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think Swank is prety darn attractive, myself.
Are people still hung up on the fact that she played a boy a DECADE ago?
Good lighting helps disguise mean lines around the mouth.
&
Photoshop is a wonderful invention.
Yes, photoshop is a wonderful. Swank is by no means stunning, but she is far from ugly.
She has nice features although I think the thing that makes her appear "hard" are her teeth which are very large and flat compared to the shape of her face. It gives her a very hard characteristic IMO. It doesn't help that roles like Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don't Cry made her up to be very masculine.
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Okay, so taking this discussion away from meaninglessly rating how hot the actress is...
Good God! I just got the CD yesterday. This is an amazing score. While it's unmistakably Yared, it also sounds like something John Barry might have composed in 1975, and I mean that as the highest compliment. There are hints, to my ear, of THE LAST VALLEY, OUT OF AFRICA, Williams's SABRINA, and even Mancini's CHARADE, with the lone piano plinking out the haunting main theme. It's unabashedly thematic, sweeping, gorgeous. It's a shame that some of the nitwit film critics out there have been bashing the score in particular, they're throwing more dirt onto the grave of film music as anything other than glorified sound design.
For anyone who thinks there hasn't been a good score in 15 years, pick this one up, you'll be astounded.
Side note: Wow, physical CDs are absolutely dead. I'm in freakin' Hollywood and the only store in a half hour driving radius that got this was Amoeba. And they had one copy, which I bought. Yeesh, it's pointless complaining about iTunes killing CDs anymore, it's in the past. I just pray Varese continues issuing CDs at all...
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Thanks James for your post. It is an amazing score and, in spite of the film's reception, I hope it will be remembered come Oscar time like James Newton Howard's VIllage score was in 2004.
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Posted: |
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:59 PM
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By: |
Blue_Kirby2
(Member)
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I noticed Jon Broxton's review on Amazon.com, and while skimming through it, this paragraph caught my attention:
The music for Amelia has received a great deal of criticism from the mainstream press. Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called his music "as distracting as sirens" and an "intrusive messenger", while Peter Travers in Rolling Stone called it "sudsy", and Justin Chang in Variety called it "hyperactive". As I clearly state my review, I thought it was absolutely lovely. It's an unashamedly old fashioned score, and by that I mean it wears its emotions defiantly on its sleeve. When Earhart's planes take flight, and she feels a rush of elation and freedom and spaciousness, the music feels it too. When she feels romantic longing, the music is right there with her. When she is in danger, with her plane rocking through storms or coming perilously close to running out of fuel, the music mirrors her apprehension. Surely this is what film music is supposed to do? It's not sudsy, it's not hyperactive, and it's not intrusive; it allows the viewer to get swept up in the emotions of the piece, giving the film a broad canvas, and a cinematic quality that is sadly missing from too many of today's films. It makes me so annoyed when "mainstream" critics come down hard on films which feature music with prominent themes, romantic orchestrations, and direct emotional content. They say they feel like they are being manipulated by the music into feeling these emotions; I say, if you don't want to feel these emotions, why do you watch movies?
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
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Side note: Wow, physical CDs are absolutely dead. I'm in freakin' Hollywood and the only store in a half hour driving radius that got this was Amoeba. And they had one copy, which I bought. Yeesh, it's pointless complaining about iTunes killing CDs anymore, it's in the past. I just pray Varese continues issuing CDs at all...
Seems to be more available than it's been for download, at least. For the life of me I can't find the soundtrack on iTunes. Is there some trick to finding it in the search engine, or is it being released for download later and I just missed it? Downloading doesn't seem to be an option on Amazon, either.
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I noticed Jon Broxton's review on Amazon.com, and while skimming through it, this paragraph caught my attention:
The music for Amelia has received a great deal of criticism from the mainstream press. Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called his music "as distracting as sirens" and an "intrusive messenger", while Peter Travers in Rolling Stone called it "sudsy", and Justin Chang in Variety called it "hyperactive". As I clearly state my review, I thought it was absolutely lovely. It's an unashamedly old fashioned score, and by that I mean it wears its emotions defiantly on its sleeve. When Earhart's planes take flight, and she feels a rush of elation and freedom and spaciousness, the music feels it too. When she feels romantic longing, the music is right there with her. When she is in danger, with her plane rocking through storms or coming perilously close to running out of fuel, the music mirrors her apprehension. Surely this is what film music is supposed to do? It's not sudsy, it's not hyperactive, and it's not intrusive; it allows the viewer to get swept up in the emotions of the piece, giving the film a broad canvas, and a cinematic quality that is sadly missing from too many of today's films. It makes me so annoyed when "mainstream" critics come down hard on films which feature music with prominent themes, romantic orchestrations, and direct emotional content. They say they feel like they are being manipulated by the music into feeling these emotions; I say, if you don't want to feel these emotions, why do you watch movies?
Bravo, sir. Bravo.
All those people singing the praise for the AMELIA score...
... are perfectly right! I bought the CD and am listening to it right now - and it´s a masterpiece! Once of the best scores of the year, maybe of the decade. I can´t believe that critics are slamming this score but don´t say anything about really intrusive and bland scores. I guess this is all due to the fact that the film "Amelia" gets no love and is the favorite boogeyman for critics right now: an "old school" biopic.
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... They say they feel like they are being manipulated by the music into feeling these emotions; I say, if you don't want to feel these emotions, why do you watch movies?
Although I suspect that's a rhetorical flourish and not a serious question, here's an answer: not everyone is into grand melodrama. Some want to feel like what they're watching could be what happened. The more it harks back to clear dramatic forms of the past, or foregrounds the magician's tricks, the less likely it will be that someone who wants a more naturalistic presentation will not go with it. They don't want to be nudged there, and they don't want the myth of Icarus, they want the authenticity of what it felt like to be Amelia. And that's a feeling you'll come across more in film critics (who know how to watch a Bresson, or a Ken Loach film) than in anyone else. Hence the negative reviews. They're misreading the film of course, which is a grand melodrama without the slightest hint of naturalism and only superficial gestures of authenticity, but it wouldn't be the first time film critics have punished a film for what it might have been. I've done it myself.
It sounds like it's great music, and I'm eagerly awaiting my copy. But it also sounds like it isn't my kind of film at all.
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