No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007)

When I first saw Coen Bros 'No Country For Old Men', on its release, I was in a nice big cinema on a trip to Glasgow. Great seat, great sound system. This atmospheric chase thriller is based almost word-for-word on Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is set variously in the desert, empty small towns in West Texas and on the Mexican border. As you will know if you have visited these places, they are where silence reigns supremo. Apart from the sounds of nature and the occasional interference of men and machines. The sound design of this movie reflects 'the region', an important aspect of the making of this film. There is no music to be heard apart from the diegetic appearance of a mariachi band when the central character awakes, wounded, in a square in Mexico.

But hark. Listen. There is constant flickering in the sonic world of this movie. As the characters walk through the dust you hear the crunch of their boots. There are various (and many) clicks of catches on guns, silenced or otherwise. Lightbulbs are unscrewed behind doors. Grills are removed from aircon ducts. Men shoot at one another in empty streets, no sirens, no dramatic swells and choruses. Meetings take place in diners with no radio in the background even, but there is hum and there are sonic references. The sound of singing bowls and sine waves fight through (my constant) tinnitus for attention. Is that music? Or my ears, my ears?

Carter Burwell has created the most minimal score for this movie, in league with sound designer Skip Lievsay (he takes care of the sound effects that are not music). I cannot recommend it highly enough. There is sound, there is music (there is always music - if there is a listener). In a world of noise, No Country (and no classical, no rock etc) is a relief. A sensory experiment. And a triumph for music and movies. Claudia Gorbman wrote of 'Unheard Melodies', how the job of film music is not to be heard. Here's an extreme example. Nice one chaps.

Music for Fireworks

I love fireworks displays. Last night we went to Ally Pally (clip above) and their massive explosions in the sky combined pretty well with space movie theme tunes (2001, Star Wars, ET) and of course Holst's Planets Suite. Someone put a lot of work into choreographing the fireworks and matching them with the music.
Unless, of course, I made those matches in my head when I was watching. A lot of the meaning of music and movies is in the head of the viewer. Obviously some of this transmits successfully from the creator (ie I get the connection between the space movies and the fireworks, and the witty lyric about 'falling to earth' from a song I didn't recognise) but whether s/he was matching the beats with the fireworks going off may require further investigation. Anyone know a firework person I can talk to?

In A Lonely Place

No, not the tear-swelling New Order song. This Humphrey Bogart vehicle (dir Nicholas Ray, 1950) features a nice diegetic performance by Hadda Brooks. In typical style of the era our hero / anti-hero the murder suspect screenwriter HB sits in a bar at a piano with gorgeous Gloria Graham while Hadda sings and plays 'I Hadn't Anyone Till You', lyrically relevant to this burgeoning and troublesome love affair. Apparently Bogie shouted down a movie mogul who tried to change the way she performed. Bless him.
Throughout the movie a recurrent theme in various arrangements and styles (by composer George Antheil) plays behind Bogie's action. That's Wagnerian leitmotif, that is.

Paul Blart - Mall Cop

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) dir Steve Carr, feat Kevin James as overweight, you guessed it, mall cop.

The music is a throw-away mixture of generic over-the-top Survivor / Bon Jovi / Kiss anthems that mean everything to American viewers, mall rats of a certain age. However there is one standout music cue. Beatles tribute band ELO (and I mean that in a nice way) massive smash 'Mr Blue Sky' accompanies Blart's journey on a 2-wheeled motorised scooter to his mall workplace. Skies are blue, natch, but it's the opening bars that really transport the visuals from the mundane to the ecstatic. The ultra-familiar chugging chords grabbed my short and curlies and I truly got the (intended) message that this loser work-obsessive can dream hisself into a make-believe super reality and achieve those wildest dreams. Which is, of course, what happens in the movie.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

If you're looking for creative music use in movies then dig out George Roy Hill's 1969 Western Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) from the library. Three prime music cues:

1. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (Bacharach) plays while Paul Newman rides around on a bike with menage a trois Katherine Ross on the handlebars (just find me something in those lyrics that matches that scene)

2. South American Getaway (wordless rising and falling vocals over footage of Bolivian adventures)

3. Stunning title tune which has haunted me since I first saw this movie in the 1970s sometime as a spotty urchin and reappears throughout in different styles and moods.

Go Burt, go.

Inglourious Basterds

If Tarantino's use of music in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and the 2 Kill Bills was anything go to by, his new black war comedy Inglourious Basterds was going to a musicinthemovies event. So I made the most of it and went to Leicester Square Odeon big screen in anticipation of getting my socks blown off.

In a TV interview Tarantino recently said something like (and I paraphrase here slightly), 'I was going to get a composer in for this movie but I decided not to because who wants someone putting their s**t all over your movie'.

That's one way of expressing his particular type of creative control, which is to use classic music to enhance the meaning of his movies and heighten the viewer / listener experience. Who could forget the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs without humming Dylan rip-off 'Stuck In The Middle With You'. Who rushed out and bought the Delphonics back catalogue after Jackie Brown? If you understand the music you get more out of the film.

I knew this new movie had 'old' or 'pre-existing' music rather than specially composed (which had been previously hinted at), alongside a couple of smash hits. Well, one smash hit, actually, Bowie's 'Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)'. So dig this. The movie is full of old (or pre-existing) movie soundtracks by (especially) Morricone. This is a neat swerveball by T. We get a new twist on movie scoring, he gets control over what music he uses (no pesky composers to contend with, spreading their s**t on his movie), and his music budget probably comes in under, enabling him to wack on the stupendous 'Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)' (and the word 'fire' is key here, go see the movie) and pay off Senor Bowie as handsomely as he deserves.

Unfortunately this strategy is limited in successfully communicating extra meaning to viewers unless they know the original sources of the pre-existing movie scores. A meaning that requires film-buff knowledge rather than the pop-culture knowledge required to appreciate the value of, say, Chuck Berry's 'You Never Can Tell' in the junked-up twist scene in Pulp Fiction.

In other words, if your audience is full of film-buffs they'll get the gig. Quentin's probably walking on the right street for this type of approach and knows that's who's taking notes during his films nowadays while the mainstream have probably bought 'Beatles Rock Band' with their pocket money and are not too bothered about a new Tarantino movie. In this respect, hats off to a master of the unexpected. Long may he do crazy stuff.

Music In The Movies

This blog is a notepad relating to my research into how large collections of music are organised by record companies and music publishers so film makers can easily find what they're looking for.


Using music in films, tv shows, commercials, computer games is known as synchronisation, or synchronization depending on whether you're from Covent Garden or Hollywood. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer synchronisation with an 's'. But to make it easier I'll just call it synch.


Finding music in large collections is called Music Information Retrieval. There are some very talented people working on some amazing tools to help find stuff you like. I'm hoping to help them with my research into how real professionals search for music.


Every now and then I will be writing about some great use of music in a movie etc. It may be Super Freak by Rick James in Little Miss Sunshine or Bellamy Brothers 'Let Your Love Flow' in the Barclaycard commercial. Whatever rises to the top (or sinks to the bottom) is worthy of comment.


Tonight I go see Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds'. If his music use in Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill 1 and 2 is anything to go by there's gonna be something worth listening to.