Navigating The Finite: The Music of "Meet Joe Black"

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Music of "Meet Joe Black"

Over the weekend my wife and I watched Meet Joe Black starring Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, and Claire Florlani. The 1998 movie is somewhat of a remake of Death Takes a Holiday. As movies go it is touching. Death incarnated in a borrowed body (Brad Pitt) falls in love with Susan Parrish (Claire Florlani) while trying to learn a few things about success and ethics from Susan's father, Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) who is his next intended victim. I enjoyed the movie. It has a few moral lessons and Anthony Hopkins is always fascinating. Claire Florlani is not hard to look at and gives a good performance, and I even warmed up Brad Pitt. But the thing I really enjoyed about the movie was the music. So I ordered the sound track off of Amazon...got it tonight (along with my nordic walking poles--thank you Old Baguette...I think these will get me off my can and get moving again).

I love the music even more with out the distraction of the movie. Thomas Newman's sweeping orchestral work is simply phenomenal. His use of the deeper strings (cellos and bass viol) puts me in mind of Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony. I have been listening to this CD endlessly this evening and I must confess to several bouts of tears.

I would like to share some of this music with you. Here is Whisper Of a Thrill on You Tube.

Whisper Of A Thrill

I hope you enjoy the ethereal quality of this piece as much as I do. The quiet clarinet rises into a rather large sweep of strings that suddenly turns into a powerful mystical tinkling and then returns to the soft clarinet, as the tears stream down my face...a romantic fool? Perhaps, or maybe a fool who through the poignant beauty of this music got an ever so tiny glimpse through the veil.

Searching You Tube for "Meet Joe Black" will yield a nice selection of music from the movie as well as some of Newman's other works. I especially liked one titled Cathedral.

Below is the trailer for Meet Joe Black

Watch The Trailer

Here is an article from Wikipedia, Meet Joe Black.

Amazon, CD and DVD

The soundtrack Amazon, CD of Meet Joe Black, The Original Soundtrack

Note, in some of the comments on Amazon there are complaints that not all of the music from the movies was included on the CD.

The movie is a better deal, but if I could only buy one I would get the soundtrack which I may listen to everyday for the rest of my life. Oh that is not a invitation Joe!

The movie Amazon, DVD of the Movie, Meet Joe Black

Image Credit:

Wikipedia, Movie Poster, Meet Joe Black

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Quotes

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Second Inaugural Speech

Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."

Edward P. Tryon

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
― Harry S. Truman

"Grant, O God, that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds."

Old Scottish Prayer

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t."

Admiral Hyman Rickover

"The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." St. Teresa of Avila

"Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em."

Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
- Douglas Adams

Trust those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it.
. . . From The Bumper Sticker.

Religion is belief in someone else's experience; spirituality is having your own experience.

Source unknown. Passed on by Olga

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION
. . . From The Bumper Sticker

On taking your time & paying attention to details:

"Few, if any, of the world’s problems can be solved with a mere twenty minutes of attention, and yet here, in the complex sociopolitical landscape of the bedroom, we have an opportunity to create bilateral satisfaction."

Ian Kerner

"We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways."

Kent Nerburn

I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightement. One is quantum electrodynamics and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather more optimistic.

Sir Horace Lamb 1932

Quoted in Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, by Anderson, Tannehill, and Pletcher, 1984.

Well, you know the definition of right and wrong constantly changes, but the definition of honesty never does. NPR, interview with Jim Garrett.

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

Ted Hughes

The older I get...

the better I was.

From The Tee Shirt.

My head is firmly up my ass, and it is the 1950s in there.

Sextant in an email to a friend.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

The H1 (Humvee) will be marketed to "RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS". These are people who are irreverent and daring and want to be seen that way by other people, Mr. DiGiovanni said. "The rugged individualists are people WHO REALLY SEEK PEER APPROVAL...."

Source unknown.