IT'S TIME TO STRIKE UP THE BAND!

The FILMMUSIC BLOG-A-THON (the first one ever hosted by Windmills of My Mind) wasn't officially supposed to commence until tomorrow. However, since I am already receiving contributions from bloggers (and because I've been looking forward to this for a long time), I figured I'd go ahead and start the show a day early. This post will serve more or less as the "headquarters" for the blog-a-thon. If you wish to participate just send me an e-mail (damianarlyn@hotmail.com) or respond with a comment below providing a link or web address to your post. The blog-a-thon will continue through the weeekend, ending on June 25th, so you have plenty of time to think of something to write about if you haven't already. I'll keep updating the list of links here as they come in (and maybe even chime in with a few thoughts of my own).

NOTE: Just to give the "competition" equal exposure, William Speruzzi over at This Savage Art is holding an Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon this week as well. Hopefully, since both blog-a-thons take place over a period of several days, people won't have to choose between the two because that would be a shame. I know that if it weren't for my own blog-a-thon I'd be contributing an essay to William's project myself (as I can think of a few films that reach for greatness but don't quite achieve it).


FILMMUSIC POSTS HERE AT WINDMILLS:

-In the official Announcement I lay out my plans and hopes for the blog-a-thon.

-The New Sound of Windmills describes the first six songs I've added to the new "jukebox" widget here on my blog and in "Put Another Dime in the Jukebox, Baby!" I add six more.

-There are also a few "personal musical journeys" with film composers that I think are significant (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Danny Elfman).


FILMMUSIC POSTS ELSEWHERE:

-Ray DeRousse of The rec discusses the use and misuse of John Williams' music for the Star Wars series, complete with youtube clips, in Sounds of a Collapsing Empire.

-In Music Makes Pictures, Piper of Lazy Eye Theatre highlights several songs that he loves from the soundtracks of various films.

-Filmscreed's Jeff Duncanson posts the first of what he promises will be many "Filmmusic Hall of Fame" clips (this particular one focusing on a lovely piece from Days of Heaven).

-Joe Valdez reviews the musically-themed film The Commitments over at his blog This Distracted Globe.

-The Shamus over at Bad for the Glass laments the current quality of filmmusic and lists several contemporary scores that he finds stand well above the rest in Modern Film Music: An Oxymoron?

-Over at Joe's Movie Corner, J.D. praises the beauty and perfection of the soundtrack to Pokemon: the movie 2000.

-Jeremy Richey of Moon in the Gutter selects a rather unlikely, but no less deserving, candidate to honor in his piece on Francis Lai's beautiful score for Emmanuel 2.

-Some people have monsters under their bed, while J.J. of As Little as Possible reveals that he has them in his head; check out his tribute to the scores for Monster and Monster's Ball.

-Filmmusic-lover Kimberly Lindberghs of Cinebeats: Confessions of a Cinephile beautifully expresses her regard for George Delerue's score in Godard's Contempt.

-A newcomer to the blog-a-thon phenomenon, Tom Dwayne of the (almost) daily appreciator gives his personal filmmusic "testimony" in Everything I Know About Music I Learned Watching Beavis and Butthead.

-The always intelligent and stimulating Ted Pigeon of the Cinematic Art examines the relationship between images and sound/music in Revisioning the Film Score.

-Jeff Duncancon at Filmscreed continues his "Filmmusic Hall of Fame" feature with entries from Alexander Nevsky, Mean Streets, (one of my personal favorites) Raging Bull, The Last Emperor and Aguirre: the Wrath of God.

-Peter Nellhaus of the aptly named Coffe, Coffee... and More Coffee writes about the great David Raksin's idiosyncratic score for Invitation to a Gunfighter.

-Filmsquish, my favorite eccentric film blogger (and I use that descriptor with the utmost affection, Squish), lists some truly memorable movie themes in his contribution to the Filmmusic Blog-a-thon.

-Nate Rogers at Zoom In reflects on how the absence of filmmusic can be just as effective as its presence in his meditation on unscored films Filmmusic or the Lack Thereof.

-Complete with screengrabs, and even a youtube clip, Moviezzz praises the soundtrack for Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World.

-Fellow soundtrack collector Tor Y. Harbin (a.k.a. Mr. Cellophane) writes of his favorite movie themes in a post that could easily have been written by me: Filmmusic... How Do I Love Thee?

-At Ogg's Movie Thoughts, Oggs Cruz composes a wonderful tribute to "the most underappreciated musician in the Phillipines," the late Yoyoy Villame, in Babae sa Breakwater.

-Just in time for the AFI's latest list, Bemis of Cinevistaramascope impressively highlights the top 100 Pop Songs in Movies.

-Proving that not enough acclaim can be heaped on Delerues' music in Contempt, Joseph B. of It's a Mad, Mad Blog 2 chimes in with Music Makes the World Go Round.

-Remember that moment in Say Anything when John Cusack held the boombox over his head? Of course you do. So does Mostly Movies' Simon Crowe (no relation to Cameron I'm guessing), as he relays in Gesture confused with meaning - Mumblecore, Say Anything, and the boombox

-Writing about the soundtrack for a different Cameron Crowe movie, Bob Turnbull of Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind expresses his affection (with the help of a few clips) for the music of Almost Famous.

-Peet Gelderblom of Lost in Negative Space writes what I think is the definitive defense of "Mickey Mousing" (with sound clips no less to help illustrate his point).

-My good friend Tucker (a.k.a. Cineboy) of Pilgrimakimbo proposes an intriguing analogy regarding filmmusic in his thought-provoking Filmmusic and Architecture (metaphorically)

-DVD Panache's Adam Ross reminisces about the lost art of the overture in movies and reminds us all of a familiar, and quite catchy, cable TV overture that used to precede features in HBOverture

-Everyone's favorite teenage British female filmblogger Emma (of All About My Movies) lists her top 20 favourite pieces of filmmusic ever, including mentioning a few of my favorites through the process.

-Dodo Dayo of the alliteratively-named Piling Piling Pekula blog writes in Superbad Hot Wax about the music featured in blaxpoitation cinema

-A proud admirer of synthesised filmmusic, Glenn Dunks (a.k.a. Kamikaze Camel) of Stale Popcorn expresses his affection for two Angelo Badalamenti scores (including clips from two lynch movies) in Bringing the Syntehsised Score Into the 21stCentury

-I remember thinking at the time I saw Ravenous that it contained one of the most bizarrely eccentric and uniquely memorable scores I had ever heard in a film. Apparently Barnaby Haszard Morris of Jdanspsa Wyksui felt the same way as he writes about it in Tracks I Never Tire of #3: Boyd's Journey

-In the second part of his "Revisioning the Film Score" series, Cinematic Art's Ted Pigeon discusses specifically how music and images interrelate (and uses John William's scoring of the truck chase scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark to illustrate) in Musically Mapping Affect.

-Over at Pentimento, tmh muses over some unanswered questions about filmmusic and specific composers in Right into the Thick of Things.

-"Don't Let Burt Bacharach score Your Film!" by Bob Westal of Forward to Yesterday. The title says it all!

-Dan E. of Cinemathematics writes about one of his personal favorite film scores (Brick) in Settling the Score.

-Fellow Oregonian Evan T. Burchfield of Continuity discusses the importance of Hanns Eisler's score for Alan Resnais' brilliant The Music of Night and Fog. Evan also provides screen shots from the film and sound clips of the music to emphasize his point.

-Since you can never have too many top 100 lists, Okenheim at TheSophomoreCritic reprints the AFI's Top 100 Movie Songs list from several years back.

-A tardy entry but a great one nonetheless: Matt Zoeller Seitz of The House Next Door asks the question "What movie music won't stop playing in your head?" and provides his own answer (Bernard Hermann's Taxi Driver).


This is great, folks! Keep 'em coming!