Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Choose My Adventure For Me

So I've got a bunch of posts in the works and I can't decide which one to finish first. So I'm putting it to you, my good readers. Which of the following would you like to read?

A series of posts breaking down the score to Avatar on CD and how it fits into James Horner's total oeuvre. (This would probably be at least three posts). I realize this is a long time coming from my "First listen" post back in December, but I didn't even see the movie until mid-January so cut me some slack!

A discussion of a potential film music canon (as suggested long ago by The Temp Track)

The postminimalist nature of Don Davis's score for The Matrix (an extension of a paper I wrote years ago).

Your 10 (or so) favorite film music moments ever (courtesy of the Pikey's recent post)

And, finally, thoughts on the best film scores of the first decade of this millenium.

So there you have it. And remember...Your opinion counts!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Little Pleasures

My drive home lends itself rather well to the ebb and flow of a well-planned film music playlist.

I take I-35 most of the way home but I take a circuitous route to get there that requires me at one point to be on I-29 south to take I-35 north (in order to avoid construction on this). The merge ramp from I-29 south to I-35 north is a single-lane brdige that actually crosses over itself to go north. Traffic often slows to a crawl - if not a complete standstill - on this bridge/merge depending on the time of day (usually by the time I'm on it).

As I merged onto the ramp yesterday, traffic slowed just as "The Asteroid Field" from The Empire Strikes Back came on. The music paced the external action perfectly. As traffic began to speed up, so also did the tempo. Once I merged fully onto I-35 and was back up to speed, the cue locked into its tempo and carried me through the next four miles of weaving in and out of the "interstate asteroids" beautifully.

Some people would say this was luck, but in my experience there's no such thing as luck.