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Only In the Movies

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Friday, November 08, 2002

"Only in the movies," people say when a film's story-line becomes unbelievable or unconvincing. But it's also "only in the movies" that you can get some wonderfully bizarre music with surprising transitions and stylistic leaps. Film scores have their twists and turns dictated by the film's action, and when taken out of that context, their twisted shapes can make for interesting listening. In the first part of Spinning On Air just such music is on display, with scores by Ennio Morricone, Johnny Williams, and Jon Brion's score for Punch-Drunk Love. Later in show, we feature the music of Brazilian guitarist and composer Baden Powell, as performed by Powell himself, and by the contemporary duo of Smokey and Miho (pictured).
Along with Punch-Drunk Love, Jon Brion has written a number of acclaimed Hollywood film scores, including the beautifully haunting music for Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia. A mainstay of the LA music scene, he is a versatile singer-songwriter as well as a record producer, who's put his stamp on albums by Fiona Apple, Robyn Hitchcock, Rufus Wainwright, and a number of Aimee Mann discs.

Baden Powell (1937-2000) was considered one of the world's finest contemporary acoustic guitar players and one of the most expressive composers of 20th century Brazilian popular music. In the 1960s, he collaborated with Stan Getz, and made his biggest hit with the song "Samba de Bençao," which was part of the original soundtrack of French filmmaker Claude Lelouch's Un Homme et Une Femme.

Guitarist Smokey Hormel is from L.A. and vocalist Miho Hatori from Japan, but they have found common ground in the bossa nova. The duo's first recorded original song, "Ocean In Your Eyes" is on the soundtrack to Alphonso Couran's hit film Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign film. More about Smokey and Miho.

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