“Prophecy Theme” by Brian Eno, from the Dune soundtrack

by Fred (follow us on Facebook) While doing some reading in preparation for an upcoming post, I came across this old gem. You’d be forgiven for not knowing this was Brian Eno. (Still image alert.) That’s from the 1984 David Lynch film Dune.

Imperial March

In a recent Marginal Revolution post, Tyler Cowen posed an intriguing hypothetical: what if David Lynch had directed the film Return of the Jedi? Not a purely academic question: we learn that there was at least brief talk on the subject. Coincidentally enough, a few years before the second set of three films showed up, [...]

Nine exit musics (for films)

Click here (Myspace page for Clint Mansell). Listen to “Lux Aeterna.” Sound familiar? Listen to “Death Is The Road To Awe.” Ditto? Mansell, formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself, has since earned himself some pretty snappy composer credits. “Lux Aeterna” appeared in Requiem For a Dream. “Death Is The Road To Awe,” in The Fountain. [...]

The music of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

In 1978, when Judi Barrett first published the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, climate change and national obesity were not marquee political issues. No one had heard of genetically modified foods and you could probably not have named the CEO of Microsoft, or any of its products. Times have changed. One of the [...]

South Africans watch District 9

It’s an incredible article. Our previous remarks on the film are here.

Revolution: district number nine

Peter Jackson — unstoppable, brilliant, visionary Peter Jackson — has struck again, this time with District 9, a science fiction picture for the rest of us. District 9 belongs in that rarest of hyperreal categories, combining an unknown cast (read: Kids and Apocalypto), and a straight-faced fictional documentary style (think Black and White, or anything [...]

Surely Star Trek had music in it, although it was such a remarkable film overall that I don’t remember any

As of last Tuesday at noon, there were exactly forty-four people left in the world who had not seen the new Star Trek film. (You in the back, I can hear you from all the way over there: “New? Tee hee!”) This post is written for the remaining forty-two. Yes, ye of That Number, the [...]

There Will B–

The wife and I are halfway through the film There Will Be Blood.  It’s phenomenal.  Never again will such an assortment of pond-scum be so engaging to watch.  There is the hateful, murdering oil man. The greedy, religious nut job. The abusive father. The careless roughnecks. The condescending monopolists. The only character the audience comes [...]

Listen to music instead of watching Knowing

SPOILER ALERT: We’re about to give the whole thing away. That’s the most humane thing you can do for so miserable a motion picture: give it away free of charge. And here we go: Atheist Nicolas Cage, son of a preacher man, realizes that a 50-year-old document has predicted the dates, death tolls, longitudes and [...]

The music of Bruno?

We never finished Borat, but not that, say, the wife took a call and yet beyond that we never made our way to the closing credits. Instead I mean that the film broadcasted itself in its entirety to our living room, but we were often hiding our faces behind our hands. Maybe we just hail [...]