Soundtrack goodness from a mountain house

I am sequestered for part of this weekend up in the lovely Northern California mountains near Sonora, so not much fanciness planned for this here bad boy. I do, however, need to announce the winner of the Marie-Antoinette soundtrack contest which ended yesterday.

It was a tough choice because all of your entries were passionate and wonderful and made me want to sit in a theater and watch films with all of you — just for the musical discussion value.

The suck-up who called me classy started things off on a nice foot, and I loved every person who mentioned Richard Linklater and Dazed & Confused (adored that film). I never knew that Linklater “created mixes for each of the characters in Dazed and Confused and sent them to the actors before production so they could get a feel for their character.”

I have not actually seen Vanilla Sky or Moonlight Mile, but now based on your descriptions I think I must. And I loved your variety of nuanced choices: Jon Brion, Ennio Morricone, Michael Mann, Peter Coquillard. All gave me something new to consider & appreciate.

The most mentioned person was Cameron Crowe, whom I wholeheartedly support: Tony K. said of Elizabethtown, “Cam painted a canvas with largely unknown acts proving how much incredible music there is out there that we are unaware of” (amen!), and another commenter noted, “I think he makes movies just so he can make a soundtrack.” Loved your waxing poetic on his movies because I absolutely feel the same way.

Quentin Tarantino (“Tarantino soundtracks have the feeling of an old mix-tape that a boy would make for a girl he was trying to get with“) and Martin Scorsese (“It’s one thing to play a catchy song over a scene or compile a hip soundtrack, but to actually take a popular song and use it to CHOREOGRAPH a scene as effectively as Marty does… well, it’s just genius“) were close runners-up in terms of frequency of mentions, which are surely warranted.

But for some reason I am going with Aikin as my winner with his interesting comment for the Trent Reznor produced Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Here was an entry out of left field that I had completely forgotten about, but remember loving for all the reasons he mentions. The songs wove a creepy and unsettling feeling with the use of pretty songs like Patsy Cline’s “Back In My Baby’s Arms” or Dylan, juxtaposed with plenty of NIN and Jane’s Addiction and even Dr. Dre.

Plus, aikin used the sentence, “There’re a lot of weenies in this fire,” when he started his discussion of this soundtrack’s greatness, which is a phrase we definitely do not use enough. So congrats to grand poobah winner Aikin for an interesting selection. I’ve emailed you to get a mailing address.

Thanks everyone for playing, and this contest was waaay too hard to judge. I could have chosen any of you as the winner. Whew.