Watched Nancy Meyer's The Holiday this evening, and although overall I more or less enjoyed it as a romantic comedy, I was very pleased to see a surprise movie music twist to the story...

The Jack Black character is a film score composer, and the movie starts off with him composing a love theme for a scene he's working on. Later on in the film, he arrives at a house in his car with Morricone's Cinema Paradiso (if I remember correctly) playing on his car stereo. His girlfriend lowers the volume but he complains becuase 'the flute is the best part'. Later on in the scene the Kate Winslet character asks if he composed that piece and he says he wished - it's the great Ennio Morricone.

Later on, in a scene in a DVD score, Jack Black picks classic films off the shelf and hums their main theme to Kate Winslet, telling her how great these scores were. He starts with Chariots of Fire, then Driving Miss Daisy (which he hums suprisingly accurately), then Gone with The Wind, Jaws, the Graduate and finally he heaps praise on The Mission. He makes her promise to go rent The Mission just to listen to the score.

Soon afterwards, he sits at his keyboards to play her a piece he composed, but instead he plays the Raider's March, and Winslet immediately stops him and tells him that's not him, but John Williams.

I think this is a first... a major movie character who's a film music composer. I loved these scenes, and my girlfriend was a bit perplexed by my enthusiasm.

Peter