Well, to make up for its lateness, I figured I would post two albums; from two of my favorite P.T. Andreson’s movies. I re-watched Boogie Nights last week and finally saw There Will Be Blood just the other day. Tremediously well-written, well-acted and well-directed, the music of both only further help these great movies.
These are two very different soundtracks. Boogie Nights is a great compilation of classic tracks from the 70’s and 80’s. Usually I find, the worse the movie the better the soundtrack, but in this case, the movie and the soundtrack go perfectly hand-in-hand and are both incredible. Somehow the music manages to unify with the film. Listening to certain songs, you can almost here the dialog in which the song was played. Most memorable for me (as it probably is for a few people) is Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” from the dealer’s house.
There Will Be Blood, on the other hand, is an original score, composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Subtle when it needs to be and overpowering when it needs to be, Greenwood is a genius at emphasizing the tones and colors of this film. I really would like to now see Bodysong, a documentary he also composed for.
Rating: 8.1
Piano, percussion, and Greenwood’s beloved Ondes-Martenot all feature, but it’s the strings that take center stage here. While Greenwood has always been vocal about the originators and inspirations behind a lot of his techniques (Penderecki, Gorecki, and Messiaen come up often), There Will Be Blood’s string arrangements nonetheless sound vanguard and exploratory in the context of Hollywood film scores. From the goosebump-inducing glissandos on opener “Wide Open Spaces” to the spiralling staccatos on “Future Markets” to the creeping dissonance in “Henry Plainview” (there’s that “wrong” sound again), Greenwood’s alien, experimental sensibilities lurk around each corner.
Quoted from Pitchfork