Film scores are just laugh tracks for people who went to college

I think it often sucks where there’s a score that is just a bunch of instruments playing the emotions that you’re supposed to feel at the moment, but it’s often awesome when great songs are used like in Harold and Maude or Tarantino movies or Stanley Kubrick. Hell, a blank screen and just music can be great. But, soundtracks are often awful and/or distracting and/or pointless filler. But then most movies are awful pointless filler all the way through.

3 Likes

Heh, I started reading this thread and was going to bring up Dogme 95.

Film scores have value precisely because they are a tool for manipulating the audience. Music can be used by the director to draw your attention to things they want you to consider. Even before movies, composers were tasked with writing incidental music to accompany plays.

Adding a laugh track to The Office doesn’t tell us anything about the value of laugh tracks. It was written and performed without the timing and spaces for laughs to fill. Try watching some comedians perform stand-up in quarantine. It just doesn’t feel as good as with a live audience. Some comedy is that way.

Overall, it feels like you just want people to be smarter than they actually are, when they are not.

5 Likes

Thermonuclear hot take: For a Few Dollars More is a better movie than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Largely because Eli Wallach was a better actor than Clint or Lee van Cleef.

2 Likes

Yep that is a scorching take.

Was going to post 2001 if no one else had.

1 Like

Anyone who says A Few Dollars More is better than The Good, The Bad and The Ugly understands nothing about Tuco, nothing.

1 Like

Eli Wallach as a villain is so much better in For a Few Dollars More. He’s just a clown in TGtB&tU.

That’s not Eli Wallach. You really do understand nothing about Tuco.

1 Like

I don’t know if Star Wars or Indiana Jones is kitschy or watev but what ggoreo posted definitely is not.

Also, when it comes to a lot of things vis a vis art: the scene that comes to my mind is the one in Mr Holland’s Opus where he’s comparing sophisticated classical against Hang On Sloopy - you can dig them both. Ebert was similarly able to appreciate low and middlebrow stuff for what it is. (Did the film succeed at what it was trying to do?) Life is a wide-ranging rainbow, being smart is great but you can enjoy the simple.

(I tried to find the scene but gave up, I only saw the movie once and was when it first came out so I apologize for any mischaracterization.)

I don’t remember the trilogy in detail, even tho I saw them all.

I just like Trolly having a BOLD TAKE.

1 Like

I don’t feel like Seinfeld having a track of audience reaction (not a true false laugh-track iirc) was a net negative at all.

I was just telling Iris today how I don’t laugh at much (she knows) but the the two movies I laughed at the most was Something About Mary with friends and a full audience, along with The Nutty Professor with the same dynamic. Laughter is infectious. (Note: I was a kid and don’t know if it would have the same effect now, but obv that’s what makes comedy clubs work.)

1 Like

Do all guys pretending to be Mexican look alike to you or something?

Like I said, BOLD TAKE.

1 Like

Buncha fake Cubans in Scarface too if that’s his bag.

You have cut me to the quick here, but I’m standing by my take: Few Dollars More is so much better. Gian Maria Volonté dominates every scene, even when he’s up against Clint and Lee van Cleef. No one remembers him (not even me!), but he’s the best part of the trilogy.

I’m just sitting back enjoying a walrus champ named Cassette arguing to remove music from films.

While we are at it, let’s take music out of songs. We don’t need that keyboard telling us how to feel, man.

5 Likes

Nah, the problem with modern music is that they have words spoon-feeding you how to feel. Music should just be music, not with some doggerel latched onto it.

1 Like

What’s wrong with art telling you how to feel?

The erudite is there, but nothing but? With this world? Really?

Do we really want every layman trying to fill in the gaps?