This has been a strange weather week in Boulder, CO. The temperature has jumped around from well below freezing to being in the 50s. As such, all of the snow (and streams) melted then froze, then melted, followed by a dusting of new snow. Sometimes this cycle is accompanied by the Chinook winds, which at times can stop you in your tracks if you try and walk directly into them. Or as is the case in this video, prevent me from holding a steady shot.
Author: filmscore80
30 Seconds a Week – Week 1
Sometimes you get the urge to do something that expands your skill set or otherwise stretches yourself in a new direction. I guess now is as good a time as any for me to start to exercise my long dormant creative side.
Back in the day I used to do more creative writing—short stories, poetry, etc.—but most of that fell by the wayside as got deeper into graduate school and began doing more analysis rather than creating. Recently, though, I have felt the urge to express myself creatively yet I lack the time and focus to dive back into creative writing. But during a conversation with a friend an idea hit me. It was simple, easy, and most importantly not all that difficult time wise. I have an iPhone, which has a great quality camera, and I live in a place that is both stunning visually, but also interesting in many ways. And then the title of the project came: 30 Seconds a Week. Continue reading “30 Seconds a Week – Week 1”
It Was the Worst of Years, It Was the Best of Years: 2016 In Review
By Michael W. Harris
Let’s face it, 2016 has been a dumpster fire of a year. Though I’m not sure that that is an adequate description. It’s more like a giant yard waste bag full of dog shit, set on your front porch and lit on fire which subsequently burns down the entire neighborhood. All the while the fire department looks on and does nothing because they have been bought off or distracted by a spray tan wannabe comic book villain with bad hair. Oh, and that fire kills every beloved pet of every single person living in the neighborhood.
Yeah, I think that begins to get across how truly craptastic 2016 has been.
And yet, as truly awful as the year has been on a macrocosmic level, and it has been truly wretched, I have to admit that for me, at least, it has been a pretty great year. Allow me to get personal for a few minutes. Continue reading “It Was the Worst of Years, It Was the Best of Years: 2016 In Review”
Borrowing Beyond the Stars: James Horner’s Music for Star Trek II and III
By Michael W. Harris
N.B.—This is a lightly edited form of my remarks delivered at the 2016 Society of Cinema and Media Studies conference held in Atlanta and the 2016 Music and the Moving Image conference held at New York University. Hence why this is nearly twice the length of my normal post.
James Horner has been a divisive figure in the film music community, fandom and scholarship alike, for many years. The cause of this division stems from Horner’s predilection for not only lifting material from other composers—Sergei Prokofiev and Dimitri Shostakovich to name but two—but also from routinely recycling material from his own scores. But the legal debate over copyright and plagiarism is best left to the Hollywood lawyers, but understanding the debate surrounding Horner is important. Continue reading “Borrowing Beyond the Stars: James Horner’s Music for Star Trek II and III”
There and Back Again: A New Viewing Order for The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Films
By Michael W. Harris
Well, I finally did it. I watched all six Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films back to back to back to back to back to back, and all in their Extended Editions (the only way to watch the films, as will be assumed throughout this post). That’s almost 21 hours of movie, to say nothing of breaks for cooking food, taking periodic walks, let alone sleep and other necessities. But throughout my viewing, the question lingered: what is the right viewing order of these six films? A film series I hereby dub the Tolkien Hexalogy, for lack of a better term.
Back when the final Hobbit film was released, an article on Medium.com was published that gave a number of possible viewing orders outside of the obvious options of story chronology option (Hobbit followed by Lord of the Rings), which is the how I watched them over two days this past week, or the release order (Rings followed by Hobbit). But none of the orders in the Medium article really resonated with me, and I mused if there was a viewing order that solved some of the viewing issues with the Hobbit films (somewhat bloated storyline, spoilers and foreshadowing for Lord of the Rings that might not make sense without seeing those films, etc.) the way that the rightfully famous Machete Order makes the Star Wars prequels watchable.
So what I will present in this post is my Machete inspired Tolkien Hexalogy viewing order, but just as Rod Hilton starts off his Machete Order post with some disclaimers, I feel like I must first tackle the elephant in the room… Continue reading “There and Back Again: A New Viewing Order for The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Films”
Jeff Buckley and Baroque Music
By Michael W. Harris
N.B. – This was written the Sunday after the election, after Leonard Cohen’s death, and after Saturday Night Live’s masterful blending of so much of the country’s reaction to both. It is going up a week later only due to my writing schedule.
It was just one of those weeks. When it seemed like the universe just knew what was going to happen and have a plan. Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen died in November 7th but it was not announced until the 10th. Regardless, it was a double whammy to many coming so close to the American presidential election, and indeed one of Cohen’s most famous songs, the wistful, gospel like “Hallelujah,” seemed to sum up so much of our somber reaction to the news that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.
So it was that Saturday Night Live opened their post-election episode with Kate McKinnon performing “Hallelujah” as Hillary Clinton, white pantsuit and all. Continue reading “Jeff Buckley and Baroque Music”
A Wistful Meditation on Mono no aware
By Michael W. Harris
N.B.—I wrote this post prior to Tuesday, November 8. Look to the end for a post-election postscript.
All things considered, this has been a fairly mild autumn in Boulder, CO. We have had scattered days of temperatures in the 80s with most days having been in the 70s or mid to upper 60s and mornings rarely dipping below freezing. Despite this, the green has slowly faded from the world with the exception of the evergreen pines of Colorado, and I can’t help but begin think more about the cycles of life and death and the concept of mono no aware. Continue reading “A Wistful Meditation on Mono no aware”
Just a Matter of Time: Musings on Arrival
By Michael W. Harris
Warning: Spoilers lie ahead. Just go see the movie first and then return to ponder its meaning with me.
Twice now in one week have I not fallen asleep until 2AM or later. The first was Tuesday night while still in shock from both the election and my ill-advised whiskey toast to the end of the American experiment. I should really never drink whiskey. Nothing good comes from whiskey.
The second time was Saturday night after seeing Arrival, the new film from Denis Villeneuve. I had only recently seen any of Villeneuve’s films, having watched Sicario about a month ago, though I had wanted to see Arrival since I had seen the first trailer.
It looked intriguing and most importantly seemed positioned to be a good thinking person’s science fiction film. One that asks big questions, and also asks more than it answers. Continue reading “Just a Matter of Time: Musings on Arrival”
A Good Trailer Is Hard to Find: Thoughts on Music and Trailers
By Michael W. Harris
I have written about trailers and music more than once on this blog, though it has been quite a while since last I thought about it. For the most part, trailers are quite unremarkable and meant to be little more than hype reels to sell a film, but that is really missing a golden opportunity to make an audience really excited for a film and drive interest (see the first Force Awakens trailer).
As I wrote in two very (VERY) early posts on this website (so please excuse the weirdness of my earlier writings), part of what can really sell a trailer is a good music choice. Rather than using canned, generic trailer music or reusing tracks from an earlier film (unless it part of a franchise), one of the best decisions can be to find the right pop song that somehow conveys something about the tone or story of the film. Continue reading “A Good Trailer Is Hard to Find: Thoughts on Music and Trailers”
How to Score Japan on Film: Kubo and the Two Strings vs. 47 Ronin
By Michael W. Harris
Back in August I went and saw Kubo and the Two Strings for my birthday and was struck by how well the score, by Dario Marianelli, balanced traditional Hollywood scoring techniques with an aural evocation of Japan’s traditional music culture. This was certainly helped by the fact that the titular Kubo is a shamisen playing, orgami folding, magic wielding boy, but so many times Hollywood films have substituted “vaguely Asian, but not Indian” instrumental sounds for any film set in China, Japan, or Korea. And the truth is that there are some very distinctive differences between the musical cultures of these countries.
This can be clearly demonstrated by a simple comparison between Kubo and the 2013 big budget adaptation 47 Ronin that was simultaneously awful, offensive, and also strangely entertaining. Continue reading “How to Score Japan on Film: Kubo and the Two Strings vs. 47 Ronin”
