Sunday, May 18, 2008

Glen Hansard and Markita Irglova ("Once")


The 2007 musical film "Once" and its soundtrack is the first collaboration between Glen Hansard (singer of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova, a young Czech musician. The film won an Oscar for Best Musical (although, to me, this movie does not fit my idea of a musical). Hansard and Irglova play the lead roles in the film of two street musicians who meet in Dublin, Ireland, write music together and fall in love. The movie is really well-done and charming. Zak posted a while back about this movie and said he didn't see what all the fuss was about. But anyway, I really like both the film and the soundtrack. So I recommend at least giving them a listen.


For those of you who are familiar with this movie or music, you might be interested in this interview with Hansard and Irglova on NPR's "Fresh Air." I found it to be really interesting and a good insight into their music writing and collaboration process. Listen to the interview here

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is truly beautiful music !

Anonymous said...

The film "Once" was NOT their "first collaboration." They had already worked together.

They didn't win "an Oscar for Best Musical"--the Oscar's don't even have an award for that. The song "Falling Slowly" won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Irglova isn't a "street musician"--her character never performs in the street.

Justin Wilmes said...

What did they collaborate on before? Record anything?

About the Oscar, point taken. I must've heard wrong about this.

And as for the street musician part-- who cares. More or less. They play together in an instrument store.

Anonymous said...

Whatever, "blogger"-nit. Dusty, you're doing a helluva job. Many thanks to you and Zak. As for "Once", I liked the film a lot. I had avoided it for a while because the "musical" tag turned me off but I agree with you, this is not a musical. It's a sweet movie about music that didn't sell out at the end like one would expect. Brilliant!

Kara said...

Yeah, that dude above is right about the small inconsistencies in yr post. No big deal though haha.

I saw the two of them open for Damien Rice under the name "The Swell Season" in late 2006. They released an album with the same name. Some of the stuff is in "Once" & some is not. The song that won best original song was also a Frames song from older albums, so there's earlier versions of that with a full band on a few of those albums. That was the big controversy of whether or not it was "original" if it was on Hansard's old albums.

BUT, if you're interested, here's that "The Swell Season" album. It's just as lovely as the soundtrack.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ajsbtrmdm3l

Anonymous said...

They worked together before in...oh wait, looks like Kara took care of that for me. Thanks!

As for the musical aspect, whether or not you want to admit it's a musical doesn't matter. It is a musical in the sense that the movie progresses by means of music. A lot of things aren't spoken because they are expressed in the songs, get it?

Finally, don't get your panties all twisted because I caught your errors. I just figured that if you are going to post something you might as well know what the hell you are talking about right?

Anyways, we are all here to steal and get music for nothing so rejoice! Yay for thievery!

Zak said...

"Blogger" it seems you have too much time on your hands, everybody makes mistakes, I'm sure i have done my share on this site. But, thats no reason to be an asshole, maybe you wouldn't be so conceited if you spent less time on the internet trying to find "errors" in everything, and more time interacting in the real world.

Zak said...

and BTW, you never explained what their previous collaboration was before ONCE. Remember Once was filmed much before it was released to major audiences, it took several years to get the financial backing to do a big release.

Anonymous said...

Did you not read Kara's post above mine? They have been collaborating since about 2005. And have you seen "Once"? It didn't necessarily require a lot of money to be made. But wait, I am being an asshole about details? Meh, I don't care.

But like I said, who cares? There were errors in the post, I caught them, no biggie. We are all here for one reason, to rejoice in the stealing and theft of music. Yay!

Justin Wilmes said...

You already said that

The Kid In The Front Row said...

amazing film :)