2nd Job + Soul Surfer Review

So life has been crazy this summer! So much has happened. Most recently I got a 2nd job. My official job title is something like "IT- CS1020 lab aide". Basically all I do is sit in a computer lab at SLCC between the hours of 3-10 Monday-Thursday answering questions about basic things you can do with Microsoft Office. It's fairly easy and pays decently well. I wish I could go traveling or do something cool...but alas...


Anyways onto the review of the movie Soul Surfer. I went to watch this movie with no idea what the movie was about. (I'll try and do this with minimal spoilers)

Soul Surfer is the inspiring true story of a girl (Bethany Hamilton) who is attacked by a shark and finds the courage to get back on a surfboard. Bethany is played by the very talented AnnaSophia Robb. The movie starts with real scenes of a young Bethany learning to surf off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. The surfing scenes throughout this movie are really well done with the real Bethany Hamilton surfing in many of them. Bethany practices a lot with dreams of going pro. That is until she is attacked by a shark while surfing with family friends. The rest of the movie follows the daily struggles she has with normal things in life and eventually the strength to return to surfing to become national champion. She find this strength mainly through seeing things from a different perspective, family and faith in God.

The movie has many overt Christian references throughout the movie. I think this movie really only appeals to certain categories of people. I'm not the type of person that cries at any movie, though this one had me on the verge of tears (okay maybe I cried) at certain points. Although I don't think this movie will appeal to everyone, I feel that the story is very inspirational and that alone makes the movie worth watching. (Oh and all the spectacular surfing scenes off the idyllic Hawaiian coast. :)) Overall, the movie to me was very inspirational and an emotional experience. I feel like this had a lot to do with the music. What the movie lacked (not much in my opinion) was made up for by the music.

The music I'm choosing to review in this post is the Soul Surfer (Original Motion Picture Score) which can be found here should you wish to purchase it: http://www.amazon.com/Surfer-Original-Motion-Picture-Score/dp/B004XDYF7Y/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1310258684&sr=8-6

I'll start this review off my saying this is easily the best soundtrack of the year. The score was written by Marco Beltrami. I hadn't heard much about Marco Beltrami's work before this, only vaguely familiar with what movies he had scored. I feel like the music really went well with the movie and having bought it after watching the movie with every listen I feel the music connects me back to scenes of the movie as I listen.

This is what I feel the music should be doing. I find it depressing when the director of the movie feels the music is a secondhand thing (yeah, I'm looking at you David Yates) and the music ends up not being as good. Anyways back on track, each and every song on this soundtrack has unique flavor and integrates really well with the theme of the movie as well as being equally good on it's own (even without having seen Soul Surfer!) The use of Hawaiian chants was excellent, as well as some exotic instruments such as the ukulele. Mainly, the thematic tie in all the songs have to the main theme makes this an album that I consider "flawless." All the music is just so...pure is the best way to describe it I suppose.

The dynamic range throughout the soundtrack was excellent. I'm not going to review every song but I'll do the ones that stood out most to me. There really isn't a bad song on this soundtrack. The soundtrack opens up with the track "Main Titles". It starts off with a Hawaiian chant (translations can be found on Beltrami's website) with a beautiful piano solo and a showcasing of Hawaiian culture represented through a flowing melody and harmony. The next song "Turtle Bay Surfing" was much more upbeat with nice use of dynamics and a reiteration of the main theme. "Shark Attack" is the darkest song on this soundtrack and is mainly a Hawaiian chant which talks about "a terrible spouting from the deep sea, from the purplish-blue sea of Kane" with full on percussion going in the background. Many of the other pieces though purely orchestral were wonderful.

"Bethany's Wave" was my favorite song on this soundtrack. I can't really explain it but this piece was stunning, and in my opinion one of the most emotional pieces I've heard in quite a while. It showcases triumph over adversity, another reiteration of the main theme and a beautiful cello solo to boot! Although I abhor the quality of youtube video, I'll post a link to the video anyways. I feel this whole album deserves to be listened to at the highest quality possible (Not that I don't feel this about all music but this one is definitely deserving of hearing it how Marco Beltrami intended)

Bethany's Wave:

Every time I listen to this cd, I get tears in my eyes without fail. For those of you that know me, this may or may not seem weird. *shrug* Had it not been for a friend recommending this movie I don't think I would have ever found this soundtrack. This is a cd I'd recommend regardless of if you watched the movie or not.

Little bit about me and my interests.

Hi,
I'm Randall DZM.

I'm 19 years old, Asian, and absolutely love music! As you can probably tell this blog will mainly be dedicated to my experiences with music, music equipment and the like. I'll try and keep this updated as much as I can. Also, with every post I do, I'll try and include a short review of some current music I'm listening too from my collection. I guess I'll explain a bit how I became interested in this hobby.
Note: I'm gonna ramble on for a bit now and this post may get boring (I'll try not to do this with future posts.)

I've always been interested in music and began to be introduced to popular music during my junior high years.  At this time I began looking for a more portable option to listen to my music. I've never really been a fan of Apple (or windows for that matter) so during mid 8th grade, I picked up my very first mp3 player; a Sansa Fuze. By the time I got to my freshman year, I was like any other teenager using Skullcandy's and listening to low quality rips of music.

Towards the end of my freshman year after having been through multiple pairs of Skullcandys I decided to look for some better IEMs (In Ear Monitors (they are essentially a fancy name for earbuds)- more on this in a later post). That search lead me to Head-fi and the beginning of my addiction to Hi-fi music. Growing up, my parents owned a mid-fi system that I preferred to anything I listened too. This quickly became a reference system for me to compare my portable setups too. I began to realize there was so much I was missing and how much better music could sound. The only problem with this was I didn't really have a way to move this setup around due to the size so my focus shifted to a portable setup. Throughout high school,  my tastes in music began to change partly because of this realization. Many would say this was a turn for the worse, as I started to stray away from popular music and started listening to less well known bands and older music. Popular music just didn't interest me anymore, though there are exceptions and I still do listen to a tiny amount of what is considered to be mainstream music. Not only that, my music collection grew a tremendous amount during my 4 years of high school. I also began to explore the different equipment that makes hi-fi music possible. I now firmly believe in buying cds (it supports the artist too! :) ) and ripping to lossless file formats.

My current collection spans roughly ~240,000 songs and 3TB of storage. I do most of my listening on my portable setup as i'm out and about a lot. When I get the chance though I try and listen on my home setup. My portable setup consists of a source (Cowon s9), Amp (Pa2v2/Homebuilt), and IEMs (Head Directs RE0's.) The sound is absolutely stunning and in my opinion a portable setup doesn't get much better. I'll be reviewing the different components in later posts as well as a review of how it sounds altogether in more depth. The more deeply I delved into this hobby I realized the more I felt the compulsion to upgrade my setup. When this happens I plug in a pair of stock apple ibuds and listen to some of my music while reminding myself of the law of diminishing returns, then plug back in my headphones/IEMs and enjoy what I have. After all, that's what this hobby is really all about to me; enjoying my music. (That isn't to say I don't upgrade, I just upgrade less often now XD) Once in a while, I'll also post my informal impressions on movies I watch.

Wow, that post ended up being much longer than I intended and probably sounds really boring. I swear future posts will be more interesting. :P

Next up: My musical progression from past to present + informal review on the movie Soul Surfer.