Welcome, fans of the Vampire Diaries!Á‚ In episode 3, the closing moments of the show featured a cover of the classic New Order songÁ‚ “Temptation,” as envisioned by Moby and…
Motion Picture Soundtrack
19 Articles
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Yeah, we just visited the Ferris Bueller soundtrack in one of Kelly Stitzel’s excellent Soundtrack Saturday posts — but one good turn deserves another, and Zack Dennis returns to the musical themes of the noted ’80s rapscallion with his latest edition of Motion Picture Soundtrack.
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
When it was released in 1988, Die Hard set a new standard for action movies. For a decade afterward, pretty much every single action movie was unable to avoid a…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Recently I’ve been gnawing away at Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited, a series of ruminations on the state of modern society (modern as in 1958, the year the book…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
This past weekend I was the best man at my friend Rodger’s wedding. I spent a long time working on my toast, which went well, but there was something I…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
A number of months ago, Darren Robbins posted a column discussing how brazen arrogance seemed to be the most valuable asset in a playboyÁ¢€â„¢s pickup arsenal. If this is true,…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
I tend to make a lot of allowances for films that translate classic literature into high school settings. If nothing else, I respect the ambition of such an endeavor. And…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Nobody, and I mean nobody, has demonstrated an ability to manipulate popular culture better than Quentin Tarantino. The pop-culture reference is a staple of modern entertainment. Television shows like The…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Like practically all Americans with (meager) holdings on the New York Stock Exchange, I watched in dismay as my stocks plummeted on Friday. Oil prices spiked, which caused the Dow…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
In Hollywood movies, surfing is basically dealt with in one of two ways. It can serve as the foundation for the film, as in movies like Blue Crush (2002) and…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
There was an episode of televisionÁ¢€â„¢s Friday Night Lights when a new character plays in his first game and forces a game-changing fumble. The lead-up sequence is unabashedly manipulative, as…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
My ten-year college reunion is this weekend, and while fraternities didn’t exist at Harvey Mudd College, I did spend two years living in our campus’ closest approximation. North Dorm was…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Teen angst is one of the most tempting lodes for an ore-seeking filmmaker to mine. ItÁ¢€â„¢s something of a shared experience; the instinct to rebel against authority in any form…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
The last time I took ecstasy was at a trance party near the beach just north of Durban, shortly after IÁ¢€â„¢d finished reading Matt RuffÁ¢€â„¢s brilliant fantasy novel “Fool on…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
In my post about The Rules of Attraction a few weeks back, commenter Idp presented the idea that many of the heroes in action movies fall into a subclass of…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
There’s a certain art to crafting a great movie trailer that is sort of a scale model of the art of crafting the advertised movie itself. Often a trailer contains…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
Sometimes, when you’re choosing the soundtrack for an adapted screenplay, the source material hands your songs right to you (such as in the novels High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, and…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
The first time I ever visited Sherman Oaks and saw the childhood home of my old roommate Miles (this was back when we lived in San Diego, before he got…
Zack Dennis
1 Min Read
To begin: Music has been a essential part of movies since the very first images were committed to celluloid — in fact, motion picture scores existed before spoken dialogue did…
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