HIDDEN GEMS
From wholly original soundtracks like Curtis Mayfield’s work for Super Fly to iconic oldies compilations like American Grafitti, the 1970s was the first golden age for the movie soundtrack.

After a glut of ’80s crap, the art form of the movie soundtrack bounced back in the ’90s. Pulp Fiction is the key example of a soundtrack that was not only essential to the movie it supported, but became essential listening on its own (although the soundtrack to Tarantino’s follow-up, Jackie Brown, gets my vote for soundtrack of the decade). Other soundtracks were so popular (Lost Highway, Empire Records) that more people had them in their CD collections than had ever bought a ticket to see the movie. The following 4 selections were not so popular, but they remain worthwhile listening experiences whether you’ve seen the movie or not.

Out of Sight | Music From the Motion Picture
1998 was the moment when DJs were making their biggest impact as solo artists in mainstream music, thanks partially to Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank.” One DJ who got a leg up in this climate was David Holmes, whose first 2 albums were more often groovy than glitchy. Hired to do the music for Steven Soderbergh’s French New Wave-style take on an Elmore Leonard novel, Out of Sight, Holmes delivered a super-cool score that’s funky without being hectic and is ambient without being somnambulant. The soundtrack album seamlessly blends Holmes’s music cues with dialogue from the film and classic hits by The Isley Brothers, Dean Martin, and more. Twelve years later, it still sounds fresh and unembarassing in a way that those Fatboy Slim records sadly don’t.

More on Hidden Gems: Second Golden Age of Movie Soundtracks

ART OF SONG
David Bowie
“Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)”
Inglourious Basterds (Soundtrack)
2009 | MCA

Few auteurs can claim mastery of both the art of filmmaking and the art of filmmaking scores as categorically as Quentin Tarantino. Starting with his spot-on use of a harmonically gleeful “Stuck in the Middle with You” smack dab in the middle of the violence of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has gone on to engrave a series of unforgettable song-scene associations on the celluloid consciousness. This tradition continues with his latest achievement, Inglourious Basterds, a film that does its own fair share of engraving—not only through the auspices of music, but through the machete-skilled hands of Brad Pitt’s backwoods brigadier, Aldo Raine (whose canvas consists of the foreheads of captured and defected Nazis).

The scene which sonically steals the show comes toward the film’s incendiary finale, courtesy of David Bowie’s “Cat People [Putting Out Fire].” Originally made with producer Giorgio Morodor for inclusion in Paul Shrader’s 1982 film Cat People (a remake of the 1942 horror film of the same name), Bowie re-recorded the song for his 1983 album Let’s Dance. Tarantino snatches the original soundtrack version from the shallow depths of the ’80s and places it in the vengeful hands of fantasy WWII heroine Shoshanna Dreyfus. Shoshanna is a French Jew who escapes from the countryside to Paris after witnessing the horrific murder of her family at the hands of SD officer (and Shoshanna’s main target), Hans Landa, and conveniently lands a job as a cinema proprietor after her theatre-owning relatives pass away.
More on David Bowie | “Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)”

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