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Film Music (slightly OT)

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kleines c
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« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2013, 06:38:37 am »

Greetings from kleines c.  As something of a film buff, I feel qualified to comment on film music and the evolution of the music video.  What better way to see in the New Year than in the company of Adam Buxton and his laptop full of audiovisual marvels at 20:30 (GMT) on Thursday 17 January 2013 (BUG 35)?   Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading The Art-Music Forum is cordially invited to join us at BFI Southbank.

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=DAE5A49C-5651-4DB3-9DCD-B3082DA39C41&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=10E8EC1B-F0F7-4EA2-A70F-4AE142DEEDCD

It is worth pointing out that when Roger Wright schedules film music of any kind for the BBC Promenade Concerts, such concerts invariably sell out.  I would go further however.  Cinema was arguably the greatest art form to emerge in the twentieth century, and as a form of multimedia, music is a key element to its success. For the record, here are the British Film Institute's 2012 'Sight & Sound' Top Ten:

Quote
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

4. La Regle du Jeu (Renoir, 1939)

5. Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)

10. 8½ (Fellini, 1963)

846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors have voted – and the 50-year reign of Kane is over. Our critics’ poll has a new number one.  Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo beat Citizen Kane by 34 votes.  In the last poll held 10 years ago, Hitchcock's 1958 thriller came five votes behind Welles's 1941 classic.  But it does mean that Alfred Hitchcock, who only entered the top ten in 1982 (two years after his death), has risen steadily in esteem over the course of 30 years, with Vertigo climbing from seventh place, to fourth in 1992, second in 2002 and now first, to make him the Old Master. Welles, uniquely, had two films (The Magnificent Ambersons as well as Kane) in the list in 1972 and 1982, but now Ambersons has slipped to 81st place in the top 100.  So does 2012 – the first poll to be conducted since the internet became almost certainly the main channel of communication about films – mark a revolution in taste, such as happened in 1962? Back then a brand-new film, Antonioni’s L’avventura, vaulted into second place. If there was going to be an equivalent today, it might have been Malick’s The Tree of Life, which only polled one vote less than the last title in the top 100. In fact the highest film from the new century is Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, just 12 years old, now sharing joint 24th slot with Dreyer’s venerable Ordet. Here is Kim Novak in Vertigo:



http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

For comparison, here are the 2012 'Sight & Sound' 358 Directors’ Top Ten:

Quote
1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

2= 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

2= Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

4. 8½ (Fellini, 1963)

5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese 1976)

6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola 1979)

7= The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

7= Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1949)

Subtle and sensitive, Tokyo Story lets the viewer experience the tensions and demands that modern life makes on people.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/sight-sound-2012-directors-top-ten

Lastly, here are the Top Ten as rated by users of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb):

Quote
1. The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994)

2. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

3. The Godfather: Part II (Coppola, 1974)

4. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966)

6. 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)

7. Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993)

8. The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008)

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Jackson, 2003)

10. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)

In The Shawshank Redemption, two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

Any preferences?  It is interesting to chart how critics' tastes change over the decades, and on how directors and internet movie database users rate films so differently.  How subjective are our tastes in film, let alone anything else? As for film music and the Oscars, The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer. Only one composer has won two Scoring Oscars the same year. In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch won Original Dramatic Score for The Way We Were and Best Adaptation Score, for The Sting. Hamlisch also won Best Song that year, making him the only composer to win three music Oscars in the same year. Only one composer has won Oscars three years in a row. Roger Edens won for Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), and Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Eight composers have won Oscars two years in a row:
 
Quote
1.Ray Heindorf won for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and This is the Army (1943).
 
2.Franz Waxman won for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).
 
3.Alfred Newman won for With a Song in My Heart (1952) and Call Me Madam (1953). He won again for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) and The King and I (1956).
 
4.Adolph Deutsch won for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma! (1955).
 
5.André Previn won for Gigi (1958) and 1959's Porgy and Bess (1959). He won again for Irma La Douce (1963) and My Fair Lady (1964).
 
6.Leonard Rosenman won for Barry Lyndon (1975) and Bound for Glory (1976).
 
7.Alan Menken won for Beauty and The Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992).
 
8.Gustavo Santaolalla won for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Babel (2006).

Interestingly, Dmitri Shostakovich and Duke Ellington were both nominated the same year but lost to arrangers of West Side Story. Noted nominated composers known for their music mostly outside of the film world include: Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, Peter Maxwell Davies, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Artie Shaw, Trent Reznor, Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock. Rock musicians and pop stars are most often nominated in the songwriting category. A handful that were nominated in the Scoring categories includes: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Prince, Peter Townshend, Rod McKuen, Isaac Hayes, Kris Kristofferson, Anthony Newley, Paul Williams, Tom Waits, David Byrne, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Trent Reznor and Matthew Wilder. Record producers George Martin (the Beatles) and Jerry Wexler (Atlantic Records) also received nominations in the Scoring categories.  My own particular favourite composers for film are Bernard Hermann (Vertigo) and Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story), although West Side Story started off as a stage musical.  My tastes in film music, therefore, are both surprisingly popular and populist.  As for the twenty-first century, we do not yet know what will be the greatest art form to emerge today, although my guess would be that because of the digital revolution, it will be some new, as yet undefined form of multimedia.  In particular, I should like to recommend a visit to the Tanks at Tate Modern on the afternoon of Wednesday 16 January 2013.  I am not me, the horse is not mine.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks/exhibition/william-kentridge-i-am-not-me-horse-not-mine

Afterwards, how about a pint at The George (16:00 GMT)?

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/george-inn/

Whatever the future of multimedia works of art, music will remain a key component.  Perhaps we are writing the greatest score of the twenty-first century today?
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