United 93

This film is so real it is actually scary. It's got quite a slow start, but when you see the end you will completely forget about the beginning. The beginning is necessary to introduce the characters and situation and for you to build an emotional connection with what's going on. I cried for the last 10 minutes of the film and for like 20 minutes after it had finished. Not because it's sad, but because it's horrific. You feel like you are on the plane, which insights fear into you. But it's not the type of fear that comes with horror films. This is genuine fear, the type I imagine you would feel when you're life is about to be taken from you. This is the most real film I have ever seen and it has left the greatest impact on me. It's almost traumatic, which is why you must watch it. Because you have to witness what these passengers did. That they fought back against the 9/11 hijackers. The passengers of the plane are some of the most heroic people I know of. Rest In Peace.

Caprica [Pilot] (Soundtrack)

Something I find with all Bear McCreary soundtracks is that they're growers. On first listen they're great, but on repeat listening's they just get better and better.

This soundtrack contains the score for the pilot episode of Caprica which since the pilot has been made has picked up for a full season. However, I think the pilot has only just aired in the US, and will be followed by the rest of the season, so hopefully we'll get another soundtrack release for season 1 of Caprica, as the pilot soundtrack is very good.

It is different to Bear's score to Battlestar Galactica, but apparently the shows are very different so it makes sense to change the music. The music to Caprica is much more orchestral and pretty sure it doesn't contain that many enthic instruments. There are still a few percussion heavy tracks, which made for a welcome change among the orchestral tracks, and certainly remind one of the music for Battlestar Galactica.

With new characters there are plenty of new themes throughout. If I recall correctly there are two main themes, one for each family and then lots of other less dominant themes. And if you listen closely to one of the tracks you can hear a little tribute to one of the themes in Battlestar Galactica, something I thought was very clever.

If you've seen the pilot then you might find this interesting: Bear McCreary's Blog. He goes through the episode and details all the themes and much more. Although having not seen the episode I've only browsed through it.

If you've like any of Bear's other soundtracks, particularly Battlestar Galactica, then you simply must buy this one. And if you're a fan of the older generation of film music then I'd recommend it too. Although that's not to discourage those that are fans of more modern film music, as this blends the old style beautifully and makes it more modern.

And on a quick side note I'm going to be going back to just my Saturdays posts for a while, as I've a pretty hectic schedule at the moment.

Nine

I was expecting to love this film, or if not love the whole film at least love parts of it. Well I guess there were parts that I loved, but whilst with Chicago and Moulin Rouge I would watch the whole film just for The Cell Block Tango and Le Tango De Roxanne, I would definitely not watch Nine again for any part of it.

I just found it very boring. It was an interesting comment on the film industry if that's what your into, but I'm really not. I found even the dances weren't that great, because there weren't really any.

It's a very well made film, but I just found the story very boring. Some of the songs are okay, but only one of them really did it for me, the rest were average.

If you like the original Broadway musical then I'm sure you'll love the story and therefore love the film, but personally I'd recommend the soundtrack more than the film.

Avatar (Soundtrack)

I'm not the biggest James Horner fan, but I am a fan of the songs he composes (or are at least composed using his themes). Titanic, The Mask Of Zorro and Troy all have great songs at the end of them. "I See You" is the newest song from Avatar. Whilst on first listen I wasn't that impressed, on second listen I was, and now I love it.

I don't watch The X Factor because I don't like it, but Leona Lewis who was discovered via the show sure can sing. Whilst I don't like the songs she usually sings I definitely do like this one, and respect that she is a great singer. I would say this song is just as good as James Horner's other songs.

As for the rest of the score, I love it. I didn't listen to it until after I'd seen the film. (Even though I'd bought it before!) With the other scores of Horner's that I own there's usually a few tracks I like and particularly bits of tracks I love. The rest just seems like filler music.

Avatar is definitely not filler music. Every note is amazing, and there is not a single moment on the soundtrack that I dislike. Out of 14 tracks I found 12 of them to be outstanding. The other 2 were still very good, but didn't quite do it for me like the other tracks did.

It reminds me of Horner's Apocalypto score in regards to the tribal sound, but only much, much, much better.

The Avatar score is very much a James Horner one, as it is riddled with his little signature sounds, but it is also what I think is his best score. I would even say it is one of my favourite soundtracks of 2009 and possibly just in general.

Simply a must buy.

Avatar

I'm lost for words with this film, so I'm simply going to tell you about my experience when watching it.

I'd not been to an IMAX theatre before so it was a very exciting experience for me, I got some great seats which I'd booked a couple of months in advance and had to travel to London in order to see it on the biggest screen in the UK. I spent in total about £60 to go and see this film and it was worth every penny.

We watched the trailer for Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland before, which was also in 3D and I thought, "Wow! This is amazing, the screen is so massive. " But it wasn't really any different to any other 3D film I'd seen. And then Avatar started.

As soon as the film started I just started crying, and must have continued to cry for about 30 minutes. They were tears of complete happiness at the beauty of the film and how real it was.

I've seen 3D films before, but they never really looked 3D. The animated ones didn't really need to be in 3D because they practically looked and felt the same, and some of them I would have preferred to have watched in 2D. And the live action films just looked as though there were some actors stood in front of a green screen and on the green screen was the rest of the film. It didn't look like it flowed in terms of depth, more like it had layers.

Avatar flowed beautifully. I felt as though I could just put my arm inside the film, or that I could actually step inside it. In some way Avatar looked more 3D than real life, due I think simply to differences in the way our eyes work and the camera works.

After I stopped crying and noticing the 3D, I just sunk right into it. Pretty much everyone seems to think that when I say Avatar was amazing then I just talk about the 3D and the CGI, but I'm not. They are simply tools of the film maker to make the story more real. I loved the story. I thought it was like Pocahuntas meets The Matrix, and whilst it might not have been that original in terms of the story being told before, it was certainly original in the way it was told.

Now a days it's pretty impossible to come up with a brand new story, because they've all been told in some way or another. The last few months I've been falling more and more out of love with films. I used to love them, but then I realised that in 2009 I'd not really seen a film that I loved in every way. I'd seen good films, don't get me wrong, Harry Brown is an amazing film, but it's not the kind of film that made me think this is the film I've been waiting for, and to be honest it's been like this for me for the last few years. I was really looking forward to The Dark Knight last year, and then it came out and I thought, there were definitely amazing bits in it, but it also had quite boring parts, and what I thought was out of place comedy, and not the kind you laugh out loud to.

Avatar has reignited that love of film for me. When the Na'Vi faced genocide in the film and Jake (Sam Worthington) flew in to rescue them and stand with them, making his big speech, I was just filled with emotion. As soon as he flew in I started crying and as he walked up to make his speech I got this feeling inside that I've only ever felt once, and that was when I saw my grandfathers dead body lying in his coffin when I was about 14 or 15. I just felt completely overwhelmed and hollow. It doesn't sound like a particularly nice feeling and it wasn't. But that fact that a film could make me feel like this just astounded me. The feeling stayed there until Jake began his speech and then the feeling slowly turned to hope and I literally felt like the Na'Vi. As though I was fighting for my survival, and for the survival of my people.

The only film that has come close to this amount of emotion for me was United 93. The last 5 minutes of the film are so emotional and horrific that I was balling my eyes out, less with sadness and more with fear. It was after the film that I felt sad, and cried for what must have been 30 minutes after the film had finished.

But Avatar was so much more intense, I almost film like I couldn't handle it. And if I was the only one in the cinema then I probably wouldn't have been able to, and would have let myself go to my limit.

So you can see how this film is so much more than just a film to me. The reason I was taken to this emotional place was because I felt like part of the story. The music encouraged me to feel this way as well, and I get chills just from listening to the Avatar soundtrack. But whilst music might provide a lot of the emotion in films, I felt that with this film what pushed the emotion even further was the 3D and the CGI.

With all the great films I don't feel like I'm watching a film, I feel part of it. However, I still always know in the back of my mind that I'm watching a film. With Avatar I wasn't watching a film, and after the film finished I had to remind me that it was a film that I just watched and that it wasn't real, because throughout the film my mind was telling me that it was real and that I was witnessing real life. I left my body in the cinema and went to Pandora. For me the events in Avatar were real, and I was there to witness them.

Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (Soundtrack)

Another great soundtrack from John Powell. Whilst I prefer his score for Ice Age 2: The Meltdown this one is still just as good.

My only major problem is that the music has been split up into too many tracks. 32 of the 44 tracks are under 2 minutes, 22 are under 1 and a half minutes, 17 are under a minute, and 8 of them are under 30 seconds in length. It works fine if your listening to the soundtrack in order, but if you put it on shuffle then a lot of the tracks continue into the next track, and the one after forming one long cue that's been chopped and sliced up. This is quite noticeable on shuffle.

Other than that it's great. The old themes are back and the new themes are in. I'm less keen on the new themes then the old ones which is why I prefer Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, but if you're a John Powell fan then it's definitely worth a listen. His arrangements of "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" by Lou Rawls are just fantastic. It's worth getting it just for them.

The Box

The concept of this film is quite strange. A couple are given a box with a red button in it. If they push the red button then they will get a million dollars, however, someone in the world that they don't know will die.

I wondered whether or not the film would say the reason behind the box, and thankfully it did. However, the film got very, very strange. It reminded me of the film Knowing and to be honest because I'd seen it I was able to partly guess the reason behind the box about half way through. But it just went even stranger as it progressed.

When I say it went strange, I don't mean that it got majorly confusing (although it did a little), I just mean that it got quite freaky, and a little scary.

The film definitely has its bad moments though, as the beginning starts out a bit rubbish, but it progresses to become quite good, and really kind of enters the horror genre, but without the moments that make you jump, and without the gore. Because of this, as horror movies go I thought it was really good. It got more real as it went on and it wasn't just a quick scare and then move on, it held that fear and as the film went on, the fear just got more intense.

If you like horrors then I would give this a try. If you don't then give it a miss, because its quite freaky.