incidental music spot of the day

A brief snippet of the intro to The Band's signature tune The Weight on the trailer for the new Tom Cruise apocalyptic sci-fi action adventure movie Oblivion. It's only ten seconds or so, but that's enough for it to be instantly recognisable, and also for me to be pretty sure that the version used in the film isn't the original studio recording as featured on the classic 1968 album Music From Big Pink. Nor is it the version by Smith that featured on the soundtrack album to Easy Rider after some contractual wranglings prevented the original being used - the one in the film is the original, slightly confusingly.

The Band also performed the song at Woodstock in 1969 but refused to allow any of their set to be used in the film or the album, supposedly because they were unhappy with the quality of their performance. So there's a bit of a history of pernickitiness about use of their material, which is probably why a soundylikey version ended up being used. There have been a gazillion cover versions, so it could be any of those.