I never knew that day will come so soon (read the last para of my last post).

Today, a super mega budget movie borrowed the soundtrack from our ARR’s score!! Nicolas Cage’s movie ‘Lord of War’ uses our ARR’s Bombay theme. When Nicolas cage gets arrested in Africa – the sun sets down, we hear Bombay theme in the background – just the full theme, not even a remix.

There you go – as far as I know thats the first time a major Hollywood movie used music from our movies! ARR has made us proud

As Manoj points out in the comments, the film makers did obtain the rights from Universal Music (India). It was funny the way they gave credits in the end titles (in the actual movie, not in IMDB) – The title card read as “Mumbai Theme Music” not “Bombay Theme Music” – such political correctness. It reminded me of the time when Bombay was renamed, my alma mater didn’t want to change its name from ‘IIT Bombay’ to ‘IIT Mumbai’ – so they called it : IIT Bombay, Mumbai

No no – don’t jump to conclusions – nobody ripped off the famous ‘Sex and the City’ tune.

Well, ripping off music, themes and tunes are nothing new in our side of the hemisphere. Our Deva dutifully copied ‘Primal Fear’ (Vaali), ARR from ‘Bewitched’ (En Swaasa Katre) and the list extends on and on. Even I have heard some 60′s classical tunes (from old black and white movies) stolen completely from American 30′s music.

So imagine my surprise when I was watching Ang Lee’s ‘Yin shi nan nu’ (1993), and halfway into the movie I heard it – The famous theme tune from Sex and the City. Back to the initial question – yes, nobody copied from ‘Sex and the City’, but ‘Sex and the city’ has completely ripped off the tune from Ang Lee’s Chinese movie – Not just a few notes, the whole damn tune!

Undoubtedly ‘Sex and the City’ has the most infectious theme tunes, a tune which I keep humming all day (until recently replaced by another HBO tune from ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’, which itself was plagiarized with permission from a Bank commercial). Either way its one of the great tunes on TV today. Digging further, it seems that HBO is actually being sued by the guy who originally composed the tune for the Chinese movie.

I just dream of a day when a western MD rips off our music (for effect, maybe an Annu Malik or Deva tune) – and our musicians take a Warner Bros or a DreamWorks to court – yes, that would be the day!

Listen to a portion of the clip here

Just when I thought AR Rahman hit rock bottom with his lackluster score for Aamir Khan’s Rang De Basanti – I heard his endearing music for Deepa Mehta’s Water. Though it has some hangover from their previous collaboration 1947 Earth. Here he re-establishes his ‘born supremacy’ over Period music – period!

Currently listening to Paris based Music Director Niru’s debut tamil film score for ‘Kalabak Kadhalan’.

Fresh music.

But I am afraid to see who is the hero of the film is – I just don’t want to find out its ‘SJ Suryah’, and start hating the music… I hope its a ‘Farhan Aktar type’ of new director. Tamil films badly need freshness.