Tag Archives: Twister

In Memoriam: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Posted on by
8

When a well-known actor dies, our minds tend to immediately jump to one particular film from their career.  Sometimes it’s their most lauded and famous role, like when my mind immediately jumped to Lawrence of Arabia when I heard that Peter O’Toole had died.  Other times the mind leaps to something more personal.  When I heard that Philip Seymour Hoffman had died yesterday at the age of 46, from an apparent drug overdose, my mind instantly went to Twister.  It’s not a role that won him any awards or critical acclaim, nor is it a film that’s particularly well thought of, despite its frequent showings on cable.  However, it is one of my favorite films (for many reasons, which I won’t go into here), and it will always be the film I associate with him.

Other pieces will focus on his Academy Award-winning role as Truman Capote in Capote, and rightly so.  Continue reading →

Why is it so hard to make a good soundtrack album?

Posted on by
3

The third CD that I ever bought was a film soundtrack (the first two were Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” and Garth Brooks’ “Greatest Hits”).  It was the soundtrack to Independence Day, and I actually bought it in the hopes of it having R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” which for some reason I really wanted on CD.  I was disappointed when the song was missing from the soundtrack album, but after listening to the CD I realized how much I enjoyed the score, composed by David Arnold.  Thus began my obsession with film scores, and my collection of albums showcasing them.

I’ve been listening to the Jurassic Park soundtrack for the past week or so on my commute to work, and I’ve realized that there are several very big problems with the film score album as a whole in the industry.  I don’t know why it’s so damn hard to put together a decent album from a film score, but I’ve come up with a list of several of the problems: Continue reading →