What's Your Favorite Movie (and why)

[midnightblues]

The Outlaw Josey Wales

[Tom22]

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But the primary reason I love this movie is the soundtrack. Here's a little sample:

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I think the soundtrack / score is really underated in importance.

I'm not saying that people ignore it, but I think that the great scores and soundtracks make the classic movies as moving as they are and many of them would be far far less with just a "very good" sound track.

Look at the American Film Institues 100 great movies of all time (we don't need to indivdually share their opinions but the list is a broad compilation of opinions so its as good as any for a point of discussion)

http://www.afi.com/100years/movies.aspx

If you go down that list an incredible percentage of those have truely memorable original scores. A great many are actually musicals.

Those that are not remembered actively for their scores very often were still trendsetters and enormously regarded scores often utiilzing great music in creative ways .

while I have only seen Citizen Kane a few times and didn't necessarily remember the score (sometimes that is the point i imagine) this quote kinda explains some of the importance in better words than I could come up with:

Soundtrack

"Before Kane, nobody in Hollywood knew how to set music properly in movies," wrote filmmaker François Truffaut in a 1967 essay. "Kane was the first, in fact the only, great film that uses radio techniques."

......... (another random remark from wiki-pedia below)

Opera lovers are frequently amused by the parody of vocal coaching that appears in a singing lesson given to Susan Alexander by Signor Matiste. The character attempts to sing the famous cavatina "Una voce poco fa" from Il barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini, but the lesson is interrupted when Alexander sings a high note flat.

Orson Welles said that the Nat King Cole Trio is heard performing the song, "It Can't Be Love," in one of the key scenes of Citizen Kane, the fight between Susan and Kane in the picnic tent. "I'd heard Nat King Cole and his trio in a little bar. I kind of based the whole scene around that song," Welles said. "The music is by Nat Cole — it's his trio. He doesn't sing it — he's too legitimate, we got some kind of low-down New Orleans voice [Alton Redd[80]] — but it was his number and his trio."[23]:57 Bernard Herrmann denied unconfirmed reports that suggest Cole can also be heard playing in the scene where Thompson questions a down-at-heel Susan in the nightclub where she works.[80]

[Tusk]

I second the "Raising Arizona" vote. Genius movie and comedy. Not sure Nic Cage ever topped this performance (Leaving Las Vegas was too depressing to finish ...)

[buzzenator]

^ I'll see your Josey Wales...



and raise your Arizona...



with The Shawshank Redemption...the best movie ever...

Red (played by Morgan Freedmen) (narrator): I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

I thought this was a lovely Haley tie-in!

[LovinDaHaley]

By the statement in bold, is it safe to assume that you majored in music at CSU?

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Thanks for asking MAE, but no I didn't get that far at CSU. It was a medical condition with pops that kept me in Colorado, and even though CSU had a pretty good music program, Juilliard was always the dream. Hell, I didn't even make it past the basic education units at CSU before having to move to Iowa and then later to California.

My only happy memories from those years are the final few at USC Thornton School of Music (fantastic programs in classical guitar). Thanks for caring. Waiter, check please.

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The only movie I've seen out of all of the above is Sound of Music, which gets 5 Hearts from me Tom. I've seen way more concert DVDs than movies. But I looked them all up and they all look good. Due to my sick crush on Clint Eastwood I'll probably watch "The Outlaw Josey Wales" first, and then "Raising Arizona" and then "Local Hero".

PS. Great post Buzz - 5 Hearts -

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[Tom22]

Thanks Buzz!

Almost choked with laughing the second time Clint spit on the dog.. I don' think there was ever a clind movie I wouldn't watch again although the Good the Bad and the Ugly are my favorites... Clint can say so much without opening his mouth... well maybe just enough to spit...

Everytime I wonder if I should really list Raising Arizona as my favorite movie I see parts of it again and it removes all doubt ... that chace seen is a 10 for action, a 10 for humor, and still is telling the story and context through it all. So many visual and one line punch line "son, you got a panty on your head" , "turn left dear" .. etc

As for Shawshank.. yeah thats a classic, and what great quote

[buzzenator]

^ All things Coen Brothers...Joel and Ethan Coen make great movies, some are love it or hate it, but there is no doubt they changed the face of the movie industry with their style. I like to think they are the American version of Monty Python's Flying Circus...their offbeat humor reminds me of the British humor many have loved or hated about Monty Python. Although, you cannot pigeon hole the Coen Brothers to just one genre in movie making. Here is a link to a ranking of their movies by one writer with a paragraph of commentary on each. It may surprise you that some of these are Coen Brothers' movies.

http://www.nerve.com/movies/the-coen-bro...t-to-worst



One thing that stands out about a Coen Brothers movie is the soundtrack (or no soundtrack as in 'No Country For Old Men'). All we need is for them to include a Haley song in one of their movies and game over...Haley wins big time!

Like what 'O Brother Where Art Thou' did for bluegrass music...



....or adding some crazy character to a movie with great music...

[whadaboutluv]

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 b

"Raising Arizona" is one of my favorites too, and some of us on this thread, I LOVE the Coen brothers. They had a film a few years ago called "A Serious Man", which was semi-autobiographical, about a Jewish family growinf up in Minnesota in the late 60's, early 70s, and Job-like trials the father in the movie went through. I'm about the same age as the Coen bros. My jaw literallt dropped during the Columbia Record Club scene. It was basically a legitimized scam where for your introduction into the "club", you got pick a ridiculous number of albums or cassettes (in my case), I think like 10, for something insanely cheap, like $5. But, the hook was, they would send you an album a month for regular price, their selection. If you didn't like after a couple of weeks, you sent it back..major hassle. If you liked it you kept it and you'd get charged full price. For me, at age 13 or 14, my babysitting jobs didn't exactly put me on Easy Street, so after getting records I had no interest in outside of my initial windfall of Carole King, James Taylor and Cat Stevens, what finally drove to writing a strongly worded, cease and desist letter to Colombia (at least for a 14 year old), was, Santana Abraxas.
PS...the letter worked.

[buzzenator]

^ LOL...thanks for sharing that Whadabout, and thanks for joining the group. I have not seen "A Serious Man" and I love Coen Brothers movies, so I am going to get serious about watching the rest of the Coen library I have not seen.

Whadabout the Columbia Record Club...that is what makes me laugh. While in college I lived on campus in a fraternity house at the University of Minnesota. Part of our weekly humor was signing up for the Columbia Deals under hilarious pseudo names with the fraternity address. Every week someone was getting the initial order of records under a name like Norm Ezboldt, etc. You only lived there 4 years (some of us 5 or 6), so the letters and records and bills would keep coming for years...until they finally figured out the guy didn't exist or didn't live there. Probably why I like Monty Python and Coen Brothers humor so much...Buzz is somewhat off kilter, according to some.

[LovinDaHaley]

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So the Las Vegas "Blade Runner Extravaganza" took place earlier today and I loved the movie. We also had a great time talking about it afterwards.

Is Deckard a replicant? My friend says yes, I say no. My friend might be right because like the rest of the movie, it's suggested but never explained; nevertheless, I still say no because too many plot holes arise if he is. For example, why would the police let a replicant run around? And the movie gives you the impression that certain people have known him for years, and considering he was retired from being a Blade Runner, I don't think they'd let him live.

I found the movie very fascinating. It has great special effects (especially considering when it was made), but it was the character drive and story that kept me interested.

As for some of the writing and directing I will say it’s a damn good thing Harrison Ford always has his charm to fall back on, like in "Star Wars" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark", because his role as “Deckard” could have easily turned boring had it been played by anyone else. Rutger Hauer has some great moments, such as his monologue near the end, but it's a pretty darn creepy scene. He has a few moments where I wasn't sure if he was overacting or if that's how the character was written. Sean Young has a few great moments and a few poor moments. And Daryl Hannah, they could not have cast “Pris” better, she made the movie for me as much as any other single factor.

The landscape and the score are awesome in every sense of the word, just one big futuristic film noir. But what really made this movie work for me was that everything is centered on the "now". Characters are simply trapped in the plot, like flies being caught in a spider web (someone please edit Haley’s song into this movie). They don't make a big issue of their reasons, they just are. Humanity’s worst flaw is how we degrade people from other places and cultures so we can kill them without remorse. I thought "Blade Runner" handled this issue really well because it's a theme that's not forced down your throat, and you see both sides of the story. The replicants are clearly human because they do the same thing

4 Hearts

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