Éowyn’s Dream “Éowyn’s Dream” is a short cue from Howard Shore’s Return of the King score. The scene only appears in the extended edition, so it’s a bit of a deep cut. The scene is quiet and intimate. Late at night in the Golden Hall, […]

Porch I love this piece at the end of Infinity War, as Thanos limps out to his porch. I only mildly get into the Avengers movies. I’ve seen most of them, and my favorites are probably the first Iron Man and Thor: Ragnarok. However, Infinity […]

Beautiful Lie If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the director’s cut of Batman v Superman on HBO Max. It adds a full 30 minutes to the film, and that extra time develops the characters and storyline so much better. It’s essentially the “Snyder […]

Day One The inception of Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score is very similar to Gustavo Santaolalla’s Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. With the latter, Ang Lee sent a script to Santaolalla, who wrote and recorded the entire score before a single frame was shot. Lee’s genius was deciding […]

The Dark Knight Rises My hometown of Pittsburgh was the shooting location for The Dark Knight Rises. Plenty of movies, TV, and Netflix shows get made here, but the 2011 Dark Knight Rises production was BY FAR the coolest one. Our downtown is mostly high-rise […]

Cornfield Chase I’ve always wanted to double back to the crux of the Interstellar theme, which is really the motif titled “Cornfield Chase.” This was a high-water mark for composer Hans Zimmer. His genius is in not being outsmarted by his own technical skill — […]

The Odyssey Theme At this point, I can definitely hear (composer) Ludwig Göransson’s aesthetic when he’s scoring a Christopher Nolan film. There’s a linear nature to the music… a veneer as familiar as Nolan’s blueish hues and title font. Although completely different, The Odyssey and […]

Gonna Fly Now I was in 3rd grade (8 turning 9) during the ’85-’86 school year — and my childhood was an amazingly patriotic time to be alive. The Cold War was hanging over the culture and this was punctuated by several USA vs. the […]

Love is in the Air, Pt.1 I love this piece from the film Obsession; a movie made on a shoestring budget ($750,000) and grossing nearly 200 million globally. I don’t expect Hollywood to draw any correct conclusions from this, but it would seem original storytelling […]

A Real Hero Drive (2011) was a great movie — artful in the way it introduced an 80s aesthetic while still being set in the present day. The soundtrack was excellent, punctuated with synthwave (or retrowave) producers like College, Kavinsky, and Desire. Music built around […]

Left Behind (The Journey) I’ve always loved this piece, originally titled “Left Behind (Together)” from The Last of Us Vol. 2 — which is actually the soundtrack for the Left Behind DLC  (the first game’s expansion). I’m not a gamer, and in case you’re not […]

What Do You Know? I’ve seen Alex Garland’s Annihilation a few times now. If you haven’t watched it, it’s a beautiful, unsettling science fiction trip. Starring Natalie Portman and directed by Garland (Ex Machina), the film follows a biologist into “The Shimmer”—a mysterious zone where […]