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Posted: |
Jan 27, 2015 - 4:07 PM
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By: |
afn
(Member)
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Wow, now that's something. A drums solo "score" (still not sure about the appropriateness of my inverted commas, but technically it is a score, right?)!
I have to say it perfectly works in the movie, it gives it a, I don't know, almost surreal kind of vibe because the film itself takes its liberties with reality. It somehow pushes and propels the main character forward relentlessly in his pursuit of himself in this strange Broadway theater world, especially with the constant following of the protagonists by the camera along the maze of narrow corridors of the theater.
The director also used Mahler (Symph. No. 9) and Tchaikovsky (Symph. Nos. 4 and 5) in some scenes but the big bulk is the modern-jazzy drum sounds of Antonio Sanchez.
I couldn't help but always see TAXI DRIVER in my head but of course only because of that strange, forlorn 70s NYC atmosphere (which BIRDMAN also sends out to a degree (to me!), even if it's set in 2015) and because in both films we actually see the drummer - in BIRDMAN he appears two or three times but that's also a liberty with reality because he's only supposed to be heard on the soundtrack, it's no incidental music.
All in all a unique piece of film - do you have to be an actor to really appreciate it? I don't know but Michael Keaton is great. And he can fly.
Will there be a soundtrack? Can't think for the life of me that anybody would listen to this apart from the film, honestly. But who knows...?
Oh, just read this on IMDB: BIRDMAN has been disqualified by the Academy for an Oscar nomination. Oh well...
"60 is the new 30!"
(Birdman)
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Posted: |
Jan 28, 2015 - 9:56 AM
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By: |
Zooba
(Member)
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Saw the movie last night on a SAG screener. I was aware of the Drum Score cause I had seen it talked about here. So I anticipated it with dread. It's weird, but for this weird movie, it kind of works. There is some actual music in the film used as the music playing for the stage play within the movie and I think near the end there may also be a tad of orchestrated music before the finale.
I really liked the touch of seeing a Marching Drum band in the film during the sequence when Keaton is walking in his underwear. It's like, your thinking the score is playing and then you actually see the Marching Band on film providing the drumming. I liked that touch. I had seen that technique in the Al Pacino movie BOBBY DEERFIELD back in 1977, where over a montage you hear a nice piece of score music by Dave Grusin and then at the end of the montage the music continues and you see Grusin himself at the piano playing the music in a small bar where Pacino and Marthe Keller are dancing. I liked what Sydney Pollack did there.
BIRDMAN the film for me, was a mixed bag. I think the performances were strong especially by Edward Norton as a total douche bag stage actor, Naomi Watts his girlfriend (also an actress in the stage show) and Keaton himself, who really captures the feeling and look of this nearly pathetic character. I'm sure he totally identified with his own real life past of playing a big screen Super Hero and his subsequent after life from all that initial fame. Some really fun sequences come up now and then, but the overall feeling of "Is it real?" or is it "Fantasy" just didn't sell for me. And the drums did get old after a while.
And I being a stage actor myself, did enjoy the look at backstage life and rehearsing lines and wardrobe fittings and the stuff that we do and identified. I loved how the director showed the actors going on and off stage and what was going on before and after their entrances and exits. I think I may need to give this a second viewing and then I might like it a little more. But I didn't like how the Theatre Critic near the end made such a dramatic turn around. That seemed totally out of character for the bitch that she was and wasn't realistic for me.
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Whether it worked in the film or not (and I have mixed feelings), the fact that this score won awards from major critics is a good example of (a) the poor standard of contemporary film scores, and (b) the utter contempt that the critical establishment has for full-blooded symphonic scores.
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Whether it worked in the film or not (and I have mixed feelings), the fact that this score won awards from major critics is a good example of (a) the poor standard of contemporary film scores, and (b) the utter contempt that the critical establishment has for full-blooded symphonic scores.
You are right on the money. Maybe there should be a category for most primitive score.
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