music makes movies

The trailer for Mark Cousin’s 12 hour documentary The Story of Film - set to a composition by Clint Mansell.

Johnny Greenwood’s original score in the teaser for Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming The Master.

The opening scenes of David Gordon Green’s George Washington set to an original score by Michael Linnen and David Wingo

Glenn Gould performing J.S.Bach’s Partita #2 in an excerpt from the documentary The Art of the Piano

Breaking Bad’s “Wendy” sequence set to Windy by The Association.  Wendy is played by Julia Minesci, the episode was directed by Adam Bernstein and this show was created by the genius Vince Gilligan.

This is the end of Xan Cassavetes documentary “Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession” (2004), a documentary about the Z Channel, which was one of the first pay cable TV stations in the US. Z Channel became famous for showing an eclectic variety of films, including foreign language, silent, documentary, director’s cut, forgotten, overlooked, underappreciated, erotic as well as mainstream films, without commercials and uncut and letterboxed when possible.

The film also tells the tragic story of Z Channel’s programming director Jerry Harvey, true film lover, programming genius, and a man almost singlehandedly responsible for getting many great films shown to the public. Sadly, Jerry was a mad genius who had a constant battle with personal demons and ended his own life and the life of his wife in a murder-suicide.

In this clip we hear Jerry requesting the song “What’ll I Do” because “for me, it’s the greatest love song”. The song was written by Irving Berlin, and is sung here by William Atherton.

As the song plays, the remainder of this clip is a montage of clips from films shown on the Z Channel.

0:18 1900 (1976, Bertolucci)
0:26 ?
0:28 Children of Paradise (1945, Carné)
0:34 China 9, Liberty 37 (1978, Hellman)
0:38 The Leopard (1963, Visconti)
0:44 Black Orpheus (1959, Camus)
0:49 La Strada (1954, Fellini)
0:55 Das Boot (1981, Petersen)
0:59 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Altman)
1:04 Malizia (1973, Samperi)
1:07 1900 (1976, Bertolucci)
1:10 In a Lonely Place (1950, Ray)
1:15 Heaven’s Gate (1980, Cimino)
1:25 Salvador (1986, Stone)
1:29 Paths of Glory (1957, Kubrick)
1:33 Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980, Roeg)
1:37 Turkish Delight (1973, Verhoeven)
1:40 8½ (1963, Fellini)
1:49 Le Magnifique (1973, de Broca)
1:45 The Important Thing is to Love (1975, Zulawski)
1:52 Fitzcarraldo (1982, Herzog)
1:55 One Deadly Summer (1983, Becker)
2:00 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973, Peckinpah)
2:05 ?
2:09 Once Upon a Time in America (1984, Leone)
2:13 Silver Streak (1976, Hiller)
2:15 Pandora’s Box (1929, Pabst)
2:18 College (1927, Horne)
2:21 Overlord (1975, Cooper)
2:25 Red Desert (1964, Antonioni)
2:30 The Wild Bunch (1969, Peckinpah)
2:36 The 400 Blows (1959, Truffaut)

This was posted by the magnificently obsessed Frankie Latina

The Fabulous Stains (Diane Lane, Laura Dern, Marin Kantner) perform Professionals in Lou Adler’s Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.  Make sure to notice a young Ray Winstone as well.

Another great post by both Breezy Long and Stef Azpiazu

The funeral scene from Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums set to Van Morrison’s Everyone. Narration by Alec Baldwin.

Marianne Faithful singing As Tears Go By in Jean-Luc Godard’s Made in U.S.A.

Thanks again, Stef

Marlene Dietrich in her first role as cabaret singer Lola-Lola, sings her signature song Falling in Love Again, in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930).

This is the first in a line of long overdue posts from Stef “I will always be from New York” Azpiazu

In the Betty Boop short film “Snow White”, Koko the Clown (voiced by Cab Calloway) sings St. James Infirmary Blues when he believes Betty Boop is dead. Cab Calloway’s voice is unique and specially eerie for this song. Koko’s dancing during the “St. James” number is rotoscoped from footage of Calloway.

This is wild and beautiful and haunting and cool - discovered by the now older and wiser Paul Sado.

Lifted directly from the back page of Bingham Ray’s Memorial program, Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again over the end scene of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

So will you please say hello to the folks that I know,

Tell them I won’t be long, they’ll be happy to know,

That as you saw me go, I was singing this song,

We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day

I miss you so much Bingham, thank you for everything.

A scene from Alexander Mackendrick’s classic The Sweet Smell of Success.  Chico Hamilton’s Quintet perfectly drives the pace and tension in the scene.

“now go on make yourself a holiday”