nixsight

A reflective week – lots of weirdness has left me wanting bewilderingly emotional movie music.

3: Amelie (piano version) – Yann Tiersen

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I haven’t seen Amelie in a good long while, but the soundtrack always makes me feel so happy. This theme is one of the slower moments in the score, but everything about this film was pretty, quirky and cheering – except the moments that were peculiar and sad, and anything that makes me think about it is a good thing.

2: The Last Waltz – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

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“The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford” is one of my three favourite films of the last year, and a lot of that is down to the beautiful dirge of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score. Cave previously aligned himself with the western with the enthusiastic but flawed “The Proposition”, but things really only came together with this soundtrack. Every second of it sings impending tragedy and tough choices.

1: Lux Aeterna – Kronos Quartet

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This track is from the Clint Mansell composed score to “Requiem For A Dream”, one of two films that I’ve seen in my life that I can honestly say are awesome, but I may never need to watch again.

The “Requiem” soundtrack, a hard and challenging instrumental assault course for the emotions, is a brilliant collaboration between the Kronos Quartet and Mansell, although it’s difficult to seperate any one track out of the thing – there are two or three particular themes that ebb and flow throughout the album, and they fit very closely to the opiate rhythm of the film itself. Still, even if you haven’t seen the film, you’ve probably heard some of this – it’s unsurprisingly used in trailers for all sorts of different movies.

Although interestingly, not yet for a screwball comedy, or dumb-girl-come-good flick.

As a bonus – another piece from Amelie, animated. I was kind of hoping to find a nice video of Michael Nyman’s theme to “The Piano”, but couldn’t, so this will have to do.

Oddly, I find these mannequin animations quite appealing, if only that they give the animator a blank canvas to practice their craft. They look unfinished, but I like that about them.