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RE: What's Your Favorite Movie (and why)
Ok.. no such thing as “best” but.. I Can point out a few of my “favorites” .. in terms of how they have maybe influenced me and make me comfortable with myself and the world.
Can I say too much about Sound of Music? Epic fairy-tail/myth that provides a moral epitome of what is noble and precious about people and life. (almost like Homer’s Iliad defined the paragons and human vulnerabilities of that age 2500 years ago). Wonderful cinematography, wonderful musical score, wonderful actors and actresses that bring open hearts to their performances and create charming characters from a script that often only gives each one a few words (but words laced with so much implied in so few words)
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Raising Arizona is also a mythic sort of Tale .. The Cohen brother’s are geniuses . So much can be said with humor poking fun at misdirected notions and emotions in the comic characters as well as the “everyman” aspirations and confusions of the world brings about them vs purer emotions I think all men/women hold in their hearts (ok a bit Ann Frank there but…)
Favorite line “those were the salad days”
On top of that I have a Crush on Holly Hunter and fall in love with her again every time I see her on camera (or off camera in the “Incredibles”). The cinematography was good here too (although less high art like.. .. more director story driven). Any sweeping moving needs a score that conveys emotion at the right time and the Cohen Brothers are masters (see OH Brother where art thou )
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Local Hero
Local Hero - this one is more existentialist and cuts slightly closer to the less than heroic conflicts of the world … more about self-knowledge. Still It is still a fair-tale about humans coming to a comfort with themselves in a way of freeing themselves from expectations they feel the world puts on them and know they can find a way to live true to their heart.
This one also had a masterful and gorgeous cinematography and a score that is something truly special
I don’t think you can have a great movie without a great score:
Here is an amateur review someone wrote about the score
In 1983, at the height of the Dire Straights' reign of pop music ("Money for Nothing"), Dire Straights lead song writer Mark Knopfler scored the soundtrack of a delightful "little movie that could" called Local Hero.
"Local Hero" (14 tracks, 43 min.) creates the atmosphere of the Scottish scene in which the movie is set, in which a US expat is sent to convince a small seaside town to sell their interest in a beach so that a "big bad" US oil company can explore ir for oil. The mostly instrumental soundtrack is superb from start to finish, creating a wonderful mood. The opener "The Rocks and the Water" sets the stage, just superbly brought of what the Scottish seaside is like. Knopfler's guitar virtuoso gets a workout in a couple of tracks, but it never deteriorates from the overall mood. Other outstanding tracks include "The Mist Covered Mountains", gently bringing in a local band playing a sorrowful yet hopeful tune, and "Stargazer", in which you can just see and smell the open Scottish sky. There isn't a single weak track on the album, frankly. This album remains a soundtrack by which others should be measured by.
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