Vanilla Sky (Movie & Soundtrack)

I really liked the movie Vanilla Sky. I was quite impressed with the intelligence it displayed and philosophic implications it had. Most movies are so basic and simple, children and adults can go to them and no one missed a thing. Walking out of the theatre after seeing this one, I was so suprised at just how much of a 'thinking movie' this was.

If any of you saw the movie, what did you think? Was it really a deep societal commentary on the search for the soul? Or was it yet another Tom Cruise look-at-me vapid waste of two hours of your life? Or was it somewhere in between? I'd be interested in hearing what other people think!

That being said, I just got the soundtrack to Vanilla Sky and I must say I'm quite impressed. Buckets of good tunes!:

Todd Rundgre - Can We Still Be Friends
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill I've heard of Peter Gabriel before, but I've never listened to any of his tunes. This song is amazingly cool. I'm going to pick up the album this song is from if I can find it. Quite cool.
Looper/Francis MacDonald - Mondo '77 (This was the theme song to the movie used in most of the trailers, I got this song stuck in my head thanks to those trailers and now I can ease it out of my mind by playing it again and again thanks to this soundtrack.)
Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
The Monkees - Porpoise Song
The Chemical Brothers - Where Do I Begin Quite a nice song. One of the more memorable ones from the movie.
Leftfield & African Bambaataa - Afrika Shox
Paul McCartney - Vanilla Sky
Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
R.E.M. - Sweetness Follows
Sigur Ros - Svefn-g-englar
Josh Rouse - Directions
Nancy Wilson - Elevator Beat
R.E.M. - All the right Friends
Red House Painters - Have You Forgotten
Bob Dylan - Fourth Time Around

Unfortunately the CD was missing some of my favorite tracks from the movie, so I perused Audiogalaxy (thank you Sputnix!) and found em, they're quite good:

U2 - Wild honey
Sigur Ros - Njosnavelin
Joan Osborne - What if God was One of Us Okay, this song wasn't actually in the movie, but Tom Cruise is screaming the lyrics to it in one scene and I got it stuck in my head.
Sigur Ros - The Nothing Song
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space I *really* love this song! Very uplifting and cool, download it and give it a listen. You'll probably end up orderring the CD.
Theivery Corperation - Lebonese Blonde

-Ybot

The music really is a character in this movie itself. It is SO well chosen and well placed it's seamless. Even if you don't care to see this movie, go anyway, the music makes up for it.

Cameron Diaz AND Penelope Cruz! So, to sum up, we've got:

Awesome music
Super-cool story
Cameron Diaz
+ Penelope Cruz
----------------------
= One damn good movie.

Alejandro Amenabar is such a versatile director. He wrote, directed and scored the music for "The Others" which I thought was quite a decent movie. I've been trying to find "Abre Los Ojos" on DVD but I have not yet been successfull. I will eventually see it though.

-Y

[ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Ybot ]</p>

I didn't think it over-used special effects really. So I'd have to disagree with the Fight Club/Matrix bit. While the movie does start off 'normal' showing what Tom Cruise's life *was* like (and then goes into insanity which does involve some special effects). It doesn't gratuitously find reasons for 360º spinning rotations of flying bullets with Carrie-Anne Moss jumping around the room. hehe

-Y

The only movie ever that I've seen Carrie-Anne Moss in and didn't go "ugh" was Red Planet. I thought that was a pretty decent adventure-in-getting-home flick.

I haven't seen Memento yet though. It's on the list.

-Y