Tagged: cinemasounds

It seemed like another extremely busy week here at CoS. It certainly was. It was difficult to compile everything into this tiny little recap post. And then one day we found out we're the best. We were browsing the internet a couple of days ago when we came across About.com's picks for the best blogs of 2010 . We're their favorite music site. It hasn't quite sunk in yet, but we assure you we'll do our best not to believe our own hype. We'll still provide you with consistently, up-to-the-minute coverage of all things [...]

Upon an old VHS tape box, there read A Lesson In Computer Animation . Easily no more than a half-hour long, it was comprised of short demos showing off things like walk cycles using 3-D penguins, shadows on pineapples, the video corresponding to Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing", and an early Pixar creation involving a bee and some crazy looking dork with funny eyes. We know our extent of computer tech has extended well beyond this scattered educational tape from the '80s. Though CGI was still a new thing, we all remember Tron . The 1982 [...]

Note: Two of the clips embedded below feature graphic content. If you are under the age of...oh, you know the drill. Yes kids, you too can own one of the big Halloween three. That's right, THREE horrific masks to chose from. They're fun, they're frightening, and they glow in the dark." There are good movies, and there are bad movies. However, there are those movies that fall into that rare category of indeterminable. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is one such film. It's a pretty boring film [...]

In 1999, I found my favorite movie of all time: Office Space . As a freshman in high school, I had no idea what to think of the corporate world. I never thought I'd ever wear a suit and tie to work or sit in a cubicle for hours on end staring at a computer; I was going places. The place I ended up going was to a cubicle, staring at a screen for eight hours a day. How quickly dreams can be shattered, but at least I have a window view. From the very [...]

Full disclosure: I was young when this film came out –prepubescent and years away from being able to see it legally due to its PG-13 rating. As time would have it, I was at the prime age of seven when William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet hit theaters in 1996. I remember seeing the movie somewhere, with someone back in Missouri where I grew up. Most likely, I watched it at our house one day with my older sister, but all I could remember was enjoying it a lot; so much that I bought the soundtrack. Maybe I liked it [...]

Last week ended on a grim note with a dramatic suicide during a Swell Season show and the death of Ou Est Le Swimming vocalist Charles Haddon (also widely believed to be a suicide). While these unfortunate events remain fresh in our minds, things have certainly picked up since then. Music, perhaps more so than anything else, proves that life does indeed go on. At least with music, there's always something to look forward to. Tragedies cannot always be avoided, but for now let's focus on the positive as opposed to the negative. - Weezer caused some controversy [...]

"This is for Brodie!" –Jay, just prior to punching the mall's Easter Bunny When I was 13-years-old, there was no band I liked more than Weezer. If you knew me at the time, this obsession made total sense... I was a huge dork who loved melodic indie rock and connected to anything remotely heartfelt. At the time, the band had made its triumphant return to the music scene, having just released Weezer (Green), which unleashed the crunchy, palm muted chords of "Hash Pipe" to own radio stations everywhere. Obsession aside, my love for Weezer led to one [...]

Friday Night Lights is a non-fiction sports novel, let's get that out of the way first and foremost. Without intentionally buying into stereotypes, I find it doubtful that many of you have read this book, seen this movie, or watched the TV series; even less done all three. Not because you're "artsy" or "into music" or what have you, but let's face it, we all feel a certain affinity for a similar mindset that usually accompanies the music we listen to. We weren't (and aren't) the letterman's jacket-wearers, the student body officers, or even the kids who went to [...]

Whether you like him or not, Wes Anderson is one of my generation's great directors. He was able to launch the careers of Jason Schwartzman and his college friends Owen and Luke Wilson, as well as create a new hip aesthetic to film that, while at times strays into the pretentious, influenced a lot of modern filmmakers. All but two of his films have been add to the Criterion Collection (he has six to date, and one was just released last year), and Martin Scorsese named Anderson's very first full-length film, Bottle Rocket , one of his favorite films [...]

With Almost Famous' Philip Seymour Hoffman reprising his role as a music aficionado in The Boat That Rocked , expectations are high. Lower them, now. The saving grace of this shipwreck of a film is the extensive '60s-dominated soundtrack, which boasts 36 songs. Debuting in the States as Pirate Radio , the United Kingdom-based film centers around an illegal radio station positioned in the North Sea. Displeased with a traditionalist British government that prefers to broadcast jazz, Radio Rock plays rock and pop all day and all night. Fittingly, The Kinks' "All Day and [...]

"Nobody knew to go to the sermon on the mound. People just turned up; they knew it was a good gig." -Tony Wilson The first time I ever saw 24 Hour Party People , I had no idea what to expect. Some kids at school just told me it was about ecstasy and raves, so I figured it would make for a good rent during one dull summer vacation. The movie proved to be more than that. Aside from its post-modernist and impressionistic filmmaking style, what shocked me more was that it had old Sex Pistols footage, [...]

No one would call 1999's Cruel Intentions a great movie, or even a good one. Too much of this modern-day Dangerous Liaisons adaptation relies upon gimmicks: dialogue that plays out like a series of for-shock-value one-liners rather than actual conversation (including Sarah Michelle Gellar's "You can put it anywhere"), a flash of Ryan Phillippe's naked ass, and a girl-on-girl kiss between Selma Blair and Gellar. Still, the filmmakers clearly knew what they were doing. Despite the mixed critical reviews, the movie went on to do pretty well in box-office receipts and, not surprisingly, garner an MTV [...]

Upon its fall 2003 release, Lost in Translation received vast critical acclaim for Bill Murray's Oscar-nominated portrayal of an actor enduring a midlife crisis and the breakthrough star-making performance of Scarlett Johansson as a young woman already dissatisfied with life and her recent marriage. Sofia Coppola also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director and won for Best Original Screenplay. In Lost in Translation , Murray's Bob and Johansson's Charlotte are two strangers who connect in Tokyo thanks to a shared disillusionment over their respective lives and humored bewilderment with the unfamiliar culture and language. In [...]

So many moments stick out when considering the Coen brothers' use of music. To be sure, composer/friend Carter Burwell and "music archivist" T Bone Burnett deserve a great deal of that credit. Together, the group form a team with a knack for pairing music with visual moments. Take, for example, the epic strands of Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" as slow-motion footage of a boy testing the first hula hoop ("You know, for kids"). Or, better yet, Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" mirroring the somber, wandering man who wasn't there, or Burwell's thumping, claustrophobic percussion as the world zooms into smaller and more complex [...]

When they're really on their game, film soundtracks expose you to a variety of acts you might never have listened to otherwise. But sometimes it works vice versa. Case in point, Reservoir Dogs . This soundtrack to the 1992 film diamond became the first I ever seriously connected to, even though I hadn't seen the movie when I discovered it. But that didn't matter, however. Regardless of my shoddy track record with films (we can blame my age), I became very close with the soundtrack, making me feel like I had watched the movie a thousand times before I [...]

Quentin Tarantino's 1994 epic Pulp Fiction is easily one of the greatest films to come out in my lifetime. That is a bold statement, but one that I am incredibly comfortable making. There wasn't a movie made like it before and hasn't been one since. The story line is twisting and fractured and constructed in such a way that you still marvel at it (even despite its imitators since). The film contains some of the greatest performances by the actors involved. Three of the main characters were nominated for Oscars (John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, and Uma Thurman), [...]

The other day, a friend and I were discussing whether or not we had ever met anyone who claimed to not like the movie Wayne's World , and neither of us could come up with a single name. Surely there are some detractors out there, but as a general rule, I'd say that this movie appeals to the masses. And why is that? Well, for one thing, it's one of the most quotable movies of all time. Many lines are funny independent of their context. "If it's a severed head, I'm going to [...]

Let's face it; actually, you either love it or hate it. Funny, tear-jerking, uplifting, and the perfect feel-good film for Christmas, or as lifted from the Monty Python sketch about Oscar Wilde, a stream of bat's piss in the night. Written and directed by Richard Curtis, Love Actually is a good old British rom-com, played out during the run up to Christmas. Curtis is best known for his biggest hit films, Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill , though Brits will equally recognize him by [...]

You would think that they had mainstream film marketing down to a science by now. If you go to a movie and are surprised by what you see on the screen, well, someone has fucked up. With movie previews, late night talk show appearances, print reviews, internet pop-up ads, and blogging, the uncertainty and risk-taking of buying an $11 movie ticket should be relatively low. But still, my heart goes out to the kids who bought tickets to see Superbad 2 and ended up with Adventureland . It's not hard to understand why the [...]

As the eve of a new year has taken us by storm... Wait, it's not 2009 anymore? Never you mind. We proceed anyway, taking time out to remember a film centered solely on New Year - and Elvis Costello, Dave Chappelle, and Courtney Love (say that in one sentence with a straight face). There is no gooey center to an ensemble cast of familiar faces hustling about New York on the eve of 1982. Entertaining in doses, the 1999 critic bomb 200 Cigarettes is a twenty-something clusterfuck and unintentional sequel to Can't Hardly Wait (the movie, [...]