What a helluva ride it’s been for fans of decent music over the past Sunday evening and Monday morning. First, Arcade Fire take home the Grammy for Album Of The Year, trumping a host of favored (and frankly, shitty) acts. Radiohead announces a new album — “The King Of Limbs” — this morning that is already on pre-sale and be released digitally this forthcoming Saturday and now, THR reports that Jonny Greenwood will be taking on the scoring duties for Lynne Ramsay‘s upcoming drama “We Need To Talk About Kevin.” Awesome.
Starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly, the film tells the story of a mother (Swinton) teenage boy who went on a high-school killing spree tries to deal with her grief—and feelings of responsibility for her child’s actions—by writing to her estranged husband (Reilly). Some fairly heavy stuff for sure, but with Ramsay at the helm its sure to be something extraordinarily special. It has been a far too long eight years since Ramsay’s last effort “Movern Callar” (she did try to mount an adaptation of “The Lovely Bones” in between that was eventually made by Peter Jackson) and for a film that we’re already highly anticipating the news that Greenwood will do the music only stokes that fire even further.
Of course, we needn’t go over Greenwood’s already stellar credentials as a film composer. His music for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “There Will Be Blood” was practically a character itself, while his recent work on Tran Anh Hung‘s “Norwegian Wood” — the soundtrack is set for a March 8th release — found him moving in some different directions.
As for Ramsay, she seems to have an impeccable ear for music. The underrated Rachel Portman scored her debut feature “Ratcatcher” while “Morvern Callar” was blessed with a stellar soundtrack boasting acts such as Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, Broadcast, Can, Stereolab and more (the disc ranked on our best soundtracks of the decade). Ramsay also directed the memorable music video for Doves‘ “Black And White Town” which you can see below.
We couldn’t be more thrilled that Greenwood is working on ‘Kevin’ and we hope it also shines the spotlight on a director who is long overdue for broader recognition. The film is currently in post-production and no word yet on when it will hit, but we don’t think Cannes is likely at this point — a fall festival run is seeming much more probable.