October 14, 2006
Five Best Uses of a song in a motion picture
There are moments in film when the perfect song integrates so well that the resulting scene becomes iconic. When it's done right, you can't imagine that scene without the song. Hell, sometimes you can't hear the song without thinking of the scene.
5. Bonehead - Naked City
A family drives to their lakeside vacation home, the forest surrounding them painted with the soothing orange of Fall in the opening credits to Michael Haneke's 1997 masterpiece, Funny Games, and the entire sequence is set to this jarring, incomprehensive jazz-metal-fusion with screeching vocals that sound like a cat being dragged through a mile of broken glass. Funny Games is one of the most intense and unsettling films ever made and this song is the perfect choice to inform the audience that the journey they are about to take is going to be unlike any they have before.
4. Sinner Man - Nina Simone
No matter how you feel about the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, I think it's difficult to argue that the final twist wasn one of the cleverest and most enjoyable in recent memory. And as impressive as it was, the big reveal wouldn't have been half as entertaining if it wasn't preceded by the wonderful "thousand men in bowler hats" sequence set to the driving beat of Simone's classic song.
3. The Flame Still Burns - Strange Fruit
1998's Still Crazy is one of the most likable films ever made. It's depiction of a 70s band reuniting for a tour 20 years later worked so well because you couldn't help but love the wonderful band of aged rock stars at the center of the story. By the time the film gets around to its rousing "big show" finale where the disjointed band unites to play this Mick Jones' penned ballad, it's almost impossible not to shed a tear.
2. The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
The 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead was a well made horror film that succeeded on it's energy and it's interesting song choices. Most notable among the choices, though, is this Cash number that begins immediately following the abrupt end of the film's bravura opening sequence. What could have been an "insert nu-metal band of the week" moment is instead a wonderfully surreal 3 minutes in which Cash's acoustic song is coupled with some jarring moments of dissonance as the credits play out before you.
1. Rang Tang Ding Dong (I Am A Japanese Sandman) - The Cellos
What better way to top off this list then with the undisputed king of the marriage of music and film, Martin Scorsese. Along with After Hours, Bringing Out The Dead is one of Martin Scorsese's most underappreciated films and this song kicks off Dead's hallucinatory dream sequence that is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sequences the master has ever filmed. The moment where Nick Cage rises from the couch and strikes a Christ like pose while he mouths the opening line of this song was the moment that I fell madly in love with both the film and the song.
I went a little more mainstream for these than Beaux did. Well, for most of them. One of them is a little out there . . . 5. Unknown Song - Kôji Endô
In what may be the greatest action sequence ever to open a film, two Japanese men sit on a dock, and slowly count off "1, 2, 1-2-3-4", and Kôji Endô's blaring rock soundtrack begins as what was originally written to be a 20 minute sequence of scenes is compressed into one 6 minute montage of drugs, sex, blood, and noodles. Thus opens Dead Or Alive, Takashi Miike's completely unique take on the cops-vs-yakuza standard. Technically, this is cheating for me, because the song is actually part of the score - but wait . . . I make the rules! * insert evil laugh here
4. The Ride of the Valkyries - Richard Wagner
Apocalypse Now. Hueys and H-6's swooping in low over a Vietnamese village, raining down lead and fire, as Wagner's majestic prelude blares from speakers on the choppers. Does it get any better than this . . .
3. In Dreams - Roy Orbison
I used to love this song. Now every time I hear it, I see this scene from Blue Velvet: Dean Stockwell, a mechanics lamp doing double duty lighting his face and serving as a microphone, as he lip synchs to Roy Orbison, while Dennis Hopper's mania rises. Taking a vintage love song and using it to set the exact opposite tone - sheer genius.
2. In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel
Ahhhhh - Say Anything, Cameron Crowe's opus to love, passion, and kick-boxing. You know the scene. You know the song. Sometime's a CyberMonkey's job is easy.
1. Little Green Bag - George Baker Selection
Quentin Tarantino is a master at song selection for his movies, often writing the scene AFTER picking the song. It's fitting, though, that his best is also, in a sense, his first. "OK, ramblers. Let's get ramblin'", and we see the stars - we're not entirely sure they're bad guys yet, but we're CyberMonkeys, we know these guys ain't choir boys - walking down the alley, adjusting the shades, as the quirky little song plays. That scene has become so iconic that any use of "Little Green Bag" since Reservoir Dogs is almost always a reference to the film. Grab that song and make it yours, Q!
So . . . want to try and tell me what's better than that? Hit the feedback form . . . if you've got the Monkey balls!