Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first time I've snatched a Song of the Moment from another music blog. My only complaint with The Blank (a.k.a. Barfboro) is that updates come so infrequently. I say that as a fan, eager to read more and look more and listen more. The site is devoted mostly to film scores, but the author tends to use music cues as an excuse to chase other, more interesting tangents -- boredom, the disturbing qualities of beauty, the ability of a photograph to speak. Dig through the site. It's full of great music.
The new Song of the Moment, "End Credits," is from Nathan Larson's score for Little Fish. I saw it at TIFF last September but hadn't thought about the film again until I found this mp3 at The Blank. Hearing it reminded me instantly of what I liked most about it: the performances from Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, and, especially, the naked fallibility they bring to two characters whose fates are a bit too predetermined by the film's tragic arc.
Frankly, I chose "End Credits" partly because it gave me an excuse to put Cate Blanchett's face on every page of Long Pauses. She's among a small handful of actors and actresses whose films I see regardless of the genre or director. She's known, of course, for the accents and her range -- the Meryl Streep of her generation -- but I can't get enough of her face. Stare at that photo while listening to "End Credits" and you'll get some sense of what makes Little Fish a compelling, if flawed, film.
The new Daily Reads image is a still from Good Night, and Good Luck, which I finally saw earlier this week. I haven't decided yet if I like it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the film's form. The inclusion of archival footage of McCarthy, Cohn, and Welch isn't an empty adornment, as I'd expected, but is, instead, the source of what little drama the film is able to muster. By comparison, the re-enacted bits seem artificial, but artificial in a deliberate, transgressive way. I need to watch it again and give it some more thought. I also like the sound design, particularly the instances in which a line of dialogue is allowed to continue over elliptical cuts in the image. There are some interesting formal affinities, I think, between Good Night, and Good Luck and Soderbergh's Solaris.
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