Favorite Movie Scores: "Charlie Wilson"

As I've said before, I LOVE movie scores. Currently, my iPod playlist titled Movie Scores has 512 songs, but it is constantly growing.

Music is an integral part of a film. Without music, a film feels incomplete. A piece of music can completely change the way a scene plays. The best movie scores are ones that don't force you to feel emotion. The movie's score should enhance the already existing emotion.

Because I love movie music so much, I've decided to regularly highlight a favorite piece of music. This probably won't be daily thing like my Fun Film Facts, but I'm going to do it as often as possible.

First up, the main theme from Charlie Wilson's War (2007) called "Charlie Wilson." If you haven't seen Charlie Wilson's War, here's a brief description. It's based on the true story of Charlie Wilson, a partying, womanizing, Texas congressman, who was the main driving force behind the covert war that helped the rebels in Afghanistan beat the Soviets in the 80s. The film's tagline reads "When the world wasn't looking, he changed it forever." Tom Hanks plays Wilson and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Julia Roberts costar. It's directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Catch 22) and the script is written by Aaron Sorkin.

I really love this piece of music because it encompasses all the aspects of Charlie Wilson's character. It starts out sounding Middle Eastern and then shifts into that twangy electric guitar riff that sounds very Texan. At 1:15 it moves into a soft melody played by a solo instrument. That melody is then picked up by a number of violins. This change from a solitary instrument to many instruments symbolizes how Charlie's covert war started as just himself and an idea and then grew into this enormous historical moment. I find the violins incredibly beautiful. As this series of posts continues you'll find that I tend to enjoy pieces of score that heavily feature strings as opposed to other instruments.

If you haven't seen Charlie Wilson's War check out the trailer.

The movie is very relevant these days because of the War on Terror. There's a quote from Charlie Wilson in the movie that goes: "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame." It means that we helped Afghanistan drive out the Soviets and then we stopped caring about them and look what happened...

Coming This Fall: Moneyball

The first trailer for the new film Moneyball came out this week and it got me very excited. I've been tracking this movie for a while because it's Aaron Sorkin's latest project. It's based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, who also wrote The Blind Side. The premise is this: It's the story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players. (Thank you IMDB for that quick description.)

Basically, the Oakland A's had a very small budget, thus they could not get big players who demanded big salaries. (The A's had a budget of about $41 million while the Yankees had a budget of about $125 million.) Billy Beane put together a team of excellent players who were cheap because they were undervalued. In the trailer the team is referred to as The Island of Misfit Toys. In many ways, the success of this theory changed the game of baseball. Here's why I'm so excited about the movie:

• The Writers: Moneyball is co-written by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. Aaron Sorkin is one of my favorite writers and he just won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for The Social Network. His other films include Charlie Wilson's War, The American President, and A Few Good Men. He's also written three of my favorite television shows: Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. If you've seen any of those movies or shows, you know that Sorkin's dialogue is musical. It is usually very fast-paced and it has a certain rhythm to it. Steven Zaillian has written Schindler's List, Mission: Impossible, A Civil Action and Gangs of New York to name a few. It will be really interesting to see how both writers' styles mesh together.

• The Director: This is only Bennett Miller's second feature film, but his first film, Capote, was SO good. I have high hopes for this film as well. Aaron Sorkin dialogue in the hands of the wrong director can be disastrous, but I think Miller has what it takes to pull it off.

• The Cast: Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) is not exactly my favorite guy in Hollywood (his public persona sometimes makes it hard for me to take him seriously) but there's no denying that when he's given a great character, he can be a great actor. Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, the wiz kid who comes up with the low-budget-team theory. Jonah Hill is a great comedic actor. He's been in a lot of Judd Apatow movies. It will be interesting to see him in a more serious role. And I've saved the best for last: Philip Seymour Hoffman. He plays Art Howe, the manager of the A's. Philip Seymour Hoffman played Truman Capote in Capote, so he knows Miller, and he also had a role in Charlie Wilson's War, so he knows Aaron Sorkin as well. Philip Seymour Hoffman rarely chooses bad films, so the fact that he's in this movie makes me happy.

The film is still 3 months away, but it's already getting Oscar buzz for its acting and writing. Aaron Sorkin could become the first writer to win two years in a row.

The movies opens on September 23.