Word: soundtracks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their hardest, they are lost in the overkill of the director and his star. Most ironical of all, Fitzcarraldofack's music. Though supposedly at the heart of the matter, opera and art have very little to do with the journey that is undertaken. Instead a synthesized German pop soundtrack intrudes for much of the film. There is nothing to sustain the meaning, and it is no wonder that Fitzcarraldo falls apart. It's like watching a Wagnerian opera where the sound has been turned off. All that remains are frantically moving lips and hollow gestures...
...bite open a marble. He is the only presiding television host who actually seems to pronounce ellipses. When he says, "Witness the death rites of a Balinese prince in a fiery ceremony designed to release his soul for reincarnation," each dot of the ellipsis seems to detonate on the soundtrack like a small grenade...
...tech high punk goings-on of the film's other characters. Hawkins carries a ruffled parasol, and young Jules, wearing the kind of lean and hungry look that only a European can muster, follows a few steps behind her. Sati (of course) comes rolling ever so slowly off the soundtrack...
Simon's screenplay restricts the direction as well as the actions. Even the set design is bland and tiresome: the first father-daughter confrontation is filmed in an annoyingly dull light. The audience's attention is directed away from the screen and toward the repetitious soundtrack. Director Ross ignores the fact that film is a visual medium--more so than the stage on which I Ought to be in Pictures was originally performed: he seems to put his own work on a secondary level to the screenwriter's. This is not a Herbert Ross film: the opening credits...
...breezy 1936 Bing Crosby picture. Steve plays a hapless sheet-music vendor who wants to live in a world "where the songs come true." Co-star Bernadette Peters, 31, Steve's oft reported main squeeze offstage, provides the love interest. With Depression-era recordings backing them on the soundtrack, the dapper duo lip-sync their way through 15 songs and six lavish production numbers. As for the dancing, says Peters: "At least I got to use my own feet...