Really poor placement of music in films

(twenty-somethings will kill me now)

As far as other bad placement of music in films, the use of "Can We Still Be Friends" in Vanilla Sky is terrible, but I only saw that movie once and I seem to remember that movie being chock full o' terrible things.

i think wes anderson's use of pop music in his movies (and the mothersbaugh scores, to boot) has been really really sharp at times, and really really grating at other times. i think its easy in hindsight to say that all his song use has been cloying and lame, what with the somewhat cloying and/or lame use of some songs in RTs/lifeacquatic. i really think it was great in bottle rocket, brilliant in rushmore, and good, but a little too self-satisfied in tenenbaums. by the time i saw life acquatic, all the songs felt like he was flailing about, looking for some familiar device to express tone or mood. but i dont know, i think thats not a bad characterization of that movie in general. ok, fine, i cant help it. i believe in him.

hello Lost In Translation

Really? I thought that Bottle Rocket only got picked up by a major after an executive saw it in a indie-film festival. Maybe this was his uncle or something, I dunno.

-- rentboy

whaaaat! for one, i thought "sometimes" was impeccable for the scene where it was used. or was i just really happy to hear it regardless of circumstances? and i forget what two songs play during the credits (JAMC and someone else?) but those were well-chosen too. i forget everything else except the air song, which i was never really crazy about.

I half expected Portman to turn toward the camera.
-- jaymc

hahah gold

Stence OTM!

Maybe Easy Rider?

-- Matos-Webster Dictionary

you really think so? what films of his have you seen? I think the music in "scorpio rising" (which i guess you're referencing) is brilliant and was obv. way ahead of its time re: camp, irony, appropriation, etc. Also, i haven't seen it (it doesn't get screened much) but the score for "lucifer rising" by bobby beausoleil is totally awesome: pink floyd meets miles davis in prison.

I def. think Easy Rider or the Graduate were pioneers of this in the Hollywood sense tho, I can't think of much else before then that epitomized this reverent use of rock/pop as a narrative trope which we see so often these days.

My main beef with music in films is more to do with a phenomenon I have experienced about 3 or 4 times in the last few years: 1)Someone will recommend me a new film saying it's a great movie with a great soundtrack 2)I watch the film and find that it is instead a bad-to-mediocre film with a great soundtrack. In fact, the last one of these I recall did include a Nick Drake song, although I can't recall the name of the movie. Royal Tenenbaums was another one of these, though.

It's almost as if they hope to cover up a bad film by putting a lot of great music in it. Great music that, of course, your average joe hasn't heard of.

Argh. Sorry if I'm restating anything anyone else has said I just realized I need to go out the door now and can't spend any more time here.

It made me think: "Gee, Buffalo Bill can't be all bad if he liked The Fall!" Although, I didn't recognize it when I heard it...someone on ILX pointed it out to me not too long ago. Still, he likes Q Lazarus as well (only available via the Married to the Mob soundtrack, btw).

Someone posted something about how Buffalo Bill was intensely likeable because he punnished a girl who likes Tom Petty....which made him even more sympathetic.

xpost i like the last waltz.

but no, hstencil is wrong, Silence of the Lambs is awful. Romanticized serial killers, homophobia, predictable ending, heavy-handed symbolism (starlings! sheep!) fuck that shit.

x-post

xpost - yeah demme hates fags, blah blah.

I also like Velvet Goldmine and the Doors - two musical movies pretty much everyone else uniformly despises...

-- hstencil (hstenc!l@NOSPAMyahoo.com ), February 8th, 2005.

bowie was better

x-post

Forrest Gump did that a lot too. It's a dumb stupid excuse for a good soundtrack and it's got to stop.

(ps email me re: shows!)

Anyway...The Doom Generation. Great music that should have been nowhere near the film. Araki has excellent taste in music, but Goddess that movie was sheer tripe. Didn't he do Joyride, too? There's another bad movie with great 4AD-obsessed soundtrack.

OOooohhhh! Yes please, Jed!

(xpost to lemin: your e-mail address leads me to believe that i may have kinda sorta met you once. not to sound like creepy or anything but i've a hunch, is all.)

Anyway, I like the way the songs broke up the scenes in Breaking the Waves.

I really hated the music in The Life Aquatic, too. Why end with "Queen Bitch"? It's a song about such a specific scene/era and it just didn't make any sense. What do horny NY drag queens with bippety boppety hats have to do with a bunch of marine biologists marching down a dock somewhere in the Mediterranean? Not that it has to match, really, but it seemed so lazy. Like, "Hey, this song is so catchy, Bowie said OK, let's just shove in on at the end."

It was just such a crappy movie, period.

i thought Lost In Translation was particularily lovely myself.

i enjoyed the life aquatic's soundtrack, particularly 'the dance' with the casio-into-big-orchestra mothersbaugh joint. i feel like the songs captured the mood well enough.

We'd ALL do this if we made films.

Not seen Life Aquatic but I think Rushmore in particular makes wonderful use of music. By sticking to 60s Mod-pop he adds to the film's autumnal feel. The sheer joy and anguish of teenage crushes is captured beautifully in the Here Comes My Baby scene and A Quick One While He's Away totally rocks.

Let's talk about really bad use of music people - naff montage scenes are always the worst, especially when they're little more than a music video. Mrs Doubtfire is a particular stinker - Robin Williams looking at the camera, doing the hoovering to Dude Looks Like A Lady. It's just so obvious and lame.
And the Return Of The Jedi redux with that awful New Age singalong is horrendous.

I'm singin' in the rain... just singin' in the rain *kick!*

I find the inclusion of Badly Drawn Boy on a soundtrack to be very irritating. I don't mind Hour of the Bewilderbeast, but he just weighs everything else down with piles of sap.
(Only "About a Boy" comes to mind, but it'll do for an example.)

"This Must Be the Place" in Wall Street
"Once in a Lifetime" (live version from one fucking year earlier) in Down and Out in Beverly Hills

I totally agree. It is probably my favourite soundtrack of all time, yet the placement of the songs in the movie just doesn't work.

Surprised not to see High Fidelity discussed more...any thoughts?

It took the Coens to make good use of Creedence, unless you count the Playgirl Bunnies scene in Apocalypse Now (but is that their version of Susy Q?)

"Smack My Bitch Up" by the Prodigy plays when Natalie Portman does her "look my ass is hanging out" dance, followed by "How Soon is Now" by the Smiths...the lyrics "I am human and I need to be loved" blares in the background as Clive Owen begs her to sleep with him and tells her he loves her. lame!

and you know exactly what scenes i'm thinking of too, don't you?

these instances are obnoxious, insincere, forced business ploys.

I can imagine myself explaining to the studio that although my film was a commercial and critical dog it was all okay because I was able to get Belle and Sebastian and Talulah Gosh to share a soundtrack with Throbbing Gristle and the Dreamies.

In my experience the music selection/use in every Solondz flick has been spot-on (granted I haven’t seen Fear/Anxiety/Depression or Palindromes yet

See also: The Long Good Friday

grandaddy. one of the sopht bulletin ones.

the annoying thing about the 'high fidelity'/beta band thing is its self-consciousness *as* product placement.

kris fucken kristoffersen.

A lot, but the best has to be An American Werewolf in London, where it's kind of funny.

It took the Coens to make good use of Creedence, unless you count the Playgirl Bunnies scene in Apocalypse Now (but is that their version of Susy Q?)

-- stew (stewfsmit...), February 8th, 2005.

It's "Susie Q" but not Creedence's version, which is appropriate since a cover band is playing it during the bunnies scene.

The moody instrumental music in Apocalypse Now is Tangerine Dream.

Lately, I've been noticing good acting being used to cover up bullshit scripts.
-- Snappy (jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj...), February 7th, 2005.

Haha, Capote anyone?

4 real? i thought it was carmine coppola!!

-- Roughage Crew (miltonpinsk...), June 22nd, 2006.

Yer right, it's Carmine Coppola. I could've sworn it was TD.

given that 'magnolia' was mostly previously unreleased, it's a bit unfair to call it product placement. golden age hollywood musicals are much more deserving targets; few used original music.

OTM
actually i felt like each scene of the movie was similarly contrived (along with the majority of the "memorable" shots): "ooh it would be cool if i had a shot wherein i stand against a wall, and my shirt has the same pattern as the wallpaper behind me and i practically disappear via camouflage--that would be SO cool" or "ooh i just HAVE to have a scene where the couple sit in a bathtub for no apparent reason." give me a break
and i almost lost my lunch at the line "good luck exploring the infinite abyss!" i mean

Wasn't that E.G. Daily? Or is my memory fucked?

While I don't agree with the blanket statement about Scorsese, I do agree when it comes to Casino, which surprises me because Robbie Robertson was musical consultant for that one. I've always found the placement of the music to be very forced in that movie. However, I felt that the soundtrack and placement thereof in Goodfellas (and others) to be great.

The trailer for his latest film, Miami Vice, features Linkin Park.

I've decided this whole phenomenon can be blamed on Mike Nichols. He started it (Matos nominating Anger isn't really fair, no one saw that guy's stuff except for filmmakers and film nerds, and none of his use of music was in the context of a standard narrative film)

Check out Scorsese's Who's That Knocking On My Door, his first feature film from 1967. It's little-seen but quite good, and he's already marrying pop/rock songs to transgressive moments, most notably a date rape scene backed by a doo-wop song. There's also a long sex fantasy scene scored to The Doors' "The End", a sequence added after Scorsese was strong-armed by the film's distributor.

In other trivia, a still from Who's That Knocking On My Door was supposed to be the original cover of The Smiths' Strangeways, Here We Come...

*A band who got their name from one of the films Keitel praises earlier on in the film.

The worst use of music in a film that I've seen continues to be a running joke for me and my husband: During the final moments of Igby Goes Down, "The Weight" by The Band plays over the scene. Just as the song says "I picked up my bag"... Igby picks up his bag.

overly on the nose music uses like this always crack me up

Devo's "Satisfaction" in Casino (twice, I think) was probably much cornier than anything Scorsese had ever used up to that point.

Ha, that placement actually turned me around 180 degrees on their version of that song (which I used to hate). Casino is probably the only brilliant thing Robbie Robertson ever did after leaving the Band (he was the music consultant).

Not sure if I knew that or not--he provided some atmospheric opening-credit music for The Color of Money. The songs that work best for me in Casino are "Love Is Strange," "I Ain't Superstitious," and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." The soundtrack lists Cream's "Those Were the Days"--no recollection of that whatsoever.

It is awesome that while having to endure the almost transcendentally soulless Watchmen film, you get to hear Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in tandem with witnessing Chevy Chase's giant, pallid arse cheeks creaking in and out in slow motion. Even though the song has numerous legitimate interpretations, none of them, imho, relate to a middle aged man managing to get a boner while dressed as an owl however.

I've never seen that movie or read the book. Your description almost belongs in this thread though:

Superhero comics: What insane story/character developments do avid followers take for granted but would blow the minds of anyone only peripherally aware of them?

Now that looks like a thread I need to read. (And, I don't want to make a song and dance about this, but read Watchmen. It's really rather good.)

xxp -- really?! Never noticed "Those Were The Days," and I've seen the movie maybe 10 times. "Toad" is all over it though, and expertly used/placed.

Agreed re: "Love Is Strange," "I Ain't Superstitious," and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking." The Jeff Beck placement, especially, is (for me) among the four or five most creatively uses of prerecorded music in a film.

That Wang Chung song at the end of the first episode of THE WALKING DEAD. I mean, all hope in the series drained when he met other people, after a sublime first half. But that music cue. Man, what a stinker.

Didn't they use some contemporary indie thing early on in "Mad Men"? Rare misstep, that.

at the end of the sappy romcom Crazy Stupid Love, an acoustic indie song by Andre Bird playing over the credits, which hey, commonplace enough of a move to not be a big foul in and of itself. but these are the lyrics.

My least missed trend: the tendency of early-00's teen/college films to oversoundtrack everything with Top 40 hits and wannabes. I remember Orange County and She's All That, in particular, sounding like someone had the radio playing behind me the whole time I was watching them.

Didn't they use some contemporary indie thing early on in "Mad Men"? Rare misstep, that.

the decemberists i think, and it was the only episode i've ever watched beginning to end (thought it was lame and contributed to my "eh,not really gonna commit to this" decision)

All of Flight.

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in <i>Watchmen</i>.

When the guy does heroin and they play "Heroin" in Killing Them Softly.

John Cooper Clarke pops in in odd places.,

I took Hallelujah in Watchmen as outstanding meta-comedy.

Zack Snyder re: Halelujah: "Hallelujah, that love scene, I originally had the Allison Crowe version of that song, a version I’ve always loved, but in the end was just too romantic. Everybody thought that I meant it they thought the love scene was serious, not that it isn’t serious but that song was too – her version was too sexy. So I was like, 'Yeah I’ve got to go back to the Leonard Cohen.' For me it is incredibly ironic, even with that version of the song it is incredibly ironic. I don’t care what version of Hallelujah is on that love scene it is ridiculous, but in a great way. With Leonard Cohen it is like you can’t miss it now, can you? I’m sure some people will, but that is fine."

I watched the Miami Vice movie over Christmas and every single piece of music in it is either awful or used in an awful way. I imagine Michael Mann compiling a soundtrack is like Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights with his bag of coke and his Awesome Mix Tape. He has such consistently shitty taste and no apparent sense of humour to explain it away.

Eazy otm

I dunno man, Manhunter seems to indicate he can make a pretty awesome mix tape

XP: What Zack Snyder's saying doesn't really add up to that much other than I know it's a shit idea but it's ok, because I know it's a shit idea. Does he have a line on why he used Ride Of The Valkyries during the Vietnam helicopter scene, or why he used other utterly movie rinsed songs like 'Sound Of Silence' etc? Because it just comes across as lazy to me.

Even the most referential movie maker of modern times Quentin Tarantino realised (when he was good) that you can't use music that's already owned by other films and it's telling that he's happy to use lazy signifiers now that he makes terrible films.

Whatever meta-reasons Snyder has, you can't get away from the fact that every other song on the Watchmen soundtrack just makes you think of another, far superior, film.

tbh most of what i remember of Manhunter's soundtrack is "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" being used pretty awesomely

xp "You can't use music that's already owned by other films". This isn't true at all. Of course you can - Across 110th Street in Jackie Brown being a great example. The obviousness of the music in Watchmen is a deliberate strategy from the Times They Are A-Changin' on down, whether you enjoy it or not, which is distinct from, say, Aaron Sorkin in The Newsroom thinking that nobody had ever used Fix You on a tearful montage before.

I haven't seen Manhunter in years but recent Mann music, like Miami Vice or the crappy Audioslave song in Collateral, is awful.

That's a fair point about Across 110th Street but as a rule of thumb it still stands. I have no doubt that this is a strategy but to what purpose?

Like for the most part Jackie Brown used relatively obscure music to good effect but it was a transitionary period leading into Inglorious Basterds [sp?] which is just pathetic in regards the OST.

What's obvious apart from Cat People (which works brilliantly imo)? Even the Morricone tracks aren't from famous movies.

RE: Watchmen, I'm not saying the strategy works, I'm just saying the obviousness was a deliberate choice.

i thought heat and the insider used music vv well, the former in particular. iirc he used eno and terje rypdal(!)

You're right - Neubaten, Dead Can Dance and Arvo Part too. I think my intense dislike of Miami Vice must have coloured my memory.

DL: What's he trying to do though? I genuinely don't get what this strategy is. Why does he get a pass for using Philip Glass to suggest patterns in nature/society outside of the ken of the average man, when hundreds of other hacks wouldn't be granted the same indulgence for lazily leaning on Koyaanisqatsi.

I thought the Morricone pieces were well known but perhaps not so much on reflection.

Miami Vice would have been improved by having Winding-Refn as musical advisor.

My feeling was that the soundtrack reflected the unreal comic-book palette - it's a distancing effect. And just as the palette is drawn from the series, most of the songs are taken from it. I remember Desolation Row and All Along the Watchtower for sure and apparently (though I don't recall) Times, Hallelujah and Sounds of Silence are mentioned by Moore too.

That's true but all of those songs should have been ditched before the giant fake space squid that the story originally hinges round.

can we get back to doran thinking chevy chase was the star of watchmen?

every aspect of the way music was used in Juno was disgusting. want to punch out everyone involved in that piece of shit.

XP: I was as surprised as everyone else; there's no way he would have gotten Community without Watchmen. Getting Ben Stiller to play Rorshach was a touch of genius though.

see i would have assumed you were joking except it didn't make any sense as a joke

i wanna see Doran's version of Watchmen

"Magic Carpet Ride" in Go always stuck out like a sore thumb, like it was filler for a song that couldn't get copyright approval.

remember the shitty cover of magic carpet ride that was in reservoir dogs?

Not really what this thread is about, but I was fairly irked by the total balls-up / late failure to secure rights / studio pressure / whatever it was that led Steve Carrell's character in Seeking A Friend For The End of the World to cue up side A of Scott Walker's solo debut and yet hear... two Walker Brothers songs. The first track on that LP is "Mathilde" and that's the name of asteroid coming to destroy the earth and the last track on side A is "My Death", so it was intended to work that way, I think. Instead, we get "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and "Stay With Me Baby".

does the really poor placement of the album cover of miles davis' 1986 album 'tutu' in the 1950s-set 'the talented mr ripley' count?

When the guy does heroin and they play "Heroin" in Killing Them Softly.

― pun lovin criminal (polyphonic), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 1:22 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

srsly, such an eyeroll moment

Love the Manhunter soundtrack, especially the Shriekback, but here's the "studio pressure" closing-credits song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBWSocJMChA

"Studio pressure" in the sense that "We need a new song to go with the Iron Butterfly." Hearing it again, though, something about it sounds a whole lot like the Audioslave that shows up in Collateral.

In my version of Watchmen Chevy Chase is getting it on to Hallelujah by the Happy Mondays.

iirc there are like five audioslave songs in miami vice

what happened to u mann

Katy Perry usage in Rust And Bone is pretty cringe. actually that soundtrack is just full of huge weird contrasts of song placement. for example when the lead french dude was suddenly listening to a 30 year old John Cooper Clarke track whilst jogging.

500 days of summer

I mean all songs in that movie

Had "Heartbeat" been an instrumental I would be jamming it right this minute.

remember the shitty cover of magic carpet ride that was in reservoir dogs?

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 4:19 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yessss, it's like a big black mark on tarantino's track record with soundtracks

Scott Pilgrim's botched use of Broken Social Scene's "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" since we're talking insufferable indie films/soundtracks.

Terrible cover of "Ruby Tuesday" (I think?) in "Children Of Men" .

I had a really terrible dream last night about my Watchmen going over budget. The bit where the giant squid materialises in New York however will still be soundtracked by Voltigeurs' Defiling Their Temples With Bestial Lust. No matter what the cost.

I find the idea of Buffalo Bill listening to Hip Priest by The Fall ludicrous to the extent that it always ruins that scene in Silence Of The Lambs for me.

You know what? I didn't even notice it the first time!

It is easy to miss. I guess it's just how everyone goes on about it. If it wasn't for that, I might not have noticed it myself - I didn't when I saw it at the pictures.

So, it was probably 'really good' placement, and its just that the track's pre-history informs some people's reaction to it, and not others.

That's one way of looking at it. I still don't see why this cross dressing, serial killing, poodle and R.E.O. Speedwagon fanboy is doing listening to The Fall.

There's this scene in Toy Story 3 where Barbie sees Ken for the first time and "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright swells up on the soundtrack. Not a bad moment for a Pixar movie.

But then, on this app my son plays with, there's a preview of the movie that shows the same scene except with "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin. REALLY POOR PLACEMENT.

they stole that from Wayne's World anyway

waynes world, top gun, same diff

nah, i meant the use of Dreamweaver

The Damien Rice song in Closer isn't poor per se but is over the top.

pop songs should be banned from films.

or maybe not?

"Sister Christian" in Boogie Nights excepted.

Enya's "Sail Away" in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also wasn't poor but was a little oh c'mon.

i believe you're referring to ORINOCO FLOW

"Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" in Away We Go. Crap film as it was, but that scene came out of nowhere, and vanished without a trace. Using a great song for it just made me angry.

scorsese has had his amazing music moment but then there's 'bringing out the dead' (a film i like vv much):

- that 10,000 maniacs song
- 'what's the frequency kenneth?'

the same movie has good use of van morrison and the clash though.

And "Bell Boy"!

remember the shitty cover of magic carpet ride that was in reservoir dogs?

I've seen Reservoir Dogs at least 10 times, and I don't remember this at all. Are you thinking of Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" cover, or is this something playing in the background that I keep missing?

i thought the tupac song in django unchained was awful placement

I don't remember any "Magic Carpet Ride" cover either. Maybe he's thinking the remix (or mashup or w/e) that was in "Go!" ?

xp

It's listed on the RD soundtrack.

Shane Meadows does a lot of terminal damage to his own films often by using winsome folky brit-wank songs to convey 'sadness' or whatever rather than sticking to competent filmmaking. I have seen all his films but I can't be arsed searching for examples, but even if it was music I liked it still wouldn't work.

i think it was briefly heard in the film but not featured prominently. maybe a car ride scene? idk.

XP: I know what you mean about Shane Meadows but then he is, essentially, a very conservative director. His entire schtick is about the importance of the nuclear family and what happens when it is disrupted. Also, the context suits some (but certainly not all) of this Green Man/lentil bake music you're talking about.

I wouldn't normally listen to Adem or anything of that ilk to be honest but I think the song Statued fits Dead Man's Shoes like a glove, and I have nothing but love for Gravenhurst.

Also smart use of Aphex Twin in a film with a near rural setting. It's the ideal scenery for Aphex Twin... see Sleep Furiously as well.

I know it wasn't a film, but yesterday there was a Nick Knowles prog where they redecorate a deserving family's house and the community get involvet etcet, you know the sort of thing.

There was lots of instrumental music backings from Gotye, Vampire Weekend, the whistly Peter John and Bjorn track, and the final bit where they do the big reveal was Hoppipola Sigur Ros

talk about over-familiar usage...

From what I've seen of these surprise redecoration shows, normally the reveal should be chosen from Fucked On A Pile Of Corpses by Skullflower.

The whole shambling fuckup that was the director's cut of Donnie Darko. Way to ruin the best bit of the film by changing the music for no reason at all.

I saw this on another thread and though I saw that film, I don't remember "America" in it. I am pissed! This song should be about ordinary people's memories, not rock stars and groupies.

"I wonder how much of "America"'s win had to do with Almost Famous. It never really stood out to me on Bookends, but then it was used in that film and kind of earned a new heightened status"

"America" was in the scene where William's older sister leaves home with her boyfriend, before rock stars and groupies entered the picture.

According to imdb:

Song: "Magic Carpet Ride"/Performer: Bedlam/Movie Moment: This Steppenwolf cover can be heard during the bar scene when Mr. Orange tells the others his "commode story."

Well, there you go--I'm not sure if it ever registered with me what's playing in the background (starts at 3:20).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ObbvrQxAc

I remember when I first watched that, I thought that Tim Roth told such a realistic drug story. Looking back, it sounds so contrived.

Regarding the Nick Knowles DIY SOS, should the BBC be using "Young folks" seeing as everyone generally knows it as "the music from the 8 & Q adverts"?