The Gravel Road The Gravel Road is an incredible piece of music from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. The music is by the iconic composer, James Newton Howard. I remember seeing this film at a packed theater in 2004. At that point, M. Night was […]

Dreamscapes Dreamscapes is sparse fingerstyle guitar piece by multi-instrumentalist composer, Gustavo Santaolalla. This motif is from the soundtrack of Dear Child (Liebes Kind) a German thriller series on Netflix. The limited series is about a 13 year-old missing persons case being reopened when a woman […]

Saving Private Ryan Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) was the first war film that put the viewer into the battle. You felt the measure of their sacrifice. I was in my early 20’s when I saw it, and I went back to theater to […]

Forsaken The Last of Us HBO is one of the best series you’ll ever watch. It was pitch perfect. Of course, the music was integral to the games experience — so naturally Gustavo Santaolalla was brought back for the HBO series. Forsaken is minimalist piece […]

Oppenheimer Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s 12th motion picture. It’s widely considered to be his greatest achievement — with some critics calling it “the film of the century”. The film follows the life of theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer who developed the first nuclear weapon. Ludwig […]

Memoria Memoria is a pretty motif from Gustavo Santaolalla’s Narcos: Mexico soundtrack. He’s actually playing an electric guitar that’s doubled with a violin. Given that dynamic, Memoria sounded better on a nylon string, as a lone guitar performance. You might also like to play… (some […]

Wild Life When the Surf Comes Up is a motif by composer Gustavo Santaolalla. The piece is from, Wild Life, a documentary directed and produced by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo). The film follows conservationists Kris Tompkins (CEO Patagonia) and her husband […]

The Whirling Ways of Stars that Pass The Whirling Ways of Stars that Pass is from Johann Johannsson’s 2014 Golden Globe winning score for, The Theory of Everything. It’s a beautiful piece of music that turned out to be an (easy to play) guitar arrangement. […]

All Life Has Meaning Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was an excellent send off for the Guardians crew. The movie was actually pretty violent, both graphically and thematically. My son is 8 at the time of this writing, and Guardians 3 pressed his (and […]

Unchained Melody Unchained Melody is nearly 70 years old. It was initially written (by Alex North and Hy Zaret) as a theme for a prison film entitled, Unchained (1955).  The song was popularized by The Righteous Brothers a decade later in 1965. My favorite is […]

Amor y Paz On March 24th (2020), at the beginning of the pandemic, Gustavo Santaolalla posted this short piece to his Instagram and YouTube channel. So far as I can tell, he’s calling it Amor y Paz (Love & Peace). It was a musical offering […]

Resurrection The Passion of the Christ is one of the greatest films of all time. If you’re a believer, it serves as a cinematic Stations of the Cross; an experiential work of pure art. In it’s wake, all faith-based film making seems tepid by comparison. […]