This Week's "Music to Read By" Soundtrack

The first two songs in my updated playlist [see left panel; press play] are from movies. I thought they deserved a few words mention.

The first is Yo Yo Ma doing a version of "Gabriel's Oboe" from the film The Mission (1986).  The movie, starring Roberto DeNiro and Jeremy Irons, may have won the Palme d'Or and the Oscar for best cinematography, but for many it's Ennio Morricone's soundtrack that is the most memorable aspect of the film. Morricone, who has composed and arranged film scores for films as varied as The Untouchables and Cinema Paradiso, became famous scoring spaghetti westerns (40 of them) including The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. (If Clint Eastwood starred in it and you can whistle the music from it, Ennio Morricone composed it.)

The second song, "Yumeji's Theme" by Shigeru Umebayashi, was made famous in Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's film, In the Mood For Love (2000). If I were taking movies to my desert island, for the photography and music alone, In the Mood for Love would come with.