We May Be Losing The Cinema Experience But We'll Still Have The Soundtrack

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 
And the Cineworld and Regal theatres all closed for a time, and even though money was saved due to the non-purchasing of popcorn and milk duds and the over-priced tickets which the cinemas saw little return due to the greediness of the movie studios, the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, wept for the loss of entertainment they had taken for granted for so long; and the idiots exclaimed "it's okay, I've got Netflix,"; and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, for the film selection on Netflix was mediocre at best. - Book Of Revelation 6:12-13


It's a genuine concern for me when cinema suffers. I'm not the only one avoiding theatres at the moment due to Covid-19 and the industry is getting into trouble. Big titles getting delayed again & again, like Wonder Woman 1984 and No Time To Die, is a sure-fire sign that the studio bigwigs are beginning to understand where the land lies.  Closing theatres for a time seems like it might be the best course of action to take, at least from a health perspective, but I do worry that this could be the death knell for many theatre franchises, and while I do enjoy my streaming services for the TV shows they beam into my face, a quality replacement for the positive cinema experience they are most certainly not.

The cinema experience has, arguably, been on the decline for awhile now. Not the quality of the films themselves; there have been peaks & troughs in that regard since the birth of the moving picture. No, I mean the actual cinema itself. Digital screenings, which were supposed to usher in a new dawn of "perfect projection" without all the issues of film, simply made projectionists obsolete and taught a new generation of cinema staff not to give a shit that the picture was slightly out of focus, or in the wrong aspect ratio, or that the contrast was off. Digital projection took away a large part of the magic of movies: reels of film containing still photos whizzing through a magnifying glass with a very bright light shining through it at 24 frames-per-second, creating the illusion of movement. It IS magic. Or rather, it was. What we have now are glorified television screens, albeit with superior speakers.

And then there's the lack of respect from the audience itself. There's always been a faction of fuck-nuggets who don't give a damn about the rest of the audience and will happily interfere with everyone else's enjoyment (I remember a fight breaking out in the audience between two twats when a friend & I went to see Mars Attacks upon its release - yes, I had a friend) but this seems to have gotten worse over the years. Mobile phones, apathetic staff who don't want to get involved in a scene and just general dickheadishness all combine to create the perfect cinema-screening shitstorm.

And don't get me started on 3-D.

And yet, despite all that, I still go when there's a film I want to see. I'm an addict, you see. Addicted to the magic. An addict with an abusive dealer with tainted products. I know the heroin has been cut with baby laxatives, milk powder and finely ground-up school classroom chalk, but I'm gonna inject that shit into my eyeballs anyway. 
"But wait," you say out loud like a mental person, "I thought you said the magic of cinema was gone now that they've all but eliminated film projection?"
"Shut up," I retort, angry that you broke my freeform flow of consciousness. "I was getting to that."

 

Cheese: delicious but completely irrelevant to this blog.

You see, while cinema is mostly a visual medium, it also has a strong connection to the aural arts too - even silent movies had a music track being played by the local alcoholic on a church organ or piano back in the old Nickelodeons - and sound systems don't get much better than at modern moving picture houses. Anyone who went to see Blade Runner 2049 will attest to that. I'm not just talking about the crunch of crashing cars or the bangs of exploding sheep or the HONKS of Jaden Smith trying to act, but also the wonderful world of soundtracks. The soundtrack to a movie can become just as iconic as anything that actually appears on the screen, sometimes more so. Years before I'd seen Psycho I knew the string-stings that accompanied the downward stabbing motion made famous in the shower scene. I knew The Godfather theme music long before I knew about the horse's head. Who can't resist humming a couple of bars of Jerry Goldsmith's Ave Satani from The Omen when they meet an annoying child? People who've still not seen The Omen were doing that to me when I was a kid. And even though it's not a film, how many people did you hear whistling the opening music to The Twilight Zone whenever you told them you saw a UFO or the ghostly apparition of Madame Curie or that you were set upon by demonic denizens of hell? Quite a few, I bet. The soundtrack can be as indelible as the picture.

So, as the cinema could very well be dying, or at least the cinema as we know it - flawed but still better than watching Prime Video at home - I thought I would compile a digital mixtape that represented some of my favourite soundtracks: classic Lalo Schifrin, John Williams and Ennio Morricone selections sitting amongst more modern scores & songs by Queen, Moby, Richard Cheese, Tina Turner and Madness. Yeah, I like a vast spectrum of music.

You can listen to the digital mixtape FOR FREE right here on Mixcloud
Or alternatively you can stream the music into your ears by using the handy widget here:

As per some of my previous mixes, I won't go into the why's and how's and what-do-you-mean-it's-dead's in regards to the tracklist. Instead, just take the journey with us through the red curtain and into the magnificent universe of silver screen music, featuring original songs, music and tracks famous (and infamous) for their use in motion picture entertainment. But if you're wondering what a particular piece of music is from, you can find the tracklist below.

 

This 97 minute mix was compiled with great love & affection by - and for - the refined connoisseur of movies and the harmonised soundtracks that accompany them... and also people who like to drink heavily. Me, basically. I am a refined connoisseur of movies and I also drink heavily. Well, why wouldn't I? IT'S 2020 AND THE CINEMAS ARE CLOSING.

 

WSTS PICAROON PLATTERS GOES TO THE MOVIES!

by

WSTS Picaroon Platters Radio

(compiled and mixed by Mark Anthony Finch)

 

 

The tracklist:

 

Tommy Lee Jones & Tess Harper - Dreams (from No Country For Old Men)

Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch - Tears In The Rain (from Blade Runner 2049)

Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Kaneda (from Akira)

Lalo Schifrin - Main Title (from Bullitt)

Goblin - Death Dies (from Deep Red)

B.J. Arnau / George Martin - Fillet Of Soul - New Orleans / Live And Let Die / Fillet Of Soul - Harlem (from Live And Let Die)

Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine - Down With The Sickness (used in Dawn Of The Dead [2004])

Moby - Extreme Ways [Original Version] (used in The Bourne Identity & The Bourne Supremacy)

Max Richter - On The Nature Of Daylight (used in many different films, including Shutter Island, Arrival and Stranger Than Fiction)

Queen - In The Space Capsule (The Love Theme) (from Flash Gordon [1980])

Ian Hunter - Good Man In A Bad Time (from Fright Night [1985])

Bruno Nicolai - Sabba (from All The Colours Of The Dark)

Laibach - The Miracle In The White House (from Iron Sky)

Angelo Badalamenti - The Pink Room (from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me)

Elliot Goldenthal & Kronos Quartet - Heat [Edit] (from Heat)

John Williams - The Map Room: Dawn (from Raiders Of The Lost Ark)

Joe Renzetti - Lookin' For Hookers (from Frankenhooker)

Tina Turner - We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) [Extended Version] (from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome)

John Harrison & Modern Man - The Dead Walk (from Day Of The Dead [1985])

The Statler Brothers - Flowers On The Wall (used in Pulp Fiction)

Madness - It Must Be Love (used in The Tall Guy)

Queen - In The Death Cell (Love Theme Reprise) (from Flash Gordon [1980])

Martin Goldray - Floe (from The Church)

Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Requiem [Edit] (from Akira)

Tim Curry - I'm Going Home (from The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Ennio Morricone - Lolita (from Lolita [1998])

Vangelis - Tears In Rain (from Blade Runner)

Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Requiem [Reprise] (from Akira)

WHY NOT CHECK OUT OUR RELEASES - FILM SOUNDTRACKS AND OTHERWISE - IN THE SHIP TO SHORE PHONOCO. STORE?