Trailer: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire


PCAS

I am currently in the process of catching up on all of the news that I missed out on during last week’s unplanned vacation from posting.  Indeed, one of the biggest events last week was the release of this trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.  The Hunger Games was one of the best films of 2012 and Jennifer Lawrence provided a role model for girls who, otherwise, might be tempted to mistake Bella Swan for a strong woman.

Is it any wonder that Catching Fire is one of the most anticipated films of 2013?

Catching Fire, starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Francis Lawrence, is scheduled to be released on November 22nd.

Song of the Day: Gipsy Danger (by Ramin Djawadi)


PacificRimOST

This latest “Song of the Day” will be the second of what will be a trifecta of my favorite tracks from the Pacific Rim soundtrack by composer Ramin Djawadi. The first one was the main theme from the film and featured Rage Against the Machine lead guitarist Tom Morello providing lead guitar work. This second track I’ve chosen is siply titled “Gipsy Danger”.

Where the main theme has been everyone’s favorite in the entire soundtrack it’s difficult not to enjoy the motif for the main character of the film. Let’s be honest and just admit to ourselves that the main character in Pacific Rim is the jaeger christened Gipsy Danger. The track which introduces her theme in the film actually precedes the main theme. We actually hear the “Gipsy Danger” theme right from the start of the film. It combines some of the hard rock melodies and chords from the film’s main theme, but also expanding on the deep bass tone (sounding like a fog horn blowing) that punctuates throughout this theme more than it did in the main theme. This deep sound I always thought of as the “monster arriving” musical cue. It appears not just when Gipsy Danger makes her initial appearance but also whenever a kaiju emerges from the ocean and makes landfall to cause destruction. It’s a sound cue similar to classic giant monster flicks from Japan that announces either Godzilla or one of his kaiju brethren which was followed-up by the iconic monster scream.

We get both the rock and roll and heroic sound from the main theme combined with the more ominous musical cue in this chosen track. It pretty much focuses on one of the film’s taglines about creating monsters to fight monsters. The Gipsy Danger jaeger is a monster in her own right. But then she’s our monster and we always have a fondness for monsters as long as it’s our own.