> Does anyone else have any particular favorite silent scenes in movies? Why? What is it that makes silence so effective?
>
> Ste "And if anyone dislikes silence in movies, I'd be interested in hearing from them" phen

Apparently, modern-day American moviegoers don't relate well to silence. In my absolute favorite animated film, Castle in the Sky Laputa (directed by Hayao Miyazaki, widely regarded as THE master of animation in Japan), basically the whole first scene of the movie is silent. It's an airship moving through the night sky, and the only sounds there are is the occasional sound of the airship's engines and the wind... it really works quite well. Many other scenes in the movie are like this, but this one is the one I remember best.

However, Disney has the distribution rights for it here, and they asked the original composer (Jo Hisaishi, who has done the music for most Studio Ghibli films including Princess Mononoke) to re-do the soundtrack. Part of that is understandable, since Laputa is a little dated musically in some parts (mid-1980s, there's some obvious use of synthesizers that sounds a bit tacky today) but they also requested the addition of musical tracks to cover the music-less scenes. To quote what Hisashi said in an interview, "according to Disney's staff, foreigners feel uncomfortable if there is no music for more than 3 minutes."

Well, whatever. I remain a fan of letting a film remain silent if it wants to be. Real life doesn't have a soundtrack.

Sosi"although if it did, you could tell when your big moment was coming up or something"qui