The customary questions which precede watching a movie can only give you a vague idea about what you might be getting yourself into. Hollywood bores us with its astounding special effects, brilliant casts and multitude of Oscar nominations. It is only when one decides to look a little beyond all that (movies with IMDB ratings greater than 7.9 for instance), that one figures that there are, in fact, movies still around that have witty dialogue, slick ambience and other such Satisfaction Guaranteed characteristics.

But there is one thing that helps in distinguishing an excellent movie from your normal clichéd flick, there’s one thing that adds the subtlest finishing touch to a nicely done piece of art. And that’s a good soundtrack. The final coat of varnish on a movie experience.

I broadly classify Original Sound Tracks into three categories: the sleek and stylish, the mellifluously acoustic and the downright weird.

The Sleek and Stylish OST has tracks that are from a completely eclectic, often unrelated, spectrum of music. They appear in the movie at supposedly story-molding moments. All Quentin Tarantino movies have the tendency to pull this off with breathtaking ease. Kill Bill, by itself, is capable of defining this category. A group of energetic Japanese chicks singing Woo Hoo before an upcoming slaughter of their fellow Japanese folk is capable of sending anyone into a fit of giggles. Mia Wallace singing  ‘I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life’ in Pulp Fiction while Urge Overkill croons ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman soon’ in the background and Vince debating with himself about his true feelings for Mia has to be a defining moment in cinematic history. Another movie that makes it to this category is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You listen to Ocean Color Scene singing ‘So I said I’m on the roam, so I need a car and I know that I’m getting alive’ right when Eddie and Bacon are running to avoid unpleasant meetings with the cozzers and see if it doesn’t make an impact on you.

The Mellifluously Acoustic OSTs usually have songs of a homogeneous kind. They are the sort of songs that blend into each other without trying too hard. Case in point: About A Boy. Badly Drawn Boy does all the songs in the movie. Their songs have smooth guitars, upbeat tunes and vocals that are very pleasant to the ear. So even if the movie doesn’t have a particularly brilliant plot line, the music seems to blend in well with the film. Elliot Smith pulls this off in Good Will Hunting with songs like Miss Misery and Between The Bars. The music plays in the background in an inconsequential sort of way, without demanding too much attention and yet managing a polite but firm hold over its audience. Everyone feels terribly pleased about the state of affairs of the world by the end of it all.

The Downright Weird is the third and most challenging category. It is easy to pick a couple of random tracks, brew them together and then hope that no one will notice. The challenging part comes in when the movie is of such a strange nature that the only thing that can possibly be stranger is the music accompanying it. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has the sort of music that will surprise you just when you begin to think that you’ve reached the limits of being caught off note. You are concentrating, trying really hard to follow the extremely novel plot line and then you hear Jon Brion’s Peer Pressure or The Willow’s I Wonder and this mellows down the strain a little. Beck singing ‘I need your lovin’ like the sunshine’ should break just about anyone’s heart. Requiem For A Dream ties with Eternal Sunshine. This movie is made for leaving a deep impression on its audience, most of whom probably make silent promises halfway through the movie never to touch any form of dope with a ten-foot pole. But it’s the pieces of Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna and Summer Overture that are played periodically through the movie which add the slightly eerie, surreal touch to it that makes the whole experience haunting.

Music and Movies complement each other. They work well together, almost naturally. It is not for us to reason why. It is perhaps human tendency to connect music in some way or the other to a visual image. In most instances, visuals seem to beautify themselves when supplemented with music. Perhaps a song gains a little more charm when it is associated with a movie. Perhaps a movie scores a couple of brownie points because of a song. Ultimately, it is the whole package that counts. An excellent movie, one that is separated from the normal, clichéd ones on account of its OST, assures the feeling of general warmth amongst its viewers making them feel like the two and a half hours were definitely worth it.

[Sneha Nagesh constantly gives way to adolescent angst but discovers the existence of things like comics and Miyazaki animations and her faith in the fairness of life is reaffirmed. Sneha is a little crazy about writing (and the Beatles, Garth Ennis, J.D Salinger, Frank Miller and…) Did she mention that her list of favorites is never ending and that she ends up using an ellipsis in most of her sentences?]

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({mhauthor})

The customary questions which precede watching a movie can only give you a vague idea about what you might be getting yourself into. Hollywood bores us with its astounding special effects, brilliant casts and multitude of Oscar nominations. It is only when one decides to look a little beyond all that (movies with IMDB ratings greater than 7.9 for instance), that one figures that there are, in fact, movies still around that have witty dialogue, slick ambience and other such Satisfaction Guaranteed characteristics.

But there is one thing that helps in distinguishing an excellent movie from your normal clichéd flick, there’s one thing that adds the subtlest finishing touch to a nicely done piece of art. And that’s a good soundtrack. The final coat of varnish on a movie experience.

I broadly classify Original Sound Tracks into three categories: the sleek and stylish, the mellifluously acoustic and the downright weird.

The Sleek and Stylish OST has tracks that are from a completely eclectic, often unrelated, spectrum of music. They appear in the movie at supposedly story-molding moments. All Quentin Tarantino movies have the tendency to pull this off with breathtaking ease. Kill Bill, by itself, is capable of defining this category. A group of energetic Japanese chicks singing Woo Hoo before an upcoming slaughter of their fellow Japanese folk is capable of sending anyone into a fit of giggles. Mia Wallace singing  ‘I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life’ in Pulp Fiction while Urge Overkill croons ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman soon’ in the background and Vince debating with himself about his true feelings for Mia has to be a defining moment in cinematic history. Another movie that makes it to this category is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You listen to Ocean Color Scene singing ‘So I said I’m on the roam, so I need a car and I know that I’m getting alive’ right when Eddie and Bacon are running to avoid unpleasant meetings with the cozzers and see if it doesn’t make an impact on you.

The Mellifluously Acoustic OSTs usually have songs of a homogeneous kind. They are the sort of songs that blend into each other without trying too hard. Case in point: About A Boy. Badly Drawn Boy does all the songs in the movie. Their songs have smooth guitars, upbeat tunes and vocals that are very pleasant to the ear. So even if the movie doesn’t have a particularly brilliant plot line, the music seems to blend in well with the film. Elliot Smith pulls this off in Good Will Hunting with songs like Miss Misery and Between The Bars. The music plays in the background in an inconsequential sort of way, without demanding too much attention and yet managing a polite but firm hold over its audience. Everyone feels terribly pleased about the state of affairs of the world by the end of it all.

The Downright Weird is the third and most challenging category. It is easy to pick a couple of random tracks, brew them together and then hope that no one will notice. The challenging part comes in when the movie is of such a strange nature that the only thing that can possibly be stranger is the music accompanying it. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has the sort of music that will surprise you just when you begin to think that you’ve reached the limits of being caught off note. You are concentrating, trying really hard to follow the extremely novel plot line and then you hear Jon Brion’s Peer Pressure or The Willow’s I Wonder and this mellows down the strain a little. Beck singing ‘I need your lovin’ like the sunshine’ should break just about anyone’s heart. Requiem For A Dream ties with Eternal Sunshine. This movie is made for leaving a deep impression on its audience, most of whom probably make silent promises halfway through the movie never to touch any form of dope with a ten-foot pole. But it’s the pieces of Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna and Summer Overture that are played periodically through the movie which add the slightly eerie, surreal touch to it that makes the whole experience haunting.

Music and Movies complement each other. They work well together, almost naturally. It is not for us to reason why. It is perhaps human tendency to connect music in some way or the other to a visual image. In most instances, visuals seem to beautify themselves when supplemented with music. Perhaps a song gains a little more charm when it is associated with a movie. Perhaps a movie scores a couple of brownie points because of a song. Ultimately, it is the whole package that counts. An excellent movie, one that is separated from the normal, clichéd ones on account of its OST, assures the feeling of general warmth amongst its viewers making them feel like the two and a half hours were definitely worth it.

{mosimage}

({mhauthor})

The customary questions which precede watching a movie can only give you a vague idea about what you might be getting yourself into. Hollywood bores us with its astounding special effects, brilliant casts and multitude of Oscar nominations. It is only when one decides to look a little beyond all that (movies with IMDB ratings greater than 7.9 for instance), that one figures that there are, in fact, movies still around that have witty dialogue, slick ambience and other such Satisfaction Guaranteed characteristics.

But there is one thing that helps in distinguishing an excellent movie from your normal clichéd flick, there’s one thing that adds the subtlest finishing touch to a nicely done piece of art. And that’s a good soundtrack. The final coat of varnish on a movie experience.

I broadly classify Original Sound Tracks into three categories: the sleek and stylish, the mellifluously acoustic and the downright weird.

The Sleek and Stylish OST has tracks that are from a completely eclectic, often unrelated, spectrum of music. They appear in the movie at supposedly story-molding moments. All Quentin Tarantino movies have the tendency to pull this off with breathtaking ease. Kill Bill, by itself, is capable of defining this category. A group of energetic Japanese chicks singing Woo Hoo before an upcoming slaughter of their fellow Japanese folk is capable of sending anyone into a fit of giggles. Mia Wallace singing  ‘I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life’ in Pulp Fiction while Urge Overkill croons ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman soon’ in the background and Vince debating with himself about his true feelings for Mia has to be a defining moment in cinematic history. Another movie that makes it to this category is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You listen to Ocean Color Scene singing ‘So I said I’m on the roam, so I need a car and I know that I’m getting alive’ right when Eddie and Bacon are running to avoid unpleasant meetings with the cozzers and see if it doesn’t make an impact on you.

The Mellifluously Acoustic OSTs usually have songs of a homogeneous kind. They are the sort of songs that blend into each other without trying too hard. Case in point: About A Boy. Badly Drawn Boy does all the songs in the movie. Their songs have smooth guitars, upbeat tunes and vocals that are very pleasant to the ear. So even if the movie doesn’t have a particularly brilliant plot line, the music seems to blend in well with the film. Elliot Smith pulls this off in Good Will Hunting with songs like Miss Misery and Between The Bars. The music plays in the background in an inconsequential sort of way, without demanding too much attention and yet managing a polite but firm hold over its audience. Everyone feels terribly pleased about the state of affairs of the world by the end of it all.

The Downright Weird is the third and most challenging category. It is easy to pick a couple of random tracks, brew them together and then hope that no one will notice. The challenging part comes in when the movie is of such a strange nature that the only thing that can possibly be stranger is the music accompanying it. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has the sort of music that will surprise you just when you begin to think that you’ve reached the limits of being caught off note. You are concentrating, trying really hard to follow the extremely novel plot line and then you hear Jon Brion’s Peer Pressure or The Willow’s I Wonder and this mellows down the strain a little. Beck singing ‘I need your lovin’ like the sunshine’ should break just about anyone’s heart. Requiem For A Dream ties with Eternal Sunshine. This movie is made for leaving a deep impression on its audience, most of whom probably make silent promises halfway through the movie never to touch any form of dope with a ten-foot pole. But it’s the pieces of Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna and Summer Overture that are played periodically through the movie which add the slightly eerie, surreal touch to it that makes the whole experience haunting.

Music and Movies complement each other. They work well together, almost naturally. It is not for us to reason why. It is perhaps human tendency to connect music in some way or the other to a visual image. In most instances, visuals seem to beautify themselves when supplemented with music. Perhaps a song gains a little more charm when it is associated with a movie. Perhaps a movie scores a couple of brownie points because of a song. Ultimately, it is the whole package that counts. An excellent movie, one that is separated from the normal, clichéd ones on account of its OST, assures the feeling of general warmth amongst its viewers making them feel like the two and a half hours were definitely worth it.

[Sneha Nagesh constantly gives way to adolescent angst but discovers the existence of things like comics and Miyazaki animations and her faith in the fairness of life is reaffirmed. Sneha is a little crazy about writing (and the Beatles, Garth Ennis, J.D Salinger, Frank Miller and…) Did she mention that her list of favorites is never ending and that she ends up using an ellipsis in most of her sentences?]

{mosimage}

({mhauthor})

The customary questions which precede watching a movie can only give you a vague idea about what you might be getting yourself into. Hollywood bores us with its astounding special effects, brilliant casts and multitude of Oscar nominations. It is only when one decides to look a little beyond all that (movies with IMDB ratings greater than 7.9 for instance), that one figures that there are, in fact, movies still around that have witty dialogue, slick ambience and other such Satisfaction Guaranteed characteristics.

But there is one thing that helps in distinguishing an excellent movie from your normal clichéd flick, there’s one thing that adds the subtlest finishing touch to a nicely done piece of art. And that’s a good soundtrack. The final coat of varnish on a movie experience.

I broadly classify Original Sound Tracks into three categories: the sleek and stylish, the mellifluously acoustic and the downright weird.

The Sleek and Stylish OST has tracks that are from a completely eclectic, often unrelated, spectrum of music. They appear in the movie at supposedly story-molding moments. All Quentin Tarantino movies have the tendency to pull this off with breathtaking ease. Kill Bill, by itself, is capable of defining this category. A group of energetic Japanese chicks singing Woo Hoo before an upcoming slaughter of their fellow Japanese folk is capable of sending anyone into a fit of giggles. Mia Wallace singing  ‘I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life’ in Pulp Fiction while Urge Overkill croons ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman soon’ in the background and Vince debating with himself about his true feelings for Mia has to be a defining moment in cinematic history. Another movie that makes it to this category is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. You listen to Ocean Color Scene singing ‘So I said I’m on the roam, so I need a car and I know that I’m getting alive’ right when Eddie and Bacon are running to avoid unpleasant meetings with the cozzers and see if it doesn’t make an impact on you.

The Mellifluously Acoustic OSTs usually have songs of a homogeneous kind. They are the sort of songs that blend into each other without trying too hard. Case in point: About A Boy. Badly Drawn Boy does all the songs in the movie. Their songs have smooth guitars, upbeat tunes and vocals that are very pleasant to the ear. So even if the movie doesn’t have a particularly brilliant plot line, the music seems to blend in well with the film. Elliot Smith pulls this off in Good Will Hunting with songs like Miss Misery and Between The Bars. The music plays in the background in an inconsequential sort of way, without demanding too much attention and yet managing a polite but firm hold over its audience. Everyone feels terribly pleased about the state of affairs of the world by the end of it all.

The Downright Weird is the third and most challenging category. It is easy to pick a couple of random tracks, brew them together and then hope that no one will notice. The challenging part comes in when the movie is of such a strange nature that the only thing that can possibly be stranger is the music accompanying it. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has the sort of music that will surprise you just when you begin to think that you’ve reached the limits of being caught off note. You are concentrating, trying really hard to follow the extremely novel plot line and then you hear Jon Brion’s Peer Pressure or The Willow’s I Wonder and this mellows down the strain a little. Beck singing ‘I need your lovin’ like the sunshine’ should break just about anyone’s heart. Requiem For A Dream ties with Eternal Sunshine. This movie is made for leaving a deep impression on its audience, most of whom probably make silent promises halfway through the movie never to touch any form of dope with a ten-foot pole. But it’s the pieces of Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna and Summer Overture that are played periodically through the movie which add the slightly eerie, surreal touch to it that makes the whole experience haunting.

Music and Movies complement each other. They work well together, almost naturally. It is not for us to reason why. It is perhaps human tendency to connect music in some way or the other to a visual image. In most instances, visuals seem to beautify themselves when supplemented with music. Perhaps a song gains a little more charm when it is associated with a movie. Perhaps a movie scores a couple of brownie points because of a song. Ultimately, it is the whole package that counts. An excellent movie, one that is separated from the normal, clichéd ones on account of its OST, assures the feeling of general warmth amongst its viewers making them feel like the two and a half hours were definitely worth it.

{mosimage}

({mhauthor})