Favourite Films

Album of the Year: Lonely Avenue by Nick Hornby and Ben Folds

By
09/12/10

While we are fundamentally a website for films, we at thisfilmison really just believe in good stories. Film may be our medium of choice but amongst our writers you’ll find those that champion novels, some who prefer TV and others still that like theatre. Music, however, is in all of our blood. And with that in mind we’d like to promote and pay respect to an album as cinematic as any other this year.

lonely ave

With words from our very own Nick Hornby and music from America’s Ben Folds. Here are our thoughts on Lonely Avenue. Seek it out.

A Working Day
Appropriately it’s a sound similar to that of a typewriter tapping away that kickstarts the collaboration. A song for anyone struggling with the faith to put something out there, A Working Day, jumps from self-adulation to crippling self-doubt. Any aspiring writer with a hint of self knowledge, be it fiction or journalism, should chuckle at the lyric, “Some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know. He’s got his own blog“.

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Exit Music For Films: A Guide To Radiohead On Screen

By
25/07/10

In a few months Facebook: The Movie hits cinemas. Now this sounds about as wank an idea as Robbie Williams replacing Noel in Oasis, but bear with us. Firstly it’s not called Facebook: The Movie but the much better sounding The Social Network based on the book by Ben Mezrich. Secondly it’s not about Facebook but rather the creation of Facebook and the surprisingly interesting tale of friends suing each other over who owns the rights and ultimately hating each others guts. Most noteworthy of all, it’s the new movie from David ‘Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac‘ Fincher.

It’s also being scored by Nine Inch Nail‘s Trent Reznor and the trailer (which you can click on and watch above) features a Scala reworking of ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. Instead of tiredly listing rubbish wordplay based on Facebook vernacular, i.e. Owen ‘likes’ new Fincher movie, updating status to ‘chuffing excited’ or I’d like to ‘poke’ Justin Timberlake in the eye with something sharp, instead let’s use this as an excuse to look back on Radiohead’s back catalogue, as featured on the silver screen.

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Eclipse Soundtrack

By
11/06/10

World Cup fever is upon us but there is another major event that is causing a very different demographic to salivate this month; the release of the third instalment of the Twilight saga Eclipse is upon us. The film won’t hit the cinema till the 3rd of July (the US gets it a few days earlier, 30th June) however like the merchandise juggernaut that it is the soundtrack has been released almost a month in advance. I’m a self-confessed soundtrack junkie so this is the part of the world of Twilight that I look forward to as much as the next fan girl.

eclipse-soundtrack.jpg picture by emskilou

The importance of music to the series begins first not with the films but with the books, Meyer states that she can not write without music and has compiled playlists for each novel on her website which you can peruse yourself if you really want to. The common theme amongst these is Muse and this can be seen on the soundtracks for the films, with ‘Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever) featuring on the Eclipse soundtrack. There have been mutterings online that Matt Bellamy was less than kind to the franchise, though all I found was a quote about how he doesn’t mind if it seems uncool to gain new fans due to Twilight.

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Let’s Buy Happiness Talk Film

By
03/05/10

The sales are over, the ash is abating and we no longer have to turn on the weather forecast prepared to be informed of impending icy doom. All this means one thing; we can start looking forward to the Summer!

letsbuyhappy

Topless chavs playing football in the park, offensively cheap cases of Dutch lager at major supermarkets, barbeques ruined by wasps and salmonella, British Summers have it all, but if there’s one thing we reallly do well it’s festivals. Whether it’s a murky moshpit at Download, a barrel of banality at V or fancy dressed frolic at Bestival we all have our favourites, my personal tipple being an unhealthy dose of weapons grade cider at Glastonbury.

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Britain Has Got Talent, You Just Won’t Find It On ITV

By
19/04/10

This weekend saw the airing of two light entertainment programmes with remarkable similarities and hugely contrasting opposites. Both featured musicians and singers performing other people’s work. Both had audiences showing their appreciation through the gesture of placing hands on hands. Both features men and women the British public wouldn’t recognise if they sat next to you in the pub.

nick

One was on ITV with viewing figures above the first election debate. The other aired on BBC4 and achieved viewing figures south of the number of people who are already getting fed-up with my constant election referencing. One featured ‘Talent’ in it’s title. The other featured talent on its show. The latter was Way To Blue: The Songs Of Nick Drake (still available on BBCiplayer).

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Frightened Rabbit Talk Film

By
25/03/10

Throughout the film Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the titular pairing are seeking their new favourite band ‘Where’s Fluffy?’ A band so orgasmic that they’d run all over town to hunt them down, a band that graces every compilation CD the pair ever make, a band so good that they couldn’t possibly feature in the movie itself for fear of bursting the ‘perfect band’ bubble.

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Yet if the producers ever make Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist 2: We Told You It Was Infinite, they couldn’t do any better than cast the Scottish rockers, Frightened Rabbit, in the role of ‘special ones’. For starters no other band can use the word ‘cunt’ in a song so moving it brings me to tears.

They’re also great enough to chat movies with us…

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Laura Marling And Friends

By
22/03/10

On the back of plaudits aplenty, including a nomination for last years Mercury Prize, Laura Marling is in an enviable position as the darling of the nu/pop/anti/whatever-folk scene. Supporting Neil Young and being likened to every female songwriter goddess from Joni Mitchell to Joan Baez, are accolades that most career musicians would give their eye teeth for. That this bright young thing hasn’t even reached the age of 20 yet is nothing short of remarkable.

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Using this new found notability Laura Marling chose to share with the London crowd the people and music that shaped her career so far. From the moment Ian McKellen’s dulcit tones informed the audience to switch off their phones, the congregation was settled into a very special evening indeed.

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How To Be A Role Model

By
22/03/10

A few weeks back Britain woke up briefly to notice the state of its underage offspring, scattered around like trussed up refugees from a Paul Gadd pyjama party. But after a few hours a shinier and more interesting ball of political shit slinging hoved into view and the whole issue was dropped faster than Lindsay Lohan’s knickers.

For the media to ignore this problem for whatever reason is one crime and certainly a reprehensible one but to conveniently pick it up, fondle it for a few hours to fill some 24 hour news and then repress it the next moment like o so many drunken mistakes is horribly irresponsible. And the upshot of this complete lack of moral responsibility is Lady Blah Blah’s new range of porn films for children.

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10 Bands Named After Movies

By
16/02/10

Movies and Music sitting in a tree, R-I-M-M-I-N-G…

As much as a film would seem incomplete without a decent soundtrack or score to manipulate, sorry, exacebate the emotional content of it, so the music world finds itself more and more snuggling up to the warm, comfortable bit of the film world.

noah

Be it Blur dressing up as droogs from A Clockwork Orange in their video for ‘The Universal’ or The Divine Comedy referencing “the snows of Hoth” in their wonderful ‘Happy Goth’ song, the music world has always had an affinity with it’s celluloid cousin.

Here’s 10 of the best film inspired band names…well, nearly 10.

Noah and the Whale
Huge fans of Wes Anderson and all that goes with it, the name Noah and The Whale is a combination of Anderson’s long term screenwriter partner Noah Baumbach and Noah’s directorial effort, The Squid And The Whale. With their last album, The First Days Of Spring, combined with a film of the same name and a soundtrack to The Scouting Book For Boys under their belts, the love affair between Movies and Fink and co. shows no signs of abating. Sic Transit Gloria, indeed.

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Soundtracks To Fall In And Out Of Love To

By
22/12/09

Whilst watching Bon Iver at this year Glastonbury I couldn’t help but think he’d dealt himself a pretty bum hand. When writing his tribute to his lost love he must have been thinking, ‘Hey this is pretty cathartic, getting her out of my system through songs’. Not thinking that he’d have to tour said album and be reminded of his lost love every single bloody night (see also Charlie Fink, although if I had, and then subsequently lost, Laura Marling I’d never leave the house again).

500

No, these singers have it all wrong. Instead they should have written a film about it and moved on. Like the makers of ‘(500) Days Of Summer’. Then you get to make your favourite mix-tape about it and release that. Genius! After all, no one band can articulate the feelings of being high as a kite, head-over heels in love with someone and at the same time show the crushing defeat of rejection. Except maybe The Spice Girls.

But compilation CD’s. This is how you remember someone. And with the Soundtrack to ‘(500) Days Of Summer’, the makers have created a string of songs that from this day forth will evoke recollections of the two leads, Tom and Summer. (more…)

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