The Life Aquatic - soundtrack

[rschleicher]

Watched "The Life Aquatic" DVD the other day, and thought it had a pretty cool soundtrack. Essentially all of the music is David Bowie songs, mostly older Bowie. A couple/few are the original Bowie tracks, but many are more or less "performed live" by a character in the movie - in Portuguese, no less!

If you haven't seen the movie, this bears a bit of explanation: The movie is more or less about a Cousteau-like (only much stranger) ocean explorer-type, named Steve Zissou (played by Bill Murray). The cast is pretty interesting - others in the film include Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, and Angelica Huston (pardon any spelling errors). One of "Zissou's" boat crew is constantly strumming on a guitar, and singing songs in the background in Portuguese - which you recognize after a while as being all Bowie songs, mostly from Ziggy Stardust. One of the actual Bowie tracks used near the end of the movie is "Queen *****" off of Hunky Dory. I'd forgotten what a great song this is, despite being only "three chords and a cloud of dust".

As for the movie itself, it was pretty funny, but in a weird, interesting way - sort of in the vein of The Tennenbaums (same director, maybe?). For some reason I really noticed that the cinematography was great, as were the computer-generated underwater scenes with a variety of invented marine life.

 

[LCA]

I love this movie and yes, it is a Wes Anderson film which means a guaranteed great soundstrack (see Rushmore especially).

The Portuguese singer's name Sue Jorge (he's also in the movie) - his covers are great. In addition to all the Bowie stuff there is a great old Devo track, an Iggy and the Stooges track. Plus Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo, does most of the instrumental tracks.

 

[BostonMark]

I have that!

I bought it even before I picked up the movie DVD. I love the Bowie songs in Portuguese, but I like the rest of it too, very eclectic, just like Wes Anderson

 

[rschleicher]

Yeah, when you first start watching the movie, it takes a while before you realize that the character who is singing songs on the boat is doing all of these Bowie covers.

Interestingly, I had never heard the Bowie version of "Queen B*tch", until I watched this movie. (It is from the Hunky Dory album, which I never owned, although I was familiar with some of the other songs from it.)

This has become one of my favorite Bowie songs. Plus, it is easy to play.