Favourite Movie Songs Redux: Original: Newer, Faster, Personal ... mixedupier

Seven more o' these. A mix of sourced and orignal, favouring original. More to follow, over....

Sky High: The Man from Hong Kong. I saw the film much later than I heard this song from the mid-70s. From it's beautiful floating verse you wouldn't expect the beat-em-up crime basher you get (featuring everyone's forgotten Bond, George Lazenby who, on the strength of this film did about a million commercials for .... sorry, can't remember). I still quite like the difference. Even the bouncy chorus ends on that soaring falsetto: "Ski Hiiiiiiiiiigh!" Dig it! (Oh, you can youtube the opening sequence of the film if you like - the floaty hang glider works well with the song - but this is the version with the great use of delay on the verse that got the radio play and I'd rather you listened to this one first.)

Up the Junction: Up the Junction. I saw the movie from halfway through in my first year in Brisbane. This song is folded through it like a layer of honey. Beautiful late 60s London pop. Almost just-post-Syd Floyd. Movie is good but is a dilution of Ken Loach's original tv play. Song's still great, though.

Ich Liebe Dich: Baxter. Imagine Lassie remade by Michael Hanneke. Baxter is a bull terrier who narrates through a voiceover that makes him sound like a bar-propping sailor in a Jacques Brel song. He goes through several owners and most of them come to a bad end. Then he meets the boy, a Hitler fan who sees his own one dog SS in Baxter. This song occurs at a point when you think the sweet and natural young girl in the clip below will provide a civilising influence. The tune and vocals themselves seem to be spun from sugar and spice and all things nice. Don't be taken in. This film is a deadly portrayal of dependence at any cost and no one is innocent. Make that Lassie directed by Michael Hanneke and written by Gunther Grass.

Call Me: American Gigolo. They didn't know it at the time but Blondie were about to nose dive into the post fame void. Before that happened they had the time and force for one last slice of greatness. Call Me is a concentration of their successful collision of power pop and Georgio Moroder electrodisco. This time they did it with Moroder himself and the result is a blast, a great charging warcry of demand over a tide of energy. Even before you saw Schrader's movie you felt like you knew what it was like to drive around it in a convertible. Chaaaaaaaarge ... it!

Marcy's Song: Martha Marcy May Marlene. Intensely creepy song from the extraordinary 2012 film sung by the cult leader to the protagonist whose journey into identity hyperspace is given a big push by this scene. Too hard to find a clip from the film but here's a studio version with a montage from the film.

Happiness: Happiness. This is one aspect of why this unsettling film is so effective. When the hopeless character Joy sings this at home as something she wrote herself it engendered howls of derision among its audience at the screening I attended. And then when it played again over the end credits but this time powered up by REM with Michael Stipe's stadium rock vocals roaring through it no one seemed to notice.

Georgy Girl: Georgie Girl. Great song from the 60s to a great Brit movie of the time. Whaddaya want?

Favourite Movie Songs: Sourced

This one is much harder than I thought. I had supposed that since the outsourcing of pop songs had only been in practice since the 60s and then only mandatory since the 80s (eg The Big Chill) the narrowed field would make it easy. You won't find Tarrantino selections here as, while he does use sourced music well I have too much trouble connecting with the films (and my loathing of Wes Anderson is a curious element actually discernable in my DNA). My ground rules were that the moment must particularly delight or surprise rather than just be apt (like the almost decorative use of all the music in The Big Chill). I suspect there will be more of these 'uns.

THE END: Apocalypse Now. The first time I heard this song was in the opening sequence of the movie. Second viewing was at a drive-in in Townsville when it rained lightly all through the movie and felt like the heat visible on screen. There were military helicopters going overhead frequently.  It was so sensuously powerful otherworldly that I bought every Doors album throughout the following months. Still a fan. (PS- The End was also used earlier to good effect in Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door .... but I didn't know that then ;)

BANANA SPLITS: Kickass. Always thought this great version would play well under comic book style action. It does.

IN DREAMS: Blue Velvet. a toss-up between this and the title track. I went with this because it comes out of nowhere and takes over the scene it's in, forming Frank's only equal.

MY WAY: Goodfellas. Runs over the freezframe and end credits but Sid's version with its goopy intro and panzer division arrangement and pisstake lyric form an even closer bond than the more celebrated use of the Stones in the paranoia sequence.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: Class. 80s teen movie where schoolboy assignations up with best friend's mother (Jacquiline Bissett). This played as the friends set out to the family mansion for Christmas and was meant to be all sassy and contemporary. It kind of was but this tune survives anything thrown at it. I don't know why this works but it does. Best bit in a resolutely ok film.

DREAMS: Sound of My Voice. No clip but that doesn't surprise me as the song is not used the way these others are. It is sung by a character and an extraordinary claim made for it. During the performance you want to shout your recognition of it because you don't think the other characters will. But they do. What follows forms part of a highly accomplished cinematic delayed sleight of hand. Uncomfortable, expertly uncomfortable.

Favourite Movie Songs: Original

Two qualifiers: songs written for movies that are not musicals. So, no chance of Over the Rainbow or Singing in the Rain (neither of which I like anyway). And no chance of other songs I'm supposed to like but am indifferent to like As Time Goes By or songs I flatly hate like Eye of the Tiger. So ....

IN HEAVEN: Eraserhead. It comes out of nowhere just like the Lady in the Radiator who sings it moves into the light from complete darkness. It's beautiful and unnerving. We don't know what it means or why it's there until the end. We think.

BECAUSE THE DEAD: Suicide Circle.  An ambush number that falls somewhere between Ziggy era Bowie and post-punk melange sung by the cult leader (digetically, there's a band around his throne) while various atrocities are taking place under bloodied sheets around him while two of his victims are forced to watch. "Because the dead shine all night long..." And then that's it, no more songs apart from the insanely catchy Mail Me by the J-pop girlband whose name keeps getting spelled differently. Nothing plays fair in this film.

THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND: The Thomas Crown Affair. Brilliant controlled explosion of free association played under the pleasing motion of Steve McQueen gliding over a landscape. Pity it was Noel Harrison's anaemic version rather than Dusty's but you can't have everything.

AVE SATANI: The Omen. A few years after The Exorcist had overhauled horror film music with judicious use of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells everyone wanted a tinkly eerie piece. The Omen's brief was larger scale, however, so consistently brilliant Jerry Goldsmith churned out this tense and creepy burst of power. Of course that then was copied for everything after that as Exorcist ripoffs gave way to antichrist stories with big choirs. Goldsmith kept working with the series and produced consistenly high scores (the one for Damien: Omen II is worth having the cd for as it's written as a full black mass and is insanely good) as the quality of the film fell from the acceptable silliness of the first one to the style perdition of the third. Don't get me started on the remake.

GOLDFINGER: Goldfinger. After I lost interest in James Bond movies sometime in my teens my affection for the music remained. My self-imposed no instrumentals rule has prevented inclusion of the Bond theme so here's another goodie.

WALK AWAY: Trust. It's cheesy and all 90s/60s and indy but still packs a wallop with me and is placed expertly in the credits sequence. Not strictly written for the film but picked by Hartley who had become friends with Hub Moore during an earlier film. I loved the opening sequence anyway but when this song kicked in just after it was going to take a lot for me to dislike the rest of the film.

No clip for this one but here's another good tune by the same artist from an earlier film. Surviving Desire. The Music from the Films of Hal Hartley cd is worth it if you can find it anywhere.

MYSTERIES OF LOVE: Blue Velvet. Plays over Geoffrey and Sandy's slow dance which is a golden hued pool of warmth between bouts of violence and tension and comes on like codeine. Slice of what makes David Lynch movies work; heartrending, dark, vaguely troubling and ethereal all at once. Also plays very beautifully over the end credits. When heard out of context feels like a whispered memory after midnight.

THE BRAIN: The Brain. Great late 60s title tune with a British line in vocal harmony but a thumping Memphis groove. Much better than the pop art master criminal movie it was written for. Same folk as had a hit with Bend Me Shape Me.

TO SIR WITH LOVE: To Sir With Love. Irresistible 60s pop tastes like musk sticks and champagne. Exact poignancy as demandedby the film. A favourite. Almost always get to the brink of welling up when I hear this.

MOON RIVER: Breakfast at Tiffanys. Audrey Hepburn strumming on the fire escape and cooing this kills the rest of the film (which I like, erky Mickey Rooney performance as Japanese character notwithstanding). Moonlight, sighs and a dry Manhattan ....