Top 5 Film Themes

Inspired by listening to Ry Cooder’s “Paris, Texas” soundtrack all day today:

1. The Third Man (Anton Karas)

The film theme that launched a million zithers

2. Amarcord (Nino Rota)

I would argue this as Nino Rota’s finest film theme: a lilting, breezy melody that repeatedly soars to the heavens before slowly gliding back down to earth. Stunning. Rota was the definition of a genius.

3. Taxi Driver (Bernard Herrmann)

The Hitchcock composer’s final theme was for Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film about loneliness, and what a way to bow out: a melancholy, wistful, sleazy saxophone-led number which somehow captures both the glamour and the sense of isolation of 1970s New York.

4. Paris, Texas (Ry Cooder)

Another film about alienation in late 20th century America, but a very different one. Cooder’s haunting slide guitar theme, based on Blind Willie Johnson’s blues classic “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” perfectly fits the dusty, weary tone of Wim Wenders’ Palme D’Or-winner.

5. Rocky (Bill Conti)

The stuff alarm clocks should be made of. Rousing, the very definition of anthemic. Is it possible to listen to this without punching the air in delight??

How does the auteur theory handle this??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7084788.stm

Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone and Cronos to write and direct a film of 1960s camp classic TV series The Champions.

This is just weird! A bit like hearing David Cronenberg has signed up to direct an episode of Tellytubbies. Or Clive Barker planning a film version of Minder.

The painting that inspired The Seventh Seal

There’s an interesting article in this month’s Sight and Sound about the late director Ingmar Bergman, which mentions this painting by the Swedish painter Albertus Pictor, which depicts Death playing chess. Now where’ve I seen that before?

The DVD box set to end all DVD box sets

Criterion‘s 15 hour seven-disc box set of Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s Berlin Alexanderplatz looks a little excessive, though my rather fetishistic collecting of their DVDs means that this will probably be winging its way onto my film shelf sometime in the future. Still, it makes that 5-disc Blade Runner special edition look a little half-arsed, doesn’t it?