Category Archives: FIlm

‘America for Me’ – Alex Ebert’s Song from the Film ‘A Most Violent Year’

Posted on by wolffkurt

No question: A Most Violent Year is a powerful film, one of the best I’ve seen in the past year. I was a fan of director J.C. Chandor’s 2011 release Margin Call, and his new film takes a vastly different but equally compelling perspective on capitalism in America.

The story focuses on the expansion plans of a heating oil executive in New York City in 1981, which sounds potentially mundane yet is anything but. Again, this is New York in the early ’80s, ages before new regimes came in to ‘clean up’ the place.

The story is strong, the mood is tense, the cinematography is stunning and the acting is stunning, notably that of the two leads, Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. Both truly disappear into the roles.

One final treat is the song that plays through the closing credits. Titled “America for Me,” it’s a sparse, loosely constructed song by Alex Ebert. Listen below.

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Pink Floyd ‘Live at Pompeii’ – Is the Director’s Cut Worth It?

Posted on by wolffkurt

Like a lot of fans, I first saw Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii in high school. I loved Pink Floyd at the time, and had really looked forward to seeing them play among ancient Roman ruins. But it was a midnight movie, and I dozed off here and there. And while the music and the setting were cool, I can’t say I fully appreciated the moods, ideas and concepts that the band or the film’s producers were going for.

Today, I came across a “director’s cut” of the Live at Pompeii. It’s a reworking of the film that was released in 2003, with additional interviews and some additional imagery of planets, sun flares and other space-themed visuals (which sounds cheesy, but in the context of the film it works).

I can’t remember exactly how this new version compares to the ‘original’ cut, but watching it now — more than 40 years after it was first released — the film turns out to be absolutely fascinating. Watch an embed below.

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‘Oxyana’ soundtrack features Jonny Fritz, John McCauley

Posted on by wolffkurt

Alt-country artist Jonny Fritz (aka Jonny Corndawg) joined up with Deer Tick’s John McCauley to create a moody soundtrack for the documentary Oxyana, which is about the oxycontin epidemic in Appalachia.

As the New Republic explains, Oxyana “seeks to capture the ravages of prescription drug addiction in Oceana, a town of 1,370 deep in impoverished coal country, not far from the Kentucky border.”

And the film’s stark point of view didn’t go over well with everyone in Oceana. Some felt the depiction didn’t show a fair and full picture of the town.

Still, as the New Republic points out, at a local town hall meeting about the film, “it was plain that local ire over the film was going to be paired with frank acknowledgment of the region’s prescription drug problem. Of all the issues that came up at that meeting, none was the subject of as much concern as drug abuse.”

Watch a trailer for Oxyana (above), or watch the whole thing on Amazon.

And the Oxyana soundtrack is haunting, too. Hear it via a Soundcloud link below.

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