Saturday, June 4, 2011

10. There Will Be Blood - Convergence - Jonny Greenwood

One of my favorite films of the last decade was Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece There Will Be Blood. Jonny Greenwood's haunting score that accentuates the consuming nature of oil in Daniel Plainview's life. The most powerful scene is an accident involving an oil derrick explosion. Convergence is a chaotic track that works both as a singular piece of music and as a part of the film. Greenwood combines percussion instruments that increase in speed as the scene progresses. The sounds of whiny violins play sporadically only adding to the eeriness of the mayhem that is taking place on screen. Convergence is perfect for conveying the tragic nature of Plainview and his inability to truly care about anything other than money and oil.

Films Scores

Recently on a special podcast of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews a panel of experts were gathered to put together their lists of the ten greatest film scores of all time.

It was interesting to hear both classical musicians, a film critic, and a pop musician discuss their favorite songs from films ranging from Star Wars to The Magnificent Seven to Amélie. Eventually they narrowed it down to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws for the number one choice. Their top ten will be played live on June 10th by the BBC Philharmonic.

Personally I like the Jaws theme better, but this may be influenced by the fact that I love the movie Jaws and I don't care for Raiders so the song just does nothing for me.

I was inspired by the podcast to compile my own top ten list, which I will post, but I did notice that most of the films I chose were from my favorite films. Is it that I have a bias for the films that I like, or do I just have that great of taste in both movies and film scores?

Let's go with the latter.

What I believe makes the most sense is that a film score is just important an element of why a movie is good or not.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Back to Blogging

After taking a year off of this here blog, I've decided to jump back in and try to kick start it again. I don't quite know what format I'm going for, but it will consist of my crazy ramblings, film reviews, and updates of things I'm working on during the coming months. This past year has been interesting and I've gained new and interesting perspectives along the way. Hope to gather some followers so I will try to keep this updated as much as possible. Thanks for reading and tell your friends. If nothing else this might be funny.

Joe