If you've already had all the Mathis and Mariah you can take this December but still want to set a merry mood for nog drinking and gift wrapping, you're in the right place! Every year I take a moment to list my favorite non-traditional Christmas radio stations on the Interwebs. From the klezmer Nutcracker to the reggae Little Drummer Boy, there's something here for everyone. Or at least, everyone I like. Xmas in Frisco. The one. The only. It makes my list every year and not just because I live in the Bay Area and feel proud of our irretrievably... Continue reading

Fans of Vera Farmiga really need to check out Joshua (2007), a psychological thriller that blends sociopathy and sibling rivalry in a Freudian cocktail so potent that after the film ended, it started a semi-heated debate in our house about what antisocial personality disorder actually is. Farmiga plays Joshua's mom, Abby Cairn, who begins a prolonged and virtuosic mental unraveling almost from the moment the film begins. Sam Rockwell plays her husband, Brad, a likable but subtly smug Wall Street type too content with his life to notice the first several rounds of its progressive implosion. In one brilliant sequence,... Continue reading

Watching the trailers for The Dark Knight Rises could give you the distinct impression there havn't been any albums released since 1973. When the trailer for Robert Zemekis's Flight kicked in with the Stones' relentlessly overused "Gimme Shelter," I squirmed uncomfortably and may have whispered "Scorsese wannabe" to my boyfriend, but when Argo followed in rapid succession with Aerosmith's "Dream On," I decided I officially couldn't take it anymore. However artfully he used it, Ben Affleck doesn't even have the excuse of being nostalgic for that era. Director Person, I am holding your hands and looking meaningfully but unblinkingly into... Continue reading

Hi there, home slices! Welcome to the fifth annual Lloyd Awards! Each year, Boombox Serenade bestows this award on directors who used real music in original and powerful ways in their films. By "real music," I mean music that wasn't written explicitly for the film in which it appears, but music that has a life and context outside of that film. As usual, we start at the bottom and work our way up to number one. Lloyd #10 goes to Director David Fincher for the "Orinoco Flow" sequence in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Ok, so he may have... Continue reading

Well hello, and welcome to my Lloyd Awards. Each year, Boombox Serenade bestows this award on the directors who use real music in original and/or powerful ways in their films. When I say "real music," I mean music that was not written for the film, but was first introduced to the world in some way other than the movies, usually as a label-backed album release. I don't mean to be flippant. There have, of course, been many great scores and songs written explicitly for film. Some of my favorite original songs include "On the Road Again," "Whatever Will Be, Will... Continue reading

It's the end of the film...the big title fight in London. Welterweight "Irish" Micky Ward waits in the wings with his older half-brother and trainer, Dick "Dicky" Ecklund, who has only recently kicked a nasty crack cocaine habit. It's a loaded moment. So much struggle has gone into it, on both sides. Micky has had to work like a fiend to regain his boxing career. Dicky's fight has been to break his addiction and win back his brother's trust. The brothers bow their heads toward one another, touch foreheads. Micky's entrance music starts to play, "Here I Go Again," by... Continue reading

On paper, the film-music moment of the week doesn't sound all that brilliant, or as if it'll go down as one of the filmmakers' most memorable, but it is and it will: Johnny Marco (played by Stephen Dorff), newly famous actor, drifts off to sleep while identical twins pole dance in his Chateau Marmont suite. It isn't just what Sofia Coppola shows you that makes this moment so great. It's what she shows you compared to what almost every other director would have shown you, given the same material. Most directors, for instance, wouldn't have dreamed of using a song... Continue reading

In some long-ago episode of ER, Doug Ross gets some help from a young doctor, Harper Tracy, in caring for a four-year-old AIDS patient. Later she asks him, "What do you do after a day like today?" Ross replies, "I tend to drink, but I'm not a very good role model." The next day it's revealed that Harper went home with Ross and slept with him. When confessing to her boyfriend, she explains that she was in need of comfort and that somehow, only a person who'd also experienced that same shift could have provided it. In Pete Weir's quietly... Continue reading

With the Oscars behind us and the second quarter of the new year beginning, it's the perfect time to burden you with one last top ten list for 2009. Below are the most outstanding film-music moments of the year, as dictated by Boombox Serenade where we've just never been interested in score, and instead favor directors who know how to use real music (yep, I said it) in original and powerful ways. As usual, we start with the tenth best moment and build up to number one. Lloyd #10 goes to Director Alan Ball, Music Supervisor Gary Calamar, and Sammy... Continue reading

Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O and ambient pioneer Brian Eno both wrote scores for major film releases in 2009, but a few weeks ago Rolling Stone that broke the story that neither would be eligible to win a Best Original Score Oscar at this year's Academy Awards. That's because the Academy rulebook currently disqualifies a score if it's "diluted" by the use of preexisting music, "diminished in impact" by the predominant use of songs, or is assembled from the music of more than one composer. It could have been either the song caveat or the bit about more than... Continue reading

Well, we don't know what to tell Virginia about the fact that our favorite Internet radio station of punk rock Christmas music has disappeared this year, but there's still plenty of non-traditional and off-the-beaten-track holiday music out there. Enjoy! 1. Xmas in Frisko. One of San Francisco's finest exports, SomaFM continues to specialize in bringing us the most deliciously eccentric holiday music out there. A recent session yielded "Christmas Wrap" by Two Live Jews, "Twas The Night Before Jesus" by Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and "Santa Claus Is A Black Man" by The Teddy Vann Production Company. Special. 2. Radio... Continue reading

With all the ink that's been spilled on "Precious," there still hasn't been enough said about the way Lee Daniels uses music in this film, so I'll start the conversation simply by saying how beautifully bold he is about using non-score music as emotional content in his work—just totally fearless about turning up the volume on music and really letting it take over for a good stretch of time. If that doesn't sound like a particularly impressive filmmaking skill to you, note how few directors can truly do it. The garden variety ones can often be recognized by how timid... Continue reading

Readers of this blog know that I tend to focus on the film-music moments created by non-score (album released) music, but every now and then I hear a score so beautiful or memorable that I can't help myself. This time it's from Tom Ford's lyrical feature film debut, "A Single Man," which I caught last night at MoMA. Resonant strings by Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski added untold layers of depth and feeling to this intensely graceful character study—an adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood novel about a British college professor (played by Colin Firth) struggling to find meaning in his life... Continue reading

If you've seen Gary Leva's 2007 documentary, Fog City Mavericks, you may have heard a few people in it assert that George Lucas' 1973 film, American Graffiti, had the first ever pop music soundtrack. But while American Graffiti was among the earlier films to take that route, it wasn't the first. Not by a long shot. All throughout the sixties, in fact, directors were moving toward a more pop oriented approach. Bruce Conner's 1962 short, COSMIC RAY—featuring atomic bomb newsreel mixed with original footage—was set to Ray Charles' "What'd I Say," and was a significant early step away from the... Continue reading

"What you touch you don't feel Do not know what you steal Destroy everything you touch today Please destroy me this way." —Ladytron, Witching Hour (2005) Well, R.J. Cutler came out with guns blazing for this, his first theater release in some time. Within minutes The September Issue launches into New York Fashion Week footage while Ladytron's darkly glamorous "Destroy Everything You Touch" plays through a flashbulb-spangled montage in which Candy Patts Price describes Anna Wintour as the Pope of fashion and Andre Leon Talley bemoans a "famine of beauty" for the season. In stark contrast to these loud, glorious... Continue reading

Sofia Coppola's go-to sound designer, Richard Beggs, reports that her significant other, Thomas Mars, will be contributing original music to her upcoming film, "Somewhere," to be released in late 2010. This continues Coppola's track record of tapping leading edge pop and rock musicians to do score for her films, versus traditional composers. On "The Virgin Suicides" she collaborated with the French downtempo electronic band, AIR, and on "Lost in Translation" it was Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine. Brian Reitzell is her favorite music supervisor, although it's not clear yet whether or not he's working on "Somewhere." It seems impossible,... Continue reading

Thanks to the San Francisco Film Society I recently had the pleasure of sitting at the feet of master sound designer Richard Beggs for an evening. He talked about his work with directors like Alfonso Cuaron, Spike Jonze, and Sofia Coppola, and showed a few clips of some of his best known films. We sat rapt at the famous opening montage of Apocalypse Now and he explained how Francis Ford Coppola was fascinated with the role technology played in the Vietnam War and how this affected his own approach to the soundtrack, like his idea to use a Moog to... Continue reading