Radiohead + Chuck Palahniuk = BFF!

Yes, I am still posting my MySpace blogs on here. To fill up space.

Famous BFFs in history: Laverne and Shirley. Bill and Ted. Lucy and Ethel. Thelma and Louise. Bert and Ernie. Radiohead and Chuck. What?

That's right. Radiohead is writing the score for the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's book Choke - my favorite one by the author (though, I confess, I've only read 5 of his 10 fiction novels so far). This year I've been looking forward to four movies, and this is one of them. The other three: Well, you can guess what one of them was if you've read my other blogs and can deduce the consensus of the rest of the country. The second was the good but-it's-no-Half-Baked stoner action flick, and the other comes out today.

Could this be the best film score written by a popular band of all time?

Well, I don't know. I don't know enough about the combo to tell you. But here are a few film scores I do remember.

- Journey does TRON. Major 80s overload. Take a nerdy 80s movie and pair it with a dorky 80s band, and this is what you get. But if you haven't seen this, prepare to be disappointed or thrilled, depending on your preference. No, you won't get an earful of the mighty Steve Perry falsetto as the light cycles race. The score, like most musical scores, is instrumental. But, if you get past all the cheese of Journey, they are solid musicians. So stop hating, and start believing.

- Queen does FLASH! Speaking of cheese. Now, in contrast to the silent Steve Perry in Tron, you do get an earful of Freddie Mercury throughout Flash. And if you haven't heard the Flash theme song, you are most certainly missing out. Brian May's custom guitar sound goes quite nicely with the whole Flash Gordon saving the world thing, wearing a shirt bearing his name. A narcissistic little guy, but whatever. Added bonus: Nazis. Any good movie needs anti-Nazi sentiment and it gets that much better. For reals.

- Jonny Greenwood does There Will Be Blood. So, the guitarist for Radiohead did the score for this little diddy. I only saw the movie once in theaters - amidst laughter from my inappropriate friends - but the film was full of experimental string-driven performances. Peaks of staccato notes between oil montages and Daniel-Day Lewis' angry greedy man moustaches. Actually, I found this to be a very impressive score. Now I can just imagine how much better it could get with a few Thom Yorke compositions.

-The Dust Brothers do Fight Club. You can't talk about Choke without mentioning Fight Club, I suppose. A fantastical and somewhat repetitious drum beat with an ominous bass behind it seems to set the mood of the dissociative personality disorder-struck character in Tyler Durden, and the single-serving universe he unknowingly creates behind him.

I'm not going to rack my brain to attempt to think of anymore and I'm sure I've left out some of the most obvious ones. But if you can, you're welcome to mention. And I'm talking about scores, not soundtracks. And I didn't include movies like The Wall, or A Hard Day's Night, or anything like that. And of course there are other great scores in film that I won't even go into, because that's a totally different topic.

Either way, my verdict is that this will be a great pairing of a band who continues to create a different feel with each album it releases, and a movie that will undoubtedly garner a cult following as did the last Chuck book that was adapted into film. Perhaps this time even more so, as Chuck is a much better known author today, and most Chuck fans that I know consider this his best book. Hopefully the film will live up to this reputation. I'm not completely sold, but... with what I perceive to be an ambient musical score to set the tone to depict a Oedipal, sex-crazed, med school dropout attention whore who works as a Colonial reenactor... perhaps it will be quite good.

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction." Victor Mancini, from Choke

-Storm.