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 — so it’s not surprising that one of the most important aspects of a film’s production is what songs are used and how they are grafted onto the visual product. Motion Picture Soundtrack is a new feature in which I will do some research on the songs that are used in some of my favorite scenes in my favorite movies, and why they happen to work so well (as well as some instances where the scenes fail). In order to discuss things properly, I’ll have to operate under the assumption that you’ve seen the film before. It’s not exactly my mission to dump a bunch of spoilers into these posts, but I’m not going to avoid them, either. (more…)