Category Archives: Music Review

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Big City Nights (dir. by Spike Jonze)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I saw Tron: Legacy, I couldn’t get the Daft Punk soundtrack out of my head and, of course, any time I think about Daft Punk, I end up thinking about the plight of lonely dog named Charles, trying to make it on his own in the big city.

I’m referring, of course, to Spike Jonze’s brilliant short film, Big City Nights.  Often mistakenly considered to merely be a music video, it is instead a satire of the conventions of pop culture that also works as an affectionate homage to every fish (or dog) out of water story ever told.  Daft Punk’s Da Funk just happens to be playing in the background.

I think I was either 11 or 12 when I first saw it, at which time I think I just thought it was kind of funny and kind of weird and not much else.  Fortunately, I was able to rediscover it when I bought a wonderful little DVD called The Works of Director Spike Jonze.

Anyway, like most works of brilliance, the art speaks for itself…

(Sorry, clicking on the embedded video here will cause another link — leading to the actual video on Youtube — to come up.  Which sucks!  But the link is safe and the video is worth watching.)

41 Songs But No End Credits

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Academy has released a list of the 41 songs that they have determined are “eligible” for an Oscar nomination next year.  Considering how this year has gone, I shouldn’t be surprised that the songs that I really liked (like “Kick Ass” from Kick Ass and “End Credits” from Harry Brown) have not been deemed eligible.

Anyway, via Awards Daily, here’s the complete list of the eligible songs:

“Alice” from “Alice in Wonderland”
“Forever One Love” from “Black Tulip”
“Freedom Song” from “Black Tulip”
“Bound to You” from “Burlesque”
“Welcome to Burlesque” from “Burlesque”
“You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” from “Burlesque”
“There’s a Place for Us” from “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
“Coming Home” from “Country Strong”
“Me and Tennessee” from “Country Strong”
“Despicable Me” from “Despicable Me”
“Prettiest Girls” from “Despicable Me”
“Dear Laughing Doubters” from “Dinner for Schmucks”
“Better Days” from “Eat Pray Love”
“If You Run” from “Going the Distance”
“Darkness before the Dawn” from “Holy Rollers”
“Sticks & Stones” from “How to Train Your Dragon”
“Le Gris” from “Idiots and Angels”
“Chanson Illusionist” from “The Illusionist”
“Never Say Never” from “The Karate Kid”
“To the Sky” from “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”
“What If” from “Letters to Juliet”
“Life during Wartime” from “Life during Wartime”
“Made in Dagenham” from “Made in Dagenham”
“Little One” from “Mother and Child”
“Be the One” from “The Next Three Days”
“If I Rise” from “127 Hours”
“When You See Forever” from “The Perfect Game”
“I Remain” from “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”
“Dream Big” from “Pure Country 2: The Gift”
“How I Love You” from “Ramona and Beezus”
“Darling I Do” from “Shrek Forever After”
“Noka Oi” from “Six Days in Paradise”
“This Is a Low” from “Tamara Drewe”
“I See the Light” from “Tangled”
“Rise” from “3 Billion and Counting”
“We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3″
“Eclipse: All Yours” from “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
“Nothing” from “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too”
“A Better Life” from “Unbeaten”
“Shine” from “Waiting for ‘Superman’”
“The Reasons Why” from “Wretches & Jabberers”

I saw Burlesque with my friend Evelyn earlier tonight (hi, Evelyn!) and even though the movie was pretty silly, we ended up singing our own version of “Bound to You” for three hours afterward. 

I also thought that “Better Days” from Eat Pray Love and “Dear Laughing Doubters” from Dinner For Schmucks were both perfect examples of good songs written for rather disappointing movies.

Still, I’m sad to see that “Pimps Don’t Cry” won’t be getting a chance to bring The Other Guys some Oscar glory.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Host of Seraphim (performed by Dead Can Dance)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, out there!

Okay, for those of you who haven’t been following along, on Monday, Arleigh posted an entry about Frank Darabont firing the Walking Dead’s writing staff and how this might indicate that Darabont is planning on being the show’s sole writer.

So, of course, me being the little contrarian that I am, I had to stick my big Italian nose into it all and comment about how much I hate The Shawshank Redemption and about how Stephen King is an insecure whore.  And this, of course, led to all of the boys fighting over whether or not The Mist had a good ending.

(I’m joking a little here — it’s actually been a pretty interesting discussion.)

Anyway, I’ve already taken my side in the argument, which is that The Mist had a terrible ending but that terrible ending was scored with a really good and haunting song.

And here that song is : The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Hey Boy Hey Girl (performed by the Chemical Brothers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some day, I’m going to make and publish a list that will entitled “Top Ten Songs To Dance To While Wasted.”  Until I get around to that, I’ll just take a few minutes to highlight the song that would probably come in at number 3 — Hey Boy Hey Girl by the Chemical Brothers.

I really wanted to put up the music video that features the kids in the museum and the skeletons having sex in the public restroom.  However, every version of that to be found on YouTube comes with one of those really annoying “embedding disabled by request” tags.  Bleh on that.

So, I’m including two videos.  The first one is simply the song as it appears on 1999’s Surrender.  The second is a clip of the Chemical Brothers doing the song live at Glastonbury in 2007.  Personally, I love the 2nd clip.  If you ever get a chance to see the Chemical Brothers live, you must take it as surely as you must breathe oxygen to live.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Buio Omega (performed by Goblin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of my favorite movies of all time is Joe D’Amato’s haunting 1979 romance Beyond The Darkness.  Not only is it one of the best Italian films ever (and the best film ever directed by D’Amato) but I think it’s also one of the best films ever made.

One reason the film is so effective is because of its soundtrack, which was composed and performed by  (who else?) Goblin.  The music will be familiar to any Italian horror fan, largely because it was reused by about a thousand other movies that came out in the years after Beyond The Darkness.  (Director Bruno Mattei, in particular, was fond of it.)

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Gimme Shelter (performed by Merry Clayton and the Rolling Stones)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is November 9th.  I’m 25 years old today and I don’t want to talk about it.  Bleh.  Instead, let’s just play one of the greatest songs ever written, Gimme Shelter.

Gimme Shelter is one of those songs that seems to turn up in every fourth movie that I watch and it’s easy to tell why.  It’s a great song.  Despite the apocalyptic subject matter, this is an undeniably exhilirating song.  This is a song that makes my heart beat faster every time I hear it.  If I ever happen to total my car again, it’ll probably be because I was listening to this song while driving.  If I ever make out my list of top ten songs to fuck make love fuck to, Gimme Shelter will be at the top of the list along with Blondie’s Atomic, Siouxsie and the Banshee’s Kiss Them For Me, and every song on Moby’s Play CD.

Is it possible that Gimme Shelter is the greatest song of all time?

Yes.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Smashed Blocked (performed by John’s Children)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Four years ago, I was in Recycle Books in Denton, Texas and I came across a book called something like “Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll.”  The book came with a CD that featured music by some of the bands featured in that book.  The first song on that CD (and my personal favorite) was Smashed Blocked, a song from a band called John’s Children. 

(It’s a good book, too.)

Now Playing: The Disco Love Theme From Caligula

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When the infamous epic Caligula was first released back in 1979, a disco version of Caligula’s love theme — We Are One — was also released as a promotional gimmick.  If you’ve sat through the behind-the-scenes footage on the Caligula Imperial Edition DVD, this song has probably been forever branded on your brain.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This song is so over-the-top, so blatantly exploitive, so insidiously catchy, and so totally inappropriate for the film it was written for that it simply cannot be ignored.  To me, this song represents everything that makes the Grindhouse great. 

(As well, I hope whoever was playing bass got paid extra…)

While we’re on the subject, I’m also going to include the opening credits of Caligula because I’ve always liked the use of Profokiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

(I also love the fact that the screenplay is credited as being adapted from a script by Gore Vidal yet no one is given credit for doing the adapting, the editing is credited to “the production,” and director Tinto Brass is credited with “principal photography.”)

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Death Disco a.k.a. Swan Lake (by Public Image, Ltd.)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Recently, I’ve been reading Clinton Heylin’s history of punk rock, Babylon’s Burning: From Punk To Grunge.  Not surprisingly, one of the main characters in this book is John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten).  Along with detailing Lydon’s time as the lead singer for the Sex Pistols, the book also examines Lydon’s subsequent career as the frontman for Public Image, Ltd.  The book also inspired me to track down and listen to one of PIL’s earliest efforts, a song that was originally called Death Disco (though it was also released under the name Swan Lake for reasons that become obvious once you listen to the song).

Death Disco was written after and in response to the death of Lydon’s mother.  Though the song is now over 30 years old, it remains a powerful and cathartic cry of pain and loss.

As an added bonus, here’s two interviews with Lydon, one from the late 70s that was recorded shortly before he formed Public Image, Ltd. (and in which he looks so incredibly young and, dare I say it, rather adorable in his bratty way) and one from 2007 in which he discusses the meaning of life.