Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Media mix

One of the things I enjoyed doing with previous blogs was doing one of those Q&A memes where someone would come up with a bunch of questions that you were to answer in your blog. I liked them because it was sort of like a writing prompt. Here's the topic, go and write. People have different ideas about the usefulness of writing prompts. Some think that good writers don't need them, that they should be writing about whatever it is that they want to be writing. Others (like me) find it to be a useful spark when you aren't writing.

One of the most popular meme blogs was the Friday Five. It had a large following but then the creator quit and no one was able to keep it alive. Many others have similar blogs but I hadn't seen one that really interested me.

Back in April, I stumbled across one that does a Wednesday meme called Media Mix. The blogger proceeded to then skip two out of three weeks which made me question the whole idea but she's been pretty consistent since. The concept is three questions related to media, one you listen to, one you watch, one combined.

I tend to write my posts earlier than the day they appear on this blog so this is actually the meme from June 10th.

[Listen] What are some of your favorite film soundtracks?

Red Violin - Joshua Bell does a fantastic job performing the John Corigliano work. Great composer/performer mix.

The Saint - One of my favorite movies. I have both the soundtrack and score. Both are equally good for different reasons. The score has some beautiful pieces. The soundtrack has Duran Duran, Sneaker Pimps and Bowie among others.

Brotherhood of the Wolf - This is one of my favorite sleeper movies in every which way. It's a French film. It combines about every possible genre into a single film and somehow manages it to pull it off. It has a zillion characters and there's enough interesting about each one of them that you could probably take any of them and build an entire movie around them. The soundtrack similarly is a mix of styles, tempos and instrumentation. It is done by Joseph LoDuca who has done the work for a lot of Sam Raimi shows and movies (Xena, Hercules, Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, etc.). Great soundtrack.



Passion - That's the album title. Peter Gabriel did the music for The Last Temptation of Christ which is this album. He also put out an album called Passion Sources that I also have that contains traditional Middle Eastern music that inspired the work he did on the soundtrack.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - I actually bought the soundtrack before the movie was released. Another awesome composer/performer combination. Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma.

[Watch] Did you see the TONY awards? Had you seen any Broadway shows over the past year (or shows that began on Broadway but traveled to other cities)?

I've only ever seen one Broadway show on Broadway and that was The Scarlet Pimpernel. Never watch award shows.

[Read] In what ways has technology hindered your reading/writing styles, and in what ways has it enhanced them?

I love to read certain things online, especially design. Shorter pieces, items with pictures/graphics. These are good fits for online reading. I also like that you can read about all sorts of topics with ease at any time thanks to the internet. That's the good side of technology and reading.

One of the struggles I had with my first semester of library science was that most of the readings were online and were text-intensive. I can't read 20 pages in Adobe Acrobat. It just doesn't work for me and I have an issue with printing out online material. It seems wasteful. My next semester starts next week and something has to break in that regard.

As far as writing, I prefer to type to writing. I haven't kept a written journal in ages and being left-handed, I no longer suffer from having ink smeared along the side of my hand after writing missives like this. You also can't link to YouTube in a written journal.

2 comments:

--Transfixed Ingress said...

No comment - other than I'm here.
Swamped - but here.
And my comment posting fails 7.34 times out of 11.

Unknown said...

Hi there, enjoyed reading your answers! I really want to see The Saint now. Anything with a score including both Sneaker Pimps and Bowie has got to be cool.