Last night's pairs figure skating competition had a lot of people going "Where HAVE I heard that song before?" particularly during
Amanda Evora and
Mark Ladwig's short routine, set to the "Portuguese Love Theme" from
Love Actually. (Ironically, this piece of music, which is used on 1 out of 5 romantic film trailers and in Oscar montages, is not actually on the soundtrack, nor available for purchase as a track. Grrrr.) Which made me think of two things I like: Olympic figure skating and film scores. When put together in the right way, they elevate each other to a new level of, well, misty eyes.
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There are several great ones here that come to mind:
Elvis Stojko's
martial arts-infused routine to the score from
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story in 1994 Lillehammer;
Jamie Sale and
David Pelletier, 2002 Salt Lake City,
in their shoulda-been gold routine to the theme from
Love Story;
Nancy Kerrigan's 1992
bronze-medalist routine to the iconic
Born on the Fourth of July theme, and so forth.
But there is one routine that stands out to me: The year was 1992 in Albertville, France, during the men's long program. An underdog named
Paul Wylie from the U.S., who was on his last Olympics and many thought had no business being on the team, came out and executed a near-flawless routine that stunned everyone including himself. Watch it again and I dare you not to get excited.
Wylie skated to selections from the
Henry V score, composed by Patrick Doyle. Complete with swordplay and Russian splits, I was so exhilarated after watching this that I went out to find the soundtrack even though I'd never seen the film. (Wylie also skated memorable routines to the scores from
JFK and
The Untouchables the following year)
NBC really should print across the screen the skaters' musical selections, because with such a large audience I'm sure plenty of people go searching for these tracks that move them to tears. Anyone else have any favorite movie-themed skating routines? --
Ellen
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