Boombox Serenade

The Ten Best Film-Music Moments of 2011 aka The Fifth Annual Lloyd Awards!

Hi there, home slices! Welcome to the fifth annual Lloyd Awards! Each year, Boombox Serenade bestows this award on directors who used real music in original and powerful ways in their films. By "real music," I mean music that wasn't written explicitly for the film in which it appears, but music that has a life and context outside of that film. As usual, we start at the bottom and work our way up to number one. 

Lloyd #10 goes to Director David Fincher for the "Orinoco Flow" sequence in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Ok, so he may have borrowed a little too heavily from American Psycho when he put Enya in the middle of this film's murderous climax, but he did it so well. He's David Fincher, after all -- a Jedi of the ironic film-music moment. Last year, Fincher won a Lloyd for the "Baby You're a Rich Man" scene in The Social Network and another for his use of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" in the 2008 film Zodiac, making him the only three-time Lloyd winner. (He probably brags about this all the time.)

Lloyd #9 goes to Director Jason Reitman for the "Mavis Rewinds the Tape" sequence in Young Adult. Mavis, 37, is driving back to her hometown in a misguided attempt to win back her now married high school boyfriend. As she drives, she keeps rewinding "The Concept" by Teenage Fanclub, belting out quasi-sensitive lyrics like, "I didn't want to hurt you, oh yeah." Presumably this was their song back in the day and the Reitman's repetition of it is a clever stroke of character development -- one of many signs Mavis is unwilling to move forward in life.

Lloyd #8 goes to Director Sean Durkin for the "Marcy's Song" sequence in Martha Marcy May Marlene. When the manipulative leader of Martha's new "community" sings a song about her in front of the entire group, it subtly but definitively wins her over. The song is actually by Jackson Frank, an obscure 1960's folk singer who only released one album, but the obsessive lyrics are perfect for the quietly sinister tone of the film and John Hawkes' performance is riveting.

Lloyd #7 goes to Director Bennett Miller for the "Casey Sings" sequences in Moneyball. Last year was the first time a set of film-music moments won a Lloyd (Sofia Coppola's Somewhere) and this year another such Lloyd goes Moneyball. The first bookend is when Billy Beane takes his daughter to a guitar store where she plays him 'The Show,' a sweet, girly song that might not have been as memorable had it not been meaningfully reprised. Just before the end of the film, Bean is restlessly driving his truck, listening to a CD his daughter made for him and Casey's voice floats into the scene with "The Show" once again. (The irony of the chaw-chewing Bean listening to such pretty music is a nice touch.) Later when we learn he has declined a generous job offer in Boston we're allowed to infer the song was a subtle influence in that direction -- a musical reminder of their father-daughter moment. The actual song was written by an Australian songwriter named Lenka.

Lloyd #6 goes to Director Simon Curtis for the "Colin watches Marilyn in the bathtub" sequence in My Week With Marilyn. Marilyn's in the bathtub, languidly sponging herself and singing "I Found a Dream" in dulcet, contented tones. Marilyn's way of singing in this moment is more loose and natural than her on screen style but has just enough panache to make us wonder if she's aware her young admirer, Colin Clark, is watching from just beyond the doorway. Is Marilyn rehearsing or performing here? Is she truly unguarded or just emulating that? Michelle Williams plays it all with a deliciously maddening, Mona Lisa like inscrutability. All of her choices in this film, in fact, communicate how blurry the line between Marilyn's private self and public persona had become and Williams' ability to add and subtract layers of identity on a moment's notice is nothing short of virtuosic. "I Found a Dream", by the way, was written by Richard Addinsell, who penned it for The Prince and The Showgirl, the film on which Clark was serving as an assistant director when he met Monroe.

Lloyd #5 goes to Director Miranda July for the "Sophie's Laptop Dance" sequence in The Future. Sophie in profile...Sophie wearing an improbable collar and doing a strange, stiff little dance to the willfully synthetic beats of Beach House. "Jack of all trades, master of none. Cry all the time, cause I'm not having fun." It's difficult to watch her struggle with the humiliation of self-imposed artistic failure, but this moment is an existential success even if she's not aware of it...a Fabergé egg of a moment. A tiny foothold in the void.

Lloyd #4 goes to Director Alexander Payne for the "Matt King Runs toward the Truth" sequence in The Descendants.  Alexander Payne can find the humor and pathos in even the darkest moments and there's something so touching about the one just after Matt King learns his comatose wife has been having an affair. His beach shoes smack absurdly on the pavement as he hustles down the street toward his friends' house where he's hoping to learn the name of the other man. For this sequence, Payne selects not the tense, dramatic music that almost any other director would have but the easygoing "Wai O Ke Aniani" by Gabby Pahinui -- a gentle meditation on the mountain water of a particular ridge in the Moanalua Valley. It's a perfect example of how choosing unexpected music can make a scene weirdly unforgettable. It's also one of the many moments in which Payne allies his protagonist with place and suggests ancestral ties can cushion the blows life inevitably deals. There's a type of traditional Hawaiian song called a “mele pana," which means "song of place," and this year I think Alexander Payne made a film of place in part through one of the warmest, most soulful soundtracks I've heard in a long time. 

Lloyd #3 goes to Director Derek Cianfrance for the "You Always Hurt the One You Love" sequence in Blue Valentine. There's something so fresh yet completely timeless about the tableau of a slightly scruffy couple courting one another in the doorway of a closed New York formal wear shop. Dean strums an out-of-tune ukelele and Cindy does a halting shuffle ball change, her apple red sweater popping against a backdrop of cheap pastel prom dresses. Before he starts the song, Dean informs her he has to sing it "goofy," and that is mostly how Dean himself seems then -- sweet and goofy -- his darker qualities only foreshadowed by the song at this point. Blue Valentine has the fateful quality asynchronous timelines can sometimes impart and the ukelele tap dance is just one end of its love-hate mobius strip. At the other is the violent, drunken, and not entirely consensual sex Cindy has with Dean in the shower of a space-themed hotel room in Eastern Pennsylvania, a room Dean likens to the “inside of a robot’s vagina." It really captured the depair.

Lloyd #2 goes to Director Nicolas Winding Refn for the "Oh My Love" sequence in Drive. The dream-like, 80's inflected soundtrack to Drive was ridiculously brilliant and gorgeous, but the real stand-out film music moment owes itself to a song that couldn't have been more different from the rest of the soundtrack -- a reverent, Streisand-esque ballad of hope borrowed from a 1971 Italian film called Goodbye Uncle Tom. Its soft strains begin as the Driver is caressing the cheek of a friend who has just been murdered by the mob, then build to a climax as the Driver finds the man who ordered the hit, t-bones his car over a bluff, then unceremoniously drowns him in the Pacific ocean. A profoundly unexpected choice, "Oh My Love," gives this procession of images an oddly holy quality, as if the driver is purifying himself somehow, and like the brilliant "Soul Holiday" sequence from Lee Daniels' Precious, the song seems at first a bitterly ironic commentary on how bad things have become, only to morph into an exalted manifesto for the future. It is a feat of a sequence.

Lloyd #1 goes to Director Lars Von Trier for the Tristan and Isolde prologue to Melancholia.  The epic scale of this seven plus minute prologue somehow doesn't eclipse an exacting sense of detail and texture throughout. Yes, there are planets colliding, but there are also two perfect rips in the knees of Justine's jeans. Deep, black footprints in a lush golf course green. A boy slowly stripping knotty bark from a branch. Delicate tendrils of electricity dancing on Justine's fingertips. The extreme slow motion makes it seem as if each scene is still playing out somewhere, each still gracefully blooming. Von Trier has said he had some of the scenes edited to same pace as the music. "It's kind of like a music video that way," he said. "It's supposed to be vulgar." But is it vulgar when a master designer makes clothing to fit perfectly a particular body? The man often says outlandish things, but this film is darkly majestic, elegant, and eternal.

And there you have it! The intensely subjective Lloyd Awards, brought to you by Boombox Serenade. See you next year!

The Fourth Annual Lloyd Awards

Well hello, and welcome to my Lloyd Awards. Each year, Boombox Serenade bestows this award on the directors who use real music in original and/or powerful ways in their films. When I say "real music," I mean music that was not written for the film, but was first introduced to the world in some way other than the movies, usually as a label-backed album release.

I don't mean to be flippant. There have, of course, been many great scores and songs written explicitly for film. Some of my favorite original songs include "On the Road Again," "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera)" and "Tender is the Night." Other greats include the "Theme from Shaft," "Nobody Does It Better," "Streets of Philadelphia," "Unchained Melody," "Lose Yourself," "Last Dance," and "They Can't Take That Away From Me." 

And yet, when you ask people what their favorite music moment in film is, the answer you get often goes something like this: "Oh, that scene in Office Space where they destroy the fax machine to the hardcore rap track." Or like this: "That scene in The Big Lebowski when Juhn Turturro licked the bowling ball to the Gipsy Kings' cover of 'Hotel California'" Or, like this: That part where the buildings explode at the very end of Fight Club with The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind."

In other words, it seems the truly memorable moments in film-music history seem to belong not to score nor to original songs composed for the film, but to music that first had a life and a context outside cinema. Why is that?

In some cases it's because of the tasty irony that can only arise when there's some friction between sound an image -- a friction that an artist would rarely choose to introduce if he or she was hired to write something directly to the scene. If Mike Judge had asked the Geto Boys to write some music specifically for Office Space, for instance, they probably wouldn't have come up with lyrics like, "Back up in your ass with the resurrection is the group harder than an erection." Nope. Probably not.

In other cases, the greatness comes from the perfect accord between image and sound. When Willard creeps up on Kurtz and assassinates him to The Doors' "The End" in Apocalypse Now, it's difficult to imagine any other music for that scene. Francis Ford Coppola loves bringing in (and riffing on) the works of other epic poets like Jim Morrison and T.S. Eliot. He's just not interested in the false continuity of a world in which he's had some hand in creating every element.

Enough nattering. Let's get on to this years' winners. As usual, we start at the bottom of the list and work our way up to the years' #1 film-music moment.

Lloyd #7 goes to Director Julian Jarrod for the "A Certain Smile" sequence in Red Riding Trilogy: Part I: 1974. Not many people in the U.S. caught this excellent adaptation of David Peace's The Red Riding Quartet, about the Yorkshire Ripper case, and it's a shame. Julian Jarrold's (Brideshead Revisited) contribution was easily the strongest of the three installations. One of the most memorable moments is when he sends his plucky young investigative journalist, Eddy Dunford, to visit a woman named Marjorie Dawson in the institution where she lives. A nurse quickly figures out Eddy isn't her nephew, as he's claimed, and calls in a couple of Yorkshire's finest to nightstick him in the knees (the corruption and brutality of Yorkshire cops is a major theme throughout this trilogy). To distract herself from the smackdown, the fragile Majorie turns up the radio on her nightstand and suddenly, Johnny Mathis' velvety voice overtakes the scene. As Eddy is unceremoniously dragged down a long hallway Mathis croons, "A certain smile, a certain face, can lead an unsuspecting heart on a merry chase..." It's twisted and wonderful. 

Lloyd #6 goes to John Cameron Mitchell for the "The Higher Road" sequence in the official trailer for Rabbit Hole. Somewhere around the 1:20 mark of this exquisite trailer, the cello gives way to the tumbledown groove of Broken Bells' "Higher Road," and the whole thing becomes strangely exalted with a world weary James Mercer advising you to "let loss be your guide." Before the film had even been released, John Cameron Mitchell showed his ability to imbue heavy subject matter with a tender, even holy quality that made you want to meet that couple and bear witness to their loss. Instead of choosing music that was merely sad, Mitchell picked something more complex and mysterious. It's a song that somehow captures the horror of transition after a tragedy...the inexorable sundowning of your old life. This is the second trailer to win a Lloyd Award. The first went to Spike Jonze and Arcade FIre for the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are.

Lloyd #5 goes to Director Danny Boyle for the "Lovely Day" sequence in 127 Hours. Earlier when I was talking about what makes a film-music memorable, I mentioned that real music can introduce irony in a way that score has a hard time doing. A downright flawless specimen of this is furnished by Mister Danny Boyle this year, who puts a little Bill Withers on the turntable as the sun comes up on mountain climber Aron Ralson's third straight day of being pinned by a boulder to a narrow crevasse in Robbers Roost, Utah. At first this seems like the dryest possible choice of an Englishman, but as much as Boyle is commenting wryly on the plight of the hero, he's also using the sequence to show the very real loveliness of the Utah landscape. A brilliant beverage montage, too, is an early look at Aron Ralston's inner life, which gains sway as the film progresses. This is Danny Boyle's second Lloyd Award. His first was for the "Paper Planes" sequence in Slumdog Millionaire.

Lloyd #4 goes to Directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington for the "Touch Me" sequence in Restrepo. After a brutal firefight in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan (often called "one of the deadliest places on Earth"), the remaining soldiers of B Company return to their makeshift outpost on a barren hillside in this feature-length documentary about war. They've recently seen members of their unit die right in front of their eyes, so the last thing you'd expect is for a spontaneous dance party to break out, let alone to some vintage 80's mall pop, and yet, that's exactly what happens. In the midst of ditch digging and weight lifting, of the soliders puts a euro-disco remix of Samantha Fox's "Touch Me," and suddenly a clump of burly soldiers are bouncing excitedly to the chorus, "Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body /Your heartbeat next to mine." The moment might have seemed like some kind of psychotic break if it weren't so obviously an expression of relief and the kind of urgent bonding people sometimes need to do after having survived something deadly. Samantha Fox's bubbly voice justaposed with the wintry Afghan countryside is haunting and bizarre.

Lloyd #3 goes to director David O. Russell for the "Here I Go Again" sequence in The Fighter. It's the end of the film...the big title fight in London. Welterweight Micky Ward waits in the wings with his older half-brother and trainer,  Dicky Ecklund, who has only recently kicked a nasty crack cocaine habit. It's a loaded moment. So much struggle has gone into it, on both sides. Micky has had to work like a fiend to regain his career. Dicky's fight has been to break his addiction and win back his brother's trust. The brothers bow their heads together. Micky's entrance music starts to play, "Here I Go Again," by Whitesnake. Dicky starts to sing it softly and Micky joins him. They step into the crowd together and make their way toward the ring. At this point, most directors would have transitioned to just the Whitesnake, mixing the bombast of the hair metal with the din of the crowd.  Instead, David O. Russell lets us hear that the brothers are still quietly singing together, all the way up to the ring. The intimacy of that private duet is what makes it so moving. This is song as ritual and shield. We feel the fierceness of the brotherly love and understand the victory this walk represents for each of them before the first bell even rings.

Lloyd #2 goes to Director David Fincher for the "Baby You're a Rich Man" scene in The Social Network. Proving that a director need not necessarily use the latest indie hit to capture the zeitgeist, Fincher turns the final moments of his film over to John Lennon, who asks, "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" as Mark Zuckerberg reloads his browser again and again, waiting for an ex-girlfriend to accept his friend request. As the camera pushes in close on Zuckerberg's face, we realize that he's implicating us every bit as much as his protagonist -- our impatience, our declining social skills, our burgeoning preference for ersatz connections over real ones.

Lloyd #1 Goes to Director Sofia Coppola for the "My Hero" sequence in Somewhere. On paper, this moment doesn't sound as if it'll go down as one of the filmmakers' most memorable, but it absolutely will: Johnny Marco, famous actor, drifts off to sleep while identical twins pole dance in his Chateau Marmont suite. Most directors wouldn't have dreamed of using a song like the gruff, platonic "My Hero" by the Foo Fighters for this scene, but it's the kind of oddly literal selection the dancers themselves might have made to go with their candystriping costumes. The way this elaborate, muscular track emanates thinly from a cheap boombox really captures the ennui, as does the twins' junior varsity choreography with its perfunctory jiggling of butt cheeks. There's no attempt to portray anything as complex as seduction here. Mystery is at a minimum, as if tanning bed bulbs and hydrogen peroxide had long since burned away all their Freudian darkness. The real centerpiece of this scene, though, is Johnny Marco's bored expression as he watches the twins dance. Coppola lets her camera linger on his face, grafting our gaze to his.The shot lasts so long, in fact, that we don't just witness his slow-motion decision to let sleep prevail over horniness, we actually experience the pleasure and the vacuousness of his life. A few scenes later, Marco is sitting in the stands of an ice skating rink, reading text messages while his eleven year old daughter, Cleo, receives a private lesson. When she performs run-through, Marco's attention shifts from his phone to his daughter's performance. Once again, he is watching a dance, but this time he's captivated. The juxtaposition of the two scenes is unmistakable. Cleo's innocence seems all the more luminous next to the false innocence of the twins. Johnny's choices are cast a new light and we wonder whether he feels strange about his womanizing now that he sees his own daughter ramping up to womanhood. In this way Coppola is now crafting meta-moments with a touch that seems ever lighter; she has a gift for arranging and slowly rotating things in a way that reveals their complexity.

Honorable Mention Lloyd goes to Director Meghan Eckman for the end credit sequence, "Welcome to the CPL" from The Parking Lot Movie. The Lloyds proper only go to film moments featuring music that wasn't written explicitly for the film, but every now and then Lloyd must tip his boombox to an original song, like this hilarious track at the end of The Parking Lot Movie, a documentary about frustrated parking lot attendants in Charlottesville, Virginia, who are forced, daily, to deal with presumptious, BMW-driving dickheads and the drunk, spoiled University of Virginia undergrads who don't have to work in a parking lot to make ends meet. The line "God will hand us the sword of justice," alone, would have been enough to attract this blog's attention, but working in such existential inquiry as, "Do you park the lot or does the lot park you?" rate a prestigious Lloyd Award, no question. 

And there you have it! The intensely subjective Lloyd Awards, brought to you by Boombox Serenade and Hint of Id Perfume. See you next year!

The Third Annual Lloyd Awards

With the Oscars behind us and the second quarter of the new year beginning, it's the perfect time to burden you with one last top ten list for 2009. Below are the most outstanding film-music moments of the year, as dictated by Boombox Serenade where we've just never been interested in score, and instead favor directors who know how to use real music (yep, I said it) in original and powerful ways. As usual, we start with the tenth best moment and build up to number one.

Lloyd #10 goes to Director Alan Ball, Music Supervisor Gary Calamar, and  Sammy Kershaw for the "Louisiana Hot Sauce" sequence in True Blood. Surprise! After the death of his girlfriend, perpetually horny Bon Temps resident Jason Stackhouse got religion this season, but even grief and God weren't enough to make him keep it in his pants. Soon he was lusting after a powerful preachers' wife, proving that Jason is perhaps one of the best-written, most lovable fuck-ups of all time. There's one scene in which Ball and Calamar have a particularly good time torturing Jason. They put God Barbie in a tight gingham shirt, then have her fetch beer and grill up some barbecue for the fellas. It's not long before Jason is seeing her in soft focus and slo-mo while she licks her fingers and tosses her big hair around to "Louisana Hot Sauce" by Kershaw. Like the entire show, it's a sequence that manages to be sexy, smart, southern, and hilariously funny.

Lloyd #9 goes to Director Paul Saltzman and Vitamin C for the "The Graduation Song" sequence in Prom Night in Mississippi. Teenagers can always be counted upon to fill their world with music, so there are a bunch of great film-music moments in Paul Saltzman's documentary about the first racially integrated high school prom in Charleston, Mississippi—filmed just a handful of months before Barack Obama was elected president. The best of these takes place at the end of the prom itself. As the hour grows late, no one drifts away to hotel rooms or parties. The vibe stays up, the dance floor stays packed, and at one point is filled to its edges with grinning students dancing to the bittersweet groove of "Graduation Song  (Friends Forever)" by Vitamin C, who sounds more like a fourth member TLC than a blond pop chanteuse. A looping sample of the Pachelbel Canon glides wistfully behind neo-soul inflected vocals..an array of nuances sandwiched into one song, and perfect for the moment. The lyrics are reflective, sentimental...typical of words spoken around graduation, but in this case they also speak to the pivotal nature of the night, and the bond these students share for having made history together.

Lloyd #8 goes to Director Robert Kenner, Music Supervisor Amine Ramer, Bruce Springsteen, and  Woodie Guthrie for the "This Land is Your Land" sequence in Food Inc. Robert Kenner's powerful documentary on the U.S. food industry, Food Inc., is made all the more powerful by the epilogue to the film, set to Bruce Springsteen's live version of "This Land is Your Land" by Woody  Guthrie. In 1940 Guthrie wrote the song in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which he considered to be unrealistic and complacent, so it's the perfect choice for a documentary that strips away the marketing lies of the food industry and makes a direct appeal to the audience. The instrumentation on the song is minimal, which makes the sequence even more immediate and personal.

Lloyd #7 goes to Director Alan Ball, Music Supervisor Gary Calamar, Sister Gertrude Morgan, and King Britt for the "New World In My View" sequence in True Blood. The "New World in My View" episode of True Blood contains a moment that had everyone talking. As Bill strides toward the villa of the vampire queen, an irresistible and mysterious song fades in and like the vampires themselves, contains elements of the ancient and modern. Warbly vocals seem to come from somewhere out of time, sung by New Orleans preacher named Sister Gertrude Morgan. In her swampy, bony voice you can hear the very origins of rock and roll. Behind that voice is an electronic arrangement by King Britt, a Philadelphia DJ who remixed Morgan's recordings and turned them into an album called King Britt Presents: Sister Gertrude Morgan. His contribution is some sleek, aquatic sounding music—unlikely sonic couture for a restless bride of Christ. It shouldn't work at all really—this old Delta priestess wandering into a Tangerine Dream track—but it does. It's a hugely portentous moment, one that makes way for a pivotal new character and suggests an even larger turning of tides.

Lloyd #6 goes to director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and The Spinners for the "One of a Kind Love Affair " sequence in Soul Power. In late September 1974 a historic music festival took place in Kinshasa, Zaire where thirty one acts performed—17 from Africa and 14 from the U.S.—including the Detroit based band The Spinners, who transfixed a stadium full of 80,000 Africans when they took the stage with their hit, "One of a Kind Love Affair." The New York Times quoted Zaire 74's producer as saying "Our purpose was to document the history of the beat. We want to...help blacks in America, strangers in a strange land, to grasp the strand of the motherland—the musical beat." In this sense, The Spinners' performance is particularly stunning. By 1974 their music was a lush blend of doo wop and the Philly-style soul that was becoming popular in the U.S., and to hear that satiny sound in an African context is a revelation—a living map of black music's breadth and scope...its journey.

Lloyd #5 goes to Directors Spike Jonze and Arcade Fire for the "Wake Up" trailer for Where The Wild Things Are. The first-ever trailer to win a prestigious (*cough*) Lloyd Award, this movie preview made everyone who saw it sit up and take notice—all without any voice-over or snippets of dialogue. Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" set a sweeping, even epic tone for Spike Jonze's unsanitized interpretation of the children's book by Maurice Sendak—revealing the downcast palette of browns and grays that scandalized studio executives when they first saw it. More like a music video than a trailer, this piece stands on its own and is full of the big, unruly emotions that define the film. It lets you know that if you watch this movie, you'll be reliving the glory and the terror of that time in your childhood when you realized home could no longer fully contain you, and that you'd have to venture out into the wider, much wilder world.

Lloyd #4 Goes to Director Sacha Gervasi, and Anvil for the finale sequence in Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Talk abut payoff. For most of this documentary, the graying members of Canadian metal band Anvil are still trying to make the dream happen, but the prospect of success seems dimmer every day. As they struggle to book gigs and get paid their sense of frustration is palpable, but so is the determination that has kept them together since 1973. When they finally book a bigger show in Japan (where they hear they have a cult following) the band nervously wonders whether anyone will show up. Then they take the stage to find themselves in front a venue full of thousands of adoring fans. The feel-good movie of the year. Since the release of this documentary, Anvil gone on to open for big acts like AC/DC and has played several big festivals.

Lloyd #3 goes to Director Robert Siegel, Music Supervisor Gabe Hilfer, as well as musicians Larry Collins, Alex Harvey, and Tanya Tucker for the "Delta Dawn" sequence in Big Fan. Big Fan is a brilliant character study of a single-minded sports fan named Paul Aufiero who willingly rejects the world in favor of his one true love: the New York Giants. After being beaten up by his favorite player one night, Aufiero deals with the humiliation by tracking down a fan of his team's arch rival and unloading a paint gun on him. His flight from the scene is accompanied by the very last song you'd expect to hear: Tanya Tucker's rendition of "Delta Dawn."  "Delta Dawn what's that flower you've got on? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?" The sound is lilting and tender, but the lyrics paint a chilling portrait of a person who takes up residence in empty obsession for the rest of her days.

Lloyd #2 goes to Director Lee Daniels, Music Supervisor Lynn Fainchtein, and Sounds of Blackness for the "Soul Holiday" sequence in Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire. This sequence is so carefully and artfully crafted that it transcends our usual definition of "film-music moment" and becomes an actual storytelling element in and of itself—woven into the very fabric of the film through careful interlacing of action and sound. We are talking, of course, about the climactic scene in which Precious' abusive mom pushes Precious down a flight of stairs while she is cradling her newborn son. Sometime during this bone chilling series of events, the early strains of a gospel song called "Soul Holiday" are folded into the action. "Time to celebrate," it begins, "our love for one another," a bitterly ironic choice at this moment, but as she ventures blindly out into the night—operating on pure instinct to protect her child—Precious sees a choir practicing in a church and has a brief fantasy of singing with them. As "Soul Holiday" grows louder over top the scene, we realize this is our protagonist's pivotal moment and the song is the anthem of her Herculean feat: walking out on the monster who was ruining her life. The fact that it's a Christmas song implies bravery on par with the biblical Mary and the "holiday" reference may also refer to a coping strategy common to victims of abuse: an ability to flee their own bodies for brief periods of time. It is a brilliant, deeply layered sequence—one so perfect that it's hard to imagine it any other way, and especially with any other music.

Lloyd #1 goes to Director Quentin Tarantino, Music Supervisor Mary Ramos, and David Bowie for the "Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)" sequence in Inglorious Basterds. Historians say that Operation Barbarossa was when Axis luck began to change for the worse, but maybe it was actually when Shoshanna Dreyfus reached through the hole in space-time that Tarantino made and gleefully murdered several hundred high ranking Nazi officials by setting them on fire. The montage in which she prepares herself to do so is the real film-music takeaway from the movie, and of course Tarantino unblinkingly joins the ranks of the very few directors (like Robert Altman and Sofia Coppola) brave and talented enough to use contemporary music in a period piece. In fact, Tarantino knows exactly what to do with David Bowie's ominous, opulent voice, placing it at the very heart of his film like a jewel while lavishing some old-school camera work on his heroine. It's one of the most visually bold sequences in a visually bold movie, and somehow the music helps sear it on your retina forever.

And there you have it! The intensely subjective Lloyd Awards, brought to you by Boombox Serenade. See you next year!

The Second Annual Lloyd Awards!

Trend spotters, rain makers, early adopters, and other thought leaders have, of course, been keenly aware of the Lloyds (*cough*, *hack*) since this time last year, but for the uninitiated, here's the deal: since the Academy Awards recognizes only music that was written for the film in which it appears, the Lloyds instead honor those directors who create powerful, memorable cinematic moments using music not written for their films...music that has had a life and a context outside the movies. Today we take a look back at such moments in 2008, and honor those that really stood out.

Lloyd #10 goes to Director/Writer Harmony Korine, Music Supervisor Liz Gallacher, and Bobby Vinton (aka Stanley Robert Vintula, Jr.) for the "Mister Lonely" sequence in Mister Lonely. This film's protagonist is a Michael Jackson impersonator and in the indelible opening scene of the film he's shown riding a miniature all-terrain vehicle around an empty racetrack in a surgical mask and high white socks, a toy winged-monkey perched off the side. This is all in slow motion to Bobby Vinton's 1964 hit "Mister Lonely," the last song to go to number one before the Beatles captured the U.S. charts. Vinton's voice has that lilting, androgynous sound of the early sixties, so it perfectly sets up the untenable fairy tale of this film, one which hinges on a group of eccentrics trying to create a separate, gentler world for themselves, only to find out how impossible that is.

Lloyd #9 goes to Director Guillermo del Toro, Music Supervisor Kathy Nelson, and Barry Manilow for the "Can't Smile Without You" sequence in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. When Abe Sapien and Hellboy are bewitched and bewildered (respectively) by two different ladies. They get drunk and pine for their women while the besotted Abe blasts Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" at top volume. At first Hellboy is disgusted, but the simple words of Manilow's white-boy blues are so true to his mood that he ends up bellowing out the tune in spite of himself. And if you've never seen a demon belt out Barry Manilow, you really should.

Lloyd #8 goes to Director Ben Stiller, Music Supervisor George Drakoulias, and Enigma for the "Sadeness" sequence in Tropic Thunder. The three fake movie trailers at the beginning of Tropic Thunder are freaking hysterical, but when Toby McGuire fondles Robert Downey Jr's rosary beads to the tune of Enigma's "Sadeness," you know that this movie is about to bring it in a big, big way. Kudos them. 

Lloyd #7 goes to Director Darnell Martin and Music Supervisor Beth Rosenblatt for the "Smokestack Lightening" scene in Cadillac Records. Cadillac Records is the fictionalized story of the Chicago's legendary Chess Records, home to some of the greatest names in blues and R&B including Howlin' Wolf, aka Chester Arthur Burnett. When you first meet Burnett in the film, Eamonn Walker is singing one of his songs with an intensity that absolutely pins you to your seat. There is something raw and electric in Walker's eyes and it makes for one of the most arresting film-music moments this year. 

Lloyd #6 goes to director Danny Boyle and M.I.A. for the "Paper Planes" sequence in Slumdog Millionaire. I know everyone's all fired up about the music that big time Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman did for this film, but for me his sequences didn't hold a candle to the one Boyle set to M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." In that montage the newly orphaned boys find themselves stowaways on passenger trains and "Paper Planes" sounds so good, so resonant that it's impossible to imagine any other music for this sequence. It's playful with a gritty, desperate edge, and when Boyle shows the two brothers sitting atop a moving train car with their heads dipping down with exhaustion, it's as if Ms. Maya Arulpragasam is singing the song only for them.

Lloyd #5 goes to Writers/Directors Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter for the "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" sequence in WALL-E. The opening scene of WALL-E is set in the vastness of deep space, so the unlikeliness of hearing "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello Dolly! is absolutely delicious: "There's a world outside of Yonkers, Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby. There's a slick town, Barnaby. Out there, full of shine and full of sparkle." Just as you're buying into these cheery promises, the scene shifts to the utter ruin that is Earth..a festering garbage heap long abandoned by human inhabitants, and then a much darker layer of irony is added. "Close your eyes and see it glisten, Barnaby."  I applaud the creators of WALL-E for not being afraid to bring some real darkness into this animated film.

Lloyd #4 Goes to Director Alan Ball, Music Supervisor Gary Calamar, and Jace Everett for the "Bad Things" opening credits to True Blood. The 90 second opening to True Blood somehow manages to evoke all the sinning of a Saturday night in Louisiana, and all its Sunday morning saving too. Visually, Ball puts these behaviors into a context of the animal kingdom through brilliantly manipulated snippets of footage: a Venus fly trap eating a frog, a woman wrapping her legs around a man, a luna moth emerging unevenly from its cocoon, a supplicant being baptized just as unevenly in a lake. We are driven by the same rhythms, passions, and appetites the rest of the animal kingdom, he seems to be saying, and even our strange propensity for guilt is a part of this pattern.   

Lloyd #3 goes to Director Doug Pray for the "David Singing" sequence in Surfwise. One of the most amazing film-music moments I saw this year was in a documentary about the Pascowitz family, known as "surfing royalty," among those in the know, but also a doctor and sex guru who, together with his wife, brought up nine children in a camper on the beach. All of the kids were home-schooled and were made to follow a strict lifestyle regimen including daily surfing. The documentary interviews the now grown Pascowitz clan to ask how their unique upbringing affected them and in one sequence, one of the adult sons, David, sings his way through a deeply bitter song he wrote about his father. The song itself is somewhat melodramatic and overwrought, but the immediacy of the moment is inescapable and boldly, Pray doesn't let you off the hook, but makes you sit through the entire, uncomfortable thing. By the time David finishes, tears are streaming down his face and you're squirming in your seat, but by God you have a real sense of what dear old Dad put these boys through.

Lloyd #2 goes to Director Gus Van Sant and Frances White for the "Walk Through Resonant Landscape No.2" sequence in Paranoid Park. This film is littered with genius music moments, but there's one in particular that stands out and it happens during the film's most charged sequences, just after a pivotal moment in fact. It's a very simple but memorable scene in which Alex is standing in the shower, head lowered, long, icicle-like water forms extending downward from his hair. The music is "Walk Through Resonant Landscape No. 2" by avant-garde artist Frances White, and it's difficult to explain how powerfully sound and image come together in this scene. The music features a simple electronic tone paired with rainfall and birdsong, but as it plays out in the film it's like watching some sort of exotic flower bloom in real time; the moment just keeps getting bigger, fuller, and more loaded with each passing second.

Lloyd #1 goes to Director Darren Aronofsky, Music Supervisor Jim Black, and Guns N' Roses for the "Sweet Child of Mine" sequence in The Wrestler. Professional wrestler Randy 'The Ram' Robinson's heyday has long since past, but he doesn't quite know it yet. He still bleaches his hair, wears spandex like it's '86, and rocks out to Quiet Riot with total unselfconsciousness, all of which makes him both an absurd and tragic figure, or so it seems. Randy's personal life is in shambles and he hasn't figured out what life after wrestling looks like at all, so when a chance to reenact his most famous match comes along, he grabs it despite a recent heart attack and dire warnings from his doctor. On match day, Randy emerges from the tinsel at maximum glam, the gleaming guitar line of GNR's "Sweet Child of Mine" coruscating all around him like the sun. The crowd goes wild, and in that moment, it all comes together for Randy. The disappointments and humiliations of his life evaporate, and he's a fierce, golden god ready to do battle. 

And there you have it! The intensely subjective Lloyd Awards, brought to you by Boombox Serenade and Hint of Id perfume. Special thanks to Chris "Mantroid" Ward for the statuette graphic. See you next year!

Honorable Mention Lloyds: The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Milk. 

The First Annual Lloyd Awards

Welcome to history home slices! Since the Academy Awards recognizes only the music that was composed specifically for the film in which it appears (and since so much of that music kinda sucks), Boombox Serenade is pleased to announce the first annual Lloyd Awards, honoring filmmakers who used music in original, powerful ways in 2007, whether it was composed for the movie or not. Mostly not.

Lloyd #10 goes to Director David Fincher and Music Supervisor George Drakoulias for the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" sequence in Zodiac. Thank you David Fincher, not only for the incredibly effective way you used Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" during the Zodiac's first kill scene, but for confirming our longstanding suspicion that this is the creepiest song of all time. We experienced this first-hand at South by Southwest last year where Donovan precisely reproduced the weird Doppler effect thing his voice does in the recorded version of the song. It was inexplicably terrifying. A great choice!

Lloyd #9 goes to Director/Writer Quentin Tarantino for the "Down In Mexico" sequence in Death Proof. I don't care who you are, if you weren't turned on by Vanessa's Ferlito's lap dance to The Coasters' "Down in Mexico," there is something profoundly wrong with you. Plus, there is no bigger film-music geek in the world than Quentin Tarantino, and he basically rules our world because of it.  We wouldn't even be surprised if he was the one who went into Death Proof's IMDB entry and added the entire contents of this scene's jukebox to the "fun facts" section. Picture little cartoon hearts where our pupils once were.

Lloyd #8 goes to Director Wes Anderson and Music Supervisor Randall Poster for the "Strangers" sequence in The Darjeeling Limited. Sure, Wes overuses the slo-mo plus album rock formula, but when the  Whitman brothers emerge from a Narlia village hut to attend the funeral of a drowned boy to The Kinks' "Strangers," it's seriously moving. The moment shows how they're united in purpose for the first time, if still a little mysterious to one another, and there's something mystical in the lyrics that reinforces this:  Strangers on this road we are on / We are not two we are one. Jack throws white flowers to a cart full of villagers. There's a white bull with flowers laced through its horns. Gorgeous.

Lloyd #7 goes to Director/Writer Ethan Coen for the mariachi band scene in No Country for Old Men. One of the most recognizably Coen-ish moments in this movie is when a bloody and battered Llewellyn Moss is awakened from his pavement nap by a perky mariachi band. Always brilliant with music, Coen cleverly exploits the inherently annoying qualities of mariachi bands and gets extra oomph from this being some of the only music at all in the movie. Go Coens! Way to semi-sweep the Oscars.

Lloyd #6 goes to director Craig Gillespie and Music Supervisor Spring Aspers for the "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" sequence in Lars and the Real Girl. This moment happens during a party where painfully bashful protagonist Lars Lindstrom is standing alone with his eyes closed and swaying to "This Must Be The Place" by the Talking Heads. He's holding up his arms as if dancing with a woman. Home - is where I want to be, But I guess I'm already there / I come home; she lifted up her wings/ Guess this must be the place. It's an intimate, brilliant moment of character development, because it's the first time we see that it might be possible for Lars to conceive of having a real girlfriend. The combination of longing and uncertainty in the Talking Heads song makes it the perfect choice. Well done Gillespie.

A Brief Aside: While the Lloyds are primarily about music that's had a life and a context outside of the films in which it appears, we'd nevertheless like to take a moment to acknowledge the deep rightness of Once having won best song over the rest of the (cough) "music" at the 80th Annual Academy Awards, as well as the deep wrongness of neither Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood) nor Nick Cave (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) having been nominated for their fine scores. Greenwood was excluded on a technicality, while Cave was outright snubbed.

Lloyd #5 goes to Writers/Directors Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis as well as the ever formidable band Mastodon for the "Cut You Up With a Linoleum Knife" sequence in Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Colon Movie Film for Theaters. In a massively brilliant parody of the "Let's All Go to the Lobby" cartoons of yore, these guys provide the ultimate guide to movie theater etiquette in the form of...what else? A hardcore metal song. "Be considerate to others, or I will bite your torso and give you a disease." Heed the pretzel!

Lloyd #4 Goes to Directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Actress Chiara Mastroianni for the "Eye of the Tiger" montage in Persepolis. Throughout this film, Marjane Satrapi doesn't just show how empowering music can be in the midst of harrowing and restrictive circumstances, she shows how it carves out space and sanity in all human lives. In a great montage the Marjane character belts out "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor and there is something so touching about the way she sings in her heavy accent and off-key voice. She's rising up. She's back on the street. She is recovering from the crippling realization that she doesn't fully belong in any one culture or land, but she's gonna be her big-mouthed, bad-ass self anyway. We're glad to know that the strange and enduring appeal of this song transcends nationality.

Lloyd #3 goes to Director/Music Supervisor Julian Schnabel for the "Le Mer" sequence in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The entire soundtrack of this film is outstanding, but there's something particularly perfect about Schnabel's choice of the lighthearted "Le Mer" by 1930's era French singer-songwriter Charles Trenet. He uses it for a montage of the environs surrounding the hospital to which stroke survivor Jean Dominique Bauby has basically been consigned for the rest of his life, and it does exactly what music should do in films like this: creates a space in which the viewer can feel a little carefree before moving into darker waters. It's also emblematic of Schnabel's most un-hackneyed approach to the entire film, which is touched with humor, joy, and lust... both for life and attractive health care workers. By the way, Charles Trenet is also responsible for the wonderful song "Boum," currently being used in that Absolut ad with the giant pillow fight.

Lloyd #2 goes to Director Todd Haynes, Music Supervisor Jim Dunbar, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, and singer-songwriter Jim Jones of My Morning Jacket for the "Goin' to Acapulco" sequence in I'm Not There. The crowded soundtrack of I'm Not There reads like the doorlist of a Pitchfork after-party, so it's a little surprising how truly stand-out music moments there are in it. Many belong to Bob Dylan himself, a testament to how well his music is aging. The real the show-stealer, though, is "Goin' to Acapulco," as sung by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, backed by Calexico. James himself appears in the film and sings it from a town bandstand while flanked by a pretty, Wisconsin Death Trip-style corpse. Whether you think this film is sheer genius or, like us, found it a bit too self-conscious for that, the soundtrack is fabulous and James' performance alone is worth the price of admission. Like Dylan, he is singular and soulful and isn't saving anything for the trip back.

Lloyd #1 goes to Director Adrienne Shelly, Music Supervisor Randall Poster for the "Give It Away" sequence in Waitress. When Jenna first lays eyes on her newborn baby girl, Adrienne Shelly brilliantly makes all else in the room fade away but mother and child, by visually blurring everything but them and playing this song by Quincy Coleman. The song, like the entire movie, strikes a rare balance between tenderness and strength, and Shelly gets special recognition for using an unknown like Coleman for such a pivotal moment in her film. We cannot express how much we hate it that Adrienne Shelly was killed in 2006, but we're sure that Waitress will stand the test of time and serve as a monument to her talent and exquisite sensibilities.

Honorable Mention Lloyds: Black Snake Moan, Sicko, Reign Over Me, Murder Party

And there you have it! The intensely subjective First Annual Lloyd Awards, brought to you by Boombox Serenade and Hint of Id perfume. Special thanks to Chris "Mantroid" Ward for the statuette graphic. See you next year!