If there is any real competition to “Toy Story 3” in the Best Animated Feature race at this year’s Oscars it will be from DreamWorks Animation‘s “How to Train Your Dragon.” While it was certainly a box office success, the film also won over audiences and critics with the kind of praise that is usually only reserved for films from the Pixar braintrust. One of nicest touches in the film was the hiring of Sigur Rós frontman Jonsi to pen a tune for the film, marking a nice deviation from the standard practice of hiring a pop-star-of-the-movement, though upon further inspection, the move wasn’t totally out of left field. Dean DeBlois, co-director of “How to Train Your Dragon,” also directed the Sigur Rós tour documentary “Heima” (must watch if you’re a fan).
The resulting song, “Sticks and Stones,” is a wonderfully buoyant little tune that falls in line with Jonsi’s recent solo output that combines the dramatic sweep of Sigur Rós within a much more theatrically pop framework. And though we’re not sure why it took this long, the filmmakers have finally cut together a video for the song using clips from the film. Frankly, it seems kind of lazily pulled together, with not much in the way of syncing the rhythms of the song with the edits of the movie and definitely geared toward a late stage Academy voting push, but if it gives us another excuse to listen to the song we’ll take it. Check it out below. [Vulture]
