Video of the Day: Air, “Sonic Armada”

The French avant-pop duo Air recently scored a restored and retinted version of Georges Melies “Le Voyage Dans La Lune” (A Trip to the Moon), an early masterpiece of science fiction most recently featured in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” and its source material, Brian Selznick’s “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” Air’s new soundtrack is available Feb. 7. This marriage of modernity with pre-talkie cinema recalls Giorgio Moroder’s colorization and new wave score for “Metropolis” back in 1984, but let’s be honest: Moroder’s soundtrack has aged dreadfully — what Moroder, the electro-disco producer who scored “Midnight Express” and produced much of Donna Summer’s early disco catalog, was doing producing Loverboy, Billy Squier and Pat Benatar is the stuff of cocaine-fueled 1980s nightmares. Where was Kraftwerk when you needed them?

Air is a great fit for Melies — “Sonic Armada” bodes well for the rest.
– Lang