Movies that show off your home theater must have incredible
pictures and sound tracks. Therefore, modern musicals are the first to
come to mind:
1 - My first nominee: Chicago. Bob Fosse’s Broadway titillating hit
about love, betrayal and exploitation (theirs and ours) is brought to 2002
celluloid with surprisingly good song and dance performances by Catherine
Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah and Richard Gere.
Stylish set with interesting plot and delightful sound keep this moving and
entertaining. Bound to be an enduring classic. His All That Jazz is wonderful also.
2 - Then Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGrehor in Moulin Rouge. A cacophony of sound and sight.
3 - John Cameron built a special limitless horizon studio
and combined Robert Ballard’s actual deep sea submersible footage for Titanic. Then it won the Academy Award
for sound in 1997.
4 – Jamie Foxx in Ray
(Charles, 2004). Great acting. Great music.
5 - Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Oddessy. Now we all know Antonio Lucio Vivaldi.
6 – And of course, George Lucas’ Star Wars. “John Williams' scores for the double trilogy count
among the most widely-known and popular contributions to modern film music.”
7 – Then of course, movies with some of the deepest, baddest
bass: depth charges dropped on the otherwise horrible Matthew McConaughey and
the always great Harvey Keitel in U-571.
8 - Steven Speilberg’s Saving
Private Ryan, puts you in each scene as the first major motion picture
using hand held video with bullets whipping from front to side.
9 – The use of spot color in Speilberg’s powerful Schindler’s List, with Liam Neesom.
10 – I personally like Master
and Commander: The Far Side of the World and
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, both of which were nominated in 2003. And
Russell Crowe again, in Gladiator. Yet,
I end this list with the amazingly 5-Hz footsteps and close-up dinosaur breath
of Jurassic Park.
Does Spielberg know how to combine tales of peril with music
or what? These are all awesome movies, worth of watching again and again. The
music makes them classics. The screens are alive with the sound of music!
6/17/2009