Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Soundtracks pumped up to make up for bad movies

Friday, Feb. 18, 2000 | 8:49 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@vegas.com.

And still Hollywood continues to produce awful films. It's nothing less than a juggernaut, loaded with all the stinky ammunition Tinseltown has at its disposal: virtual-reality hokum, prison melodrama and trailers that begin with the deathless phrase "In a world ..."

Audiences in the United Kingdom are flocking to midnight showings of "The Sound of Music," with the songs captioned for the purpose of sing-a-longs. That's how ugly the situation has become.

How do you solve a problem like mediocrity? Easy: You just pump up the soundtrack. The worst film of 1999 -- "Dick," the film that caused me to lose all faith in Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com -- nevertheless had a half decent soundtrack. If you can't sell someone on your looks or conversation, pull your pants down.

Two new soundtracks do just that. The compilation soundtracks of "The Big Tease" and "The Beach" are drawn from a pair of teen-oriented films, one about a Scottish hairdresser, the other about ... two hours long, from what I hear. Truth to tell, I like the compilations so much that I'm afraid to see the movies that go with them.

"The Big Tease" was executive-produced by Nellee Hooper, the cat who makes Bjork sound like the second-weirdest mama on God's green Earth (no one will ever touch the lofty standard set by Mrs. Miller). The disc swings, but boy howdy, it's one wacky and elliptical swing.

A Rip-Off Artist remix of Dean Martin and Julie London's "Sway" is cool and mysterious enough as not to be blasphemous. High Jinx turn "California Dreamin' " into a wild house stomp, and Fantastic Plastic Machine's exotic reading of the Eurythmics' "There Must Be An Angel (Playin' With My Heart)" would do Martin Denny proud.

Terrific tracks from Groove Armada, Roy Budd and Ruff Driverz round out a wonderfully mixed bag. "The Big Tease" is the most eclectic cocktail party mix of the new year, and the most symbiotic meeting of house/techno and space age pop beats I've yet heard. It deserves to become a cult hit, even if the film bombs.

Ditto "The Beach." I have a profound respect for "Beach" director Danny Boyle -- he made "Trainspotting" and "Shallow Grave," two of the most atmospheric films of the past 10 years. So what if "A Life Less Ordinary" was plodding tripe, and "The Beach" looks like more of the same? It's all about the atmosphere -- and "The Beach" soundtrack immerses you in that cold blue air, holding you in place until you take a lungful of it.

Actually, there's a bit of a funny coincidence for the reviewer: I was listening to Moby's gorgeous track "Porcelain" on the beach at Phi Phi Leh -- the South Thailand island where "The Beach" was filmed -- last November. Having been there and done that, I can say that Moby's track, and Underworld's percolating "8 Ball" truly belong on that beach. The rest of the songs, God love them, aren't from this planet.

Barry Adamson's chilling "Richard, It's Business as Usual" places "Beach" star Leonardo DiCaprio in a miniature "Apocalypse Now," "on patrol in the Delta." It's better than it has any right to be, as is the Angelo Badalamenti/Orbital collaboration "Beached."

Imagine a standard "tropical paradise" theme, fitted with android parts and topped with DiCaprio's disembodied brain, and you'll have an idea of what to expect. It's a right treat, and illustrates once again how much Orbital's Brothers Hartnoll deserve a soundtrack all to themselves. All that's needed is a movie written around their work, after the fact. That's the way it's done these days, anyway.