sundance music

Sundance music

Over the past few days, I've taxed my brain cells with an onslaught of

movies on TV and DVD and in theaters. I'll single out Little Miss

Sunshine, Juno and Dan in Real Life not because they're my favorites

but because they're thematically and aesthetically similar (even if

Juno thinks of itself as a little hipper--it's not really), and

because their soundtracks are pretty much interchangeable. Those

scores say as much as the films themselves about a certain type of

Hollywood aesthetics circa now. All three movies attempt to evoke a

certain type of quirkiness (one that glorifies a palatable idea of

individualism without actually offering any serious critique of the

American social order), and in all three the music is a very specific

type of indie rock/pop that translates that quirkiness into naivet�--a

word meant as a compliment for many, but not necessarily a good thing

in my mind.

This is most flagrant in Juno, which prominently features several

songs by Kimya Dawson and in which a Moldy Peaches tune plays a rather

big part. When you know that Jason Bateman plays an artiste manqu�

whose old band once opened for Melvins and who now writes music for

commercials, you know you're in for indie-rock references as shortcuts

for actual character development.

DeVotchKa did the music for Little Miss Sunshine and Dan in Real Life

sports an extensive score plus a few songs by Sondre Lerche. In both,

another type of indie sound is called up to help out potential

deficiencies in screenwriting--this time, bouncy horns and jaunty

melodies suggest that we are not in James Newton Howard or Hans Zimmer

territory. Every time something meant to be unconventional, fanciful

or touching happens, we get a bleating trumpet or a serious tuba

instead of the 1,001 strings of the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra.

That'll stick it to the man!

As an alternative to all these tubas, here's the nouveau-retro

collaboration between Nouvelle Vague and director-screenwriter-actor

Julie Delpy that plays over the end credits of Delpy's 2 Days in Paris

(a movie with a successful first half about French-American cultural

differences and a frustrating ending about Delpy and Adam Goldberg's

couple trouble).

Nouvelle Vague featuring Julie Delpy "LaLaLa" (from 2 Days in Paris

soundtrack, 2007)