia) -films by Federico Fellini (La Strada, La Dolce Vita) -Bollywood (Bombay) and films about India (Gandhi 1988)
Indie movies often
-fragment narrative and eschew narration -accentuate low production values, DIY aesthetics -emphasize whimsicality and quirkiness (individuality of style) -stress single moments over any story -often rely on compilation soundtracks rather than traditional nondiegetic scoring -rely on music, sometimes by single songwriters, to provide continuity and cohesion -emphasize the mediated materiality of the music (as played on cheap equipment, old scratch LP2
Bollywood musicals
-length, much longer than Hollywood movies -music made first, story second -playback singing, actors not actually singing -Bollywood music has replaced the face of Indian music
The New Millennium
-minimalist styles in film and music -new overlaps between film and concert music -more electronic music in film and TV scores
Reasons for reemergence of compilation soundtracks
-suffering finanical problems in the late 1960s, studios aim for the lucrative but underdeveloped youth market -they recruit a young "film school generation" and give them new degrees of artistic license; for some directors, music became a crucial aspect of their personal cinematic style -industry recession also encouraged studios to form closer ties with the music industry; compilation soundtracks coincide
filmakers and composers can decide to
-use a Western style only (romantic, modern, popular) -reflect setting with ethnic elements in diegetic music -add ethnic instruments to the (western) studio orchestra -use musical aspects of the other culture in the underscoring -create an entirely and believably "authenic" score
Easy Rider
1969, dir Dennis Hopper, music by Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Byrds, Steppenwolf, The Electric Prunes, Roger McGuinn -iconic late 60s counterculture film, same year as Woodstock
Altered States
1980 dir. Ken Russell, music by John Coriliano
The Red Violin
1998, dir. Francois Girard, music by John Corigliano
The Hours
2002, dir. Stephen Daldry, music by Phlip Glass
Lost In Translation
2003, dir Sofia Coppola music supervisor Brian Retizell, choosing songs by Kevin Shields, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Squarepushes, The Pretenders
Slumdog Millionaire
2008, dir. Danny Boyle -is an essay in mainstream Hindi cinematic themes
Phillip Glass
American composer, early pioneer of minimalism in the concert hall, the theater, and movie scores
music-video-style moment in Blue Velvet
Ben lip-syncs Roy Orbison's In Dreams to Frank; Frank ruthlessly beat Jeffrey to In Dreams
Lost in translation karoke scene
Charlotte sings Pretenders "Brass in the Pocket" Bob picks Costello arrangement of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny Bout Peace, Love and Understanding"
Cong Su
Chinese conservatory-trained composer of art music, now teaches in Germany
Gu zheng, erhu, pipa
Chinese zither, Chinese two-string fiddle, Chinese verical lute
a revival of animated features
Disney Studios begin a comeback with The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991)-scores mostly by Alan Menken, who began his career in Broadway musicals
And these Disney animated movies have in turn come back as Broadway shows
Disney-produced musicals have the most successful run after Andrew Lloy Webber's last smash hit in 1986 (Phantom of the Opera)
Fallen Angels
Do Lok Tin Sai, 1995, dir Wong Kar-Wait, songs by Laurie Anderson, The flying Pickets, Marianna Faithful -is equal parts music video, film noir, hard boiled action flick, and absurdist student art-film project
a few famous earlier generic HK films
Enter the Dragon (1973), Fearless Hyena (1979), A Better Tomorrow (1986)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Hans Christian Anderson's tale given a happy ending and contemporary songs ranging from English folk to French cabaret, lively Caribbean, Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and showstopping Broadway "Under the Sea": Oscar-winning song in calypso style
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Japanese techno star, pianist and composer, now primarily a film composer using world music, samples, musique concrete, glitch and orchestra
Disney's Beauty highly influenced by French director
Jean Cocteau's romantic-surrealist film Belle et la Bete
John Corigliano
New York Composer of modernist-cinematic-phantasmagoria convert works and film scores and (in the case of The Red violin) a film score that has become a concert work
two famous early music videos of the non-action, visually-oriented type
Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody, Sinhead O'Connor Nothing Compares 2 U
David Byrne
Scottish-American art-pop composer, with a taste for dada; spearheaded late 197-s New Wave pop as original member of the Talking Heads
Bollywood films incorporated diverse influences
Shakespeare, Persian lyric poetry, Indian folk traditions, and Sanskrit drama; they involve operatic structures integrating songs into the narrative, dominant genres being the historical, mythological, and romantic melodrama
China as exoticist kitsch
Shanghai Express (1932) The Good Earth (1937)
first Hong Kong film made in 1909
Stealing the Roast Duck, as an offshoot project of the Shanghai movie industry
early compilation score examples
The Last Picture Show (songs by Hank Williams, Tony Bennett, Lefty Frizell, Pee Wee King, and Frankie Laine), American Graffitit (songs by the Big Bopper, Chuck Berry, Flash and the Cadillacs, the Flamingos, the Platters, the Diamonds, )
among the postmodern allusions in The Matrix:
Trinity's rooftop chase sequence, which references Hitchcock's Vertigo
Pulp Fiction
Vincent and Mia dance to Chuck Berry's "You can Never Tell" (only point in the film where narrative and music are fully integrated)
the east-west hybridity of Tan's music reflects the huge impact
Western art music had on him starting in the late 1970s
Happy Together
Wong Kar-Wai, 1997
Tan Dun
a composer "swinging and swimming freely among cultures" Tan has drawn inspiration from nature, Chinese philosophy and his childhood memories of folk music during the Cultural Revolution
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001, dir. Karan Johar; songs by Jatin Lalit, Sandesh Shandilya, and Aadesh Shrivastava)
a family struggles to accept their adopted son's marriage to a girl of a lower cast -11 songs
subculture
a group or class of lesser importance or size with specific beliefs, interests, or values different from those of the general culture
popular Hindi films tend toward melodrama
a narrative genre featuring sharp oppositions of good and evil, obvious displays of emotions, and moral rather than psychological conflicts
By the end of the 1970's,
a new practice had emerged, one that significantly challenged the sound, purpose, and authorial control of a conventional orchestral score
counterculture
a radical culture, esp amongst the young that rejects established social values and practices; a mode of life opposed to the conventional or dominant
Cameron returns to the disaster-movie genre of the 1970s, only with a huge production budget
adds a Romeo and Juliet love story representing classic differences
song sequences form
an extra narrative funciton of linking a film to Indian tradition, often quoting classical performances or depicting religious imagery
Indie
an independently produced film; by extension applied to other individuals and institutions, as distributors or cinemas, engaged independently in film or television
in the 1970s, world music became an important marketing term for commercially available music of non-Western origin and circulations, as well as musics of dominated ethnic minorities within the Western world
as discussed originally by ethnologists, "world musics" contested the idea -world music contested idea that the only music of value was Western art music
Bollywood movies commonly reference Hollywood musicals
but there is no such things as a Bollywood musical-most popular Hindi films could be called musicals in some way
blue velvet becomes a fetish for Frank Booth and a song about innocent love becomes a symbol of murder and perversion
by using the same song to represent both wholesomeness and perversion, Lynch musically signifies both worlds as fantasy
Lynch relies heavily on sound as well as songs
calls music just "another effect" and says he love to "push the pressure" in a scene sending a lot of stuff to the subwoofer
auteur idea starts by French critics and then American critics in 1960s
decades later (in the 1980s) a new kind of auteurism starts under the influence of music videos: these cinematic stylizations are music inspired and music based -David Lynch and Tarantino give pop songs that kind of centrality once reserved for the script
The Last Emperor 1987
dir. Bernardo Beertolucci; music by Ryuichi Sakamato, Cong Su, David Byrne
American Graffiti
dir. George Lucas, nostalgia is for early rock 'n' roll: The Big Bopper, Chuck Berry, Flash and the Cadillacs, the Flamingos, the Platters, the Diamons, and the Monotones
Koyaanisqatsi
dir. Godfrey Reggio, music by Philip Gass -unusual genre of "non-narrated documentary" -Glass's repetitive, ultra-tonal, minimalist score as analogy to structural rhythms of this pioneering non-narrative film (both music and film styles require a new kind of audience interaction)
Titanic (1997)
dir. James Cameron, music by James Horner
Stranger than Paradise
dir. Jim Jarmusch, music by John Lurie -Eva play and replays a tape of Screamin' Jay Hawkin's "I put a Spell on you" Lurie's original nondiegetic music is scored for string quartet
Raging Bull
dir. Martin Scorsese
Magnolia
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, songs by Aimee Mann Anderson Anderson: the film "came out of" Mann's song -extreme metadiegetic music moment in Magnolia: all the characters separately start singing Aimee Mann's "Wise up"
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
dir. Peter Sollett, songs by Chris Bell, Devendra Banhart, Bishop Allen, Vampire weekend, The Dead 60s
Nashville
dir. Rovert Altman
Run Lola Run (1998)
dir. Tom Tykwer, music by Tykwer -robbing a store scene: synthesized techno scoring, independent of the screen action
The Matrix (1999)
dir. Wachowski brothers; music by Don Davis -slick dystopian futurism, with a musical score combining minimalism, techno, and heavy metal
The Exorcist
dir. William Friedkin
minimalism preserves a
distance with the onscreen emotional and narrative content
Tarantino loves using California surf music
eg Dick Dale and Del Tones, for its distinct kind of musical intensity of style"- becomes signature sound for Pulp Fiction
Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou (1990)
first mainland Cinese film nominated for a foreign language Oscar
Tarantino's "situational use" of music
he has characters choose and celebrate songs (Mr. Blonde picks just the right music for torturing Marvin in Reservoir Dogs)
Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch: music by Angelo Badalamenti)
including Bobby Vinton's gong "Blue Velvet"), Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", Ketty Lester's "Love Letters"
Indexical signs
indicates things that are not visible in themselves: a fever indicates sickness, dark clouds in the west are an index of impending rain, (when it does signify, music signifies most often through indexical signs)
"Song and dance number" in Hollywood
is in Bollywood called "song picturization"
classic Hollywood film and film musicals have come to represent
mainstream film-making and American commercialist values
Kill Bill 2
music from old spaghetti westerns, country songs, Bernard Herrmann scores, Japanese pop guitar, martial arts flicks
With new auteurs of the 1980s and after
music is involved with the widening gap between script and cinematic experience (the script is no longer the central, all-determining aspect of the film)
ellipt for 'indie music'
music typical of independent record labels, freq characterized as unpolished or uncommercialized
Films that are specifically about music, musicians, or musical performance are called
musicals by Hindi filmakers
music-video-inspired auteurs
new audiovisual techniques (ex. rapid montage, edits, crosscutting) became inextricable from music -speeds of event raised or lowered -demphasis of traditional aspects of narrative and characterization -obliterating time and place -instead, a new concentration on situation -heightening of iron and ambiguty
auteur idea
notion that a film can be defined stylistically by a single cinematic "author" usually the director
exotic
of or pertaining to, or characteristic of a foreigner, or what is foreign (now rare), hence outlandish, barbarous, strange, uncouth (or strange and glamorous)
Bollywood
prolific and box-office oriented popular Hindi language film industry situated in Bombay (renamed Mumbai)
Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is an example of
recent films showing a "music video aesthetic" in which "musical moments not only break narrative continuity, they are also frequently self-consciously non-realist in style" (Tincknell & Conrich)
the Disney formula:
recreating a classic fairy tale with a strong female role, comic sidekicks, casting of well-known entertainers as voice actors, and new and engaging songs
These films displayed a growing diversity of rock n roll styles
reflecting an audience that was increasingly fragmented into discrete demographics and giving the score and soundtrack album broader appeal
the mainstream is constatnly
responding and incorporating subcultures and countercultures (including indie films and music)
scene: the English master and Pu Yi having lunch
scored by Cong Su, using mostly Chinese instruments
scene: Pu Yi tries to escape the Forbidden City to see his dead mother
scored by Sakamoto and Byrne
in classical Hollywood studio practice, music gives voice to the sentiments and insinuations that the
script cannot
the kung fo dojo training between Neo and Morpheus:
seamless integration of Asian percussion (Japanese taiko and gong) techno (from Lunatic Calm) and minimalist orchestral underscoring
the compilation soundtrack
selecting and fathering music from preexisting, often varied, sources -new practice of selecting and placing music in film; identified in the 1960's and 70's as a form of youth culture -compiled soundtracks, contrasting with original scores by using music with a host of extrafilmic associations, had broad allusive powers that added to a film's narrative power
symbolic signs
something signifies by convention: punctuation marks, traffic signs, national flags, etc
Bollywood films usually function as song collections for an audience that sources its popular music through films
songs are in simple style and serve as the starting point even the raison d'etre, prioritized over the visuals, and usually filmed before the rest of the movie, become stand-alone set pieces in the film
orientalism
the West exoticizing the East
exoticism
the charm and allure of the unfamiliar
Be Our Guest sequence references
the elaborate Busby Berkley dance routines
Hindi films tend to be much longer than Western movie because of
the episodic nature of the narrative and the inclusion of song sequences, comic interludes, and subplots -popular Indian cinema as a "cinema of interruptions" where elements such as song sequences and the interval interrupt the narrative
the distinguishing feature of popular Indian cinema
the ever present song-and-dance routines
Iconic signs
the sign resembles or imitates its signified object in that it possesses some of its qualities: a cartoon, sound effects, a statue, etc
idea of the gaze
the visual manifestation of power; one who looks is in a position of power over one who is looked at (domination of the male gaze, western gaze, white gaze) -The Last Emperor makes a case for the exoticizing gaze as a mode native to the movie camera
even more than the classic Disney animated features,
there movies are patterned after Broadway reviews
exoticize
to make something exotic
David Lynch
uses popular music not simply as an old-fashioned cue for fantasy (Over the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz) but as a screen upon which fantasy is projected
Horner's score is both orchestral and synthesized
uses representative themes (Leitmotifs) that aren't transformed
songs have a variety of functions in a compilation soundtrack:
• to authenticate the film's time and setting (the music typically fragmented and distorted, coming from car radios and jukeboxes • foregrounding the music, using whole songs In extended montage sequences, letting the lyrics speak for characters, or commenting on screen action • in the case of classical compilations, the music also often follows scoring conventions by being placed "under" action or dialogue to set a mood or tone for a scene.