Lord of the Recordings: The Film Director as DJ by Adam Baer -- Slate.com
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CULTUREBOX ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT, AND MORE.
MARCH 20 2002 3:28 PM
Lord of the Recordings
The film director as DJ.
By Adam Baer
Film music, as I hinted around Oscar time last year, is a fiddly art: While strong movie music
should flavor and pace a film, it shouldn't divert you from the narrative. Even though scores and
soundtracks are written to be experienced during a film, they're released as albums and
therefore beg to be judged as such.
This year's Oscar nominees for Best Score certainly aren't too difficult to codify. They're all
blissfully mediocre. John Williams' score to A.I. is both overly theatrical and self-conscious, with
classic string-section wailing, percussive suspense tactics, and phantasmagoric soprano vocals
from opera star Barbara Bonney. Williams' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stoneriffs (yes, the
scoring superman is nominated twice) aren't as weak as A.I.'sif only because they impersonate
his Star Wars tunes, which of course were excellent even if they first appeared in the scores of
Serge Prokofiev and Richard Strauss. Still, for a film whose chief virtues are digital
representations of sorcery, this music lacks original charisma and fails to summon a supernatural
aura.
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