Modern Day/Current Music for Movies Set in a Different Era (Great Gatsby-R)
JectWon
(@_@) 1,654 Posts
So, the score for The Great Gatsby will include music from Andre 3000, Jay-Z, Beyonce...etc.
Considering the fact that this is a retelling of an immortal book, I think its a pretty ballsy move...and I doubt I'll enjoy it.
When I watch movies set in a certain time, I like to get immersed as much as possible in that time...and I expect the music to be a part of that. Introducing completely foreign music that clearly didn't exist made from instruments that didn't exist kinda crushes that for me.
Anyone feel otherwise and/or have an example of a movie that pulls this off, in their opinion?
Considering the fact that this is a retelling of an immortal book, I think its a pretty ballsy move...and I doubt I'll enjoy it.
When I watch movies set in a certain time, I like to get immersed as much as possible in that time...and I expect the music to be a part of that. Introducing completely foreign music that clearly didn't exist made from instruments that didn't exist kinda crushes that for me.
Anyone feel otherwise and/or have an example of a movie that pulls this off, in their opinion?
Comments
I never liked that idea. The Score can be modern but the soundtrack, id prefer to be time specific. It really depends.
Ive seen it work but a lotta times its just some way to highlight stars and attract audiences.
Yeah, what the fuck is that...It's just my opinion and I'm a sensitive mug but I almost find it offensive to the material...In Jackie's case, I would never imagine taking that epic story off the rails with some current hip soundtrack....it stinks of "this will be another way to make even more money off this film".
Brooklyn Dodgers.
Old white guys think rap didn't really cross over until they started seeing that Jay Z character on the cover of Forbes, so clearly Jay Z is the Jackie Robinson of rap.
This is going to sound incredibly petty, but I was so irritated by that shitty, sub-sub-U2 title music for Boardwalk Empire that I bailed halfway through the first season and never went back.
Tupac was the "Django Unchained" of rap.
brian jonestown massacre - straight up and down
i never got around to watching the show, so just watched the opening credits on youtube... sounds more like a stoned version of "i'm waiting for my man" than U2 (that said, i don't have any U2 records so they may well have a whole velvet underground sounding past that i'm not aware of).
Wow, that is bad. Why not just FWD through it? That's what my B'walk crew does.
If the characters are depicted listening to post-period music in a period piece, then we have a question of whether the anachronism is intentional or accidental--and, if intentional, whether it serves the film or detracts from the film. But if only *we* the viewers are hearing non-period music, it's all part of the constructed experience that is moviegoing, with the filmmakers using any variety of technologies and techniques at their disposal toward making us see, hear, and feel new things. Perhaps we're too boxed in by what music we expect to encounter in genre films and, particularly, period pieces.
Well, I'll defer to your greater familiarity here. I had no idea who it was, but it sounded as 80s-indie-rock generic as it did anachronistic, hence the qualifier.
I know, it's inexcusable, isn't it? Especially since, in just about every other respect, it's the kind of thing that's right up my street. That music really jarred with me, though - when you're already thinking there's something wrong with a show almost before it's started, it's not an encouraging sign. People keep telling me I should give it another go, and if I do, I'll follow your advice.
I genuinely thought it was a bit of bought-in production music, perhaps from an album called "Atmospheric Modern Rock Vol. II" or something.
The one Beatnick made some nice tracks out of this album a couple of years back.
Junior knows the deal.
This whole movie drove me nuts...It was actually one of the first things that came to mind when I heard who was going to be on the Great Gatsby I got the feeling that it was over my head and I didn't care enough to figure it out.
Not sure if you are talking about a different story...but The Great Gatsby takes place in 1922 and there was plenty of great recorded music to pull from.
I guess I just don't understand why the folks who made the movie feel they need to take such bold artistic liberties with a story that doesn't need any tweaking. Sure, there is no soundtrack to the book to follow.
It's a stubborn position for me to take, but I really enjoy when a movie adaptation sticks with the culture that was available during the time of the story.
My comments were generally addressing the idea that film music needs to wedded to the era in which the film takes place; the 1860s rap reference specifically was to those who have complained about the use of modern music in Django. I'm arguing that making movies in 2013 involves hundreds of tools that were not around in most prior periods of history, digital cameras being the most obvious; maybe our insistence that films' soundtracks limit themselves to music the characters could've heard in their era is limiting, unfairly focusing on one of these modern tools when we allow so many other contemporary devices to be used to tell the story.
I'm probably not going to be a fan of the new Gatsby, so this isn't meant as a defense of that film. There was a more reverent film version of the novel in the midst of Paramount's great run in the '70s--but while it's not as flat and lifeless as its reputation, it's also not great, and mostly of interest for the amazing cast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby_(1974_film)
Well, the old west wasn't in the Pyrenees, and I'm pretty sure they didn't have twangy surf guitar back then.
Nobody complains, or probably even cares, about rackmount-preset "Celtic" pipes in fantasy adventures, but if you're talking about a movie that in all other respects presents itself as a period piece, then why not point out when the music - as evocative of period as any and every other device a film-maker's likely to call upon - is jarringly anachronistic? I don't think doing so neccesarily makes you the kind of viewer who has an, er, unrealistic notion of what "realism" means in movie terms, but I can quite easily see why it would disrupt the atmosphere of a movie for some viewers.
http://greatgatsbygame.com/
Sure, and I love many period pieces that limit themselves to music that would've been available to the film's characters, and try to immerse viewers in that specific atmosphere. But I also think there's room for a wider spectrum of what period pieces can be, particularly in reference to music, and since audiences are resistant to this I appreciate films that work toward broadening the genre. I don't like Baz Luhrmann's films and I don't think Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette was a resounding success by any means; however, I appreciate that they are trying to stake out the right to make period pieces in which the characters are realistically situated in their historical period while acknowledging that we as an audience are still situated in the present day.
My larger point being: we expect the sound/music we hear in period pieces to be only sound/music the characters could've experienced, but have no expectation that the images we see will be only images the characters could've seen (a 2013 version of The Great Gatsby will not be shot on 1920s cameras, for instance). I'd argue this has to do with the conservative manner in which most period pieces have been conceived and executed throughout film history, and audiences getting accustomed to those conservative production values, rather than any inherently "right" or "wrong" potential way in which period pieces could be made.
agreed.
also:
I watched the Carlos miniseries biopic recently and that depicts actual events across a time period from 73 to 94. Now the fashions, furnishing and everything else were appropriate to each time period, but the music mainly stayed on a early 80s New Order, A Certain Ration, Fripp & Eno tip. They could've had the music also progress through the time period, but that could be pretty corny and certainly would've detracted from the sense of cohesiveness the limited period soundtrack brought.
Francesco Rosi's "Lucky Luciano" has some funky instros.
this is on a totally different tip, but Peter Watkins makes historical films using a documentary style, as if there was a crew following the characters around - think The Office without the comedy. There are interviews, the characters constantly look at the camera, and there is doc style voice-over narration. It's obviously anachronistic, but his films are amazing.