Songs of Praise

When I was picking the films I wanted to watch at the London Film Festival, I only had a 20-minute window  before the members' booking opened and, as such, I was doing it quite quickly. So much so that I saw the title of Miss Bala, assumed it was about a would-be beauty queen in mid-Wales, and skipped right over it. 

Today, though, I saw the trailer for Miss Bala and realised I completely mis-judged the film, not least because it is about a young woman in Mexico whose dreams of becoming Miss Baja California (I'm not sure why the film is called Miss Bala not Miss Baja; it may be explained in the movie) are interrupted by gangsters, murder, kidnapping and drugs, and other happy things.

From the trailer, it looks like an interesting and powerful thriller and I'm sad that two of the LoFiFest screenings clash with the two George Clooney films I'm going to see and the other is fully booked. I guess I'll just have to wait until it goes on general release at the end of the month.

Perhaps, though, I'm judging a movie too much by the soundtrack of its trailer because I really like the song used in the second half of the trailer. It has a very similar sound to Bat for Lashes and Florence + the Machine, both of whom I like a lot, but it's by an artist called Saint Saviour and the track is called This Ain't No Hymn. I downloaded it this afternoon and I've been listening to it a lot. 

I'm sure Morgan Spurlock's neuro-marketing expert would have something to say about how the song is bouncing off my amygdala and making me want to see the movie I associate with the song even more. There was also a free download of a song called Hurricanes on Saint Saviour's website, which is also good, although doesn't have the same effect on me as This Ain't No Hymn.