My last post focused of video game music so I thought I would take a moment to talk about film soundtracks and our collection.
Music and film have always shared a close relationship. While the on-screen action and dialogue provide crucial information on the content of a film, accompanying music can set the tone of a scene and in certain cases provide a narrative without a single spoken word.
In the silent film era movie theaters would hire piano players to help provide audiences with auditory clues about the action on-screen. It seems only natural that the first full length film that was produced with sound was the Jazz Singer, a film about a talented Jazz musician whose ambitions are in conflict with his upbringing.
This is not a new film, but it is a classic tale which has been re-released on DVD and is available in our catalog: The Jazz Singer
But seeing as this is a music blog, I offer you a gateway to many treasures:
The following link will give a list of a good deal of our soundtrack collection under the subject heading Motion Picture Music. The selection is very diverse, and there are plenty of CDs (225!) to choose from. Not enough? Here's another link, for 147 soundtracks under Motion Picture Music Excerpts. That's a lot of music. I invite you to browse these links and find something new, or something you haven't thought about in a while.
But for those who find the idea of sorting through hundreds of records daunting, here are three of my current favorite soundtracks from the catalog:
Wicked: The soundtrack to the Broadway musical, it's an entertaining re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz based on the Gregory Maguire series.
Inception: Composer Hans Zimmer is prolific, and while his distinct style of composition is sometimes recognizable it sometimes borders on repetitive, he does a wonderful job of capturing the ambiance of dystopic and post-apocalyptic worlds.
Inglourious Basterds: I have been a Tarantino fan for years, and his films always so a great job of using existing music to accentuate the emotions actions that take place on the screen. While this isn't my favorite of his films, the soundtrack is still memorable.
Happy Listening!
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