Film Score Friday 12/8/00

by Lukas Kendall

Scoring Assignments -- some of these are old news but here's what is happening on the genre front for big upcoming movies:

John Williams is scoring the Harry Potter film, for which he just recorded an original theme for the trailer.

Don Davis -- not James Horner as previously believed -- will score Jurassic Park 3, making use of Williams's themes where appropriate.

Alan Silvestri will score The Mummy Returns -- not Jerry Goldsmith, who did the first one.

Elliot Goldenthal is scoring Final Fantasy, starring Alec Baldwin and based on the videogame.

In TV news, Richard Marvin is scoring all 13 episodes of Six Feet Under, a new HBO series by Alan Ball (American Beauty) with a theme by Thomas Newman.

Album News

Dan Jones' score to Shadow of the Vampire (starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe), about the making of the 1922 Nosferatu, will be released by Pacific Time Entertainment.

Varese Sarabande will release a soundtrack to Cast Away, but because the score is so short, the CD will be filled out with previously released Alan Silvestri music to other Robert Zemeckis films: Back To The Future I, II and III, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, What Lies Beneath, Romancing the Stone, Contact and Death Becomes Her. Release date is January 30, 2001.

FSM Site Updates

As we announced on Wednesday, we now have sound clips loaded -- finally -- for all the CDs we sell here on the site. We might have had some technical kinks on Wednesday but everything should work now. Please browse through the selections and we hope you support our efforts.

Also, another convenient innovation -- we've added recepient address fields to all of our order forms for people ordering GIFT subscriptions or CDs. Our secure-server order form is a breeze to go through -- please consider a gift for the movie music fan in your life... speaking of which...

Autographed Books

We're going autograph crazy for the holiday season!

In addition to Sound and Vision -- 11 copies of this new book are still available as of this writing (Thursday late PM) signed by both Jon Burlingame and foreword author Leonard Maltin -- we have:

A Heart at Fire's Center: the Bernard Herrmann biography -- 7 copies signed by Steven C. Smith on the inside blank first page: "I hope you enjoy this book -- Steven C. Smith."

The Music of Star Trek -- 4 copies (all we have in stock right now) autographed by our very own Jeff Bond: "Keep on Trekkin' --Jeff Bond." (Jeff is a humorist too.)

Film Music and Everything Else -- Charles Bernstein's book of essays on film scoring -- a couple dozen copies autographed on the title page.

As they say, operators are standing by... if our ordering forms give you any trouble, call us toll free at 1-888-345-6335 (overseas: 310-253-9595) or fax 310-253-9588.

Vertical Limit Sneak Peek

From: "Roman Deppe" <roman.deppe@planet-interkom.de>

Today I saw VERTICAL LIMIT at a press showing. Wow! It was such a rush! Definitely the most exciting and most powerful actionmovie of the year, if not even of the last years. For sure, several action sequences are the best I've seen in a long time and probably the whole movie would be if there wouldn't be some too many dialogue scenes. Of course, dialogue in an action movie is not necessarily bad and it is not in this film, but it just slows the movie down a bit at some points. You are just so grabbed by the action scenes, that you cannot wait until you return to the people in danger and just don't want to hear the rescuers at the bottom of K2 discuss the next plan.

Of course, you shouldn't take the whole thing too serious, (although the movie itself is serious and doesn't give you any jokes to laugh about), as most of the things which happen are not very likely (especially that mountain climbers would take Nitroglycerine with them). But director Martin Campbell keeps the tension in the action scenes and in Tunney's and Paxton's struggle for survival at such a high level, that you don't really think about the unlikely set-up of the story (besides that the story is quite good). Add a good cast, a thundering score by James Newton Howard, which deserves more than the 30 minutes on Vareses album and just amazing action scenes, which include several explosions, avalanches, storms, fights, helicopters (THE heartstopper), just everything you expect from an actioner like this.

The only bad thing is, that the FX are not as good as they could be and it's pretty obvious for most of the time that almost everything was shot in a studio (but it didn't bother me as much as the ridiculous sets and FXs in CLIFFHANGER did).

Don't miss this movie and score.

Total Recall

From: HKetkar@aol.com

After long time today I was remembered again why I am fond of scores: the listening experience of 'Total Recall' today was a treat !!! I am still so excited that I can hardly express my feelings..., the incredible sound, the really very good liner notes, the excellent performance of the orchestra and last but not least: the music !!!

After almost every cue I had to stand up and applaud Mr. Goldsmith !!! Robert Townson, especially his efforts, must be rewarded in some way, excellent !!! Gosh, this was real fun today and that is for me the most important thing while listening to filmmusic.

This music really deserves being called a masterpiece, really brilliant Mr. Goldsmith ! For me it this kind of composing is really art !!!

Mr. Kendall, can we expect a response on the fsm site, this 'event' must be discussed !!!

Are you nuts? Of course! This CD has been going non-stop at the FSM office -- Jeff Bond's comprehensive review will be printed early next week.

New Books

A couple of new books we're not carrying (at least not yet) here at FSM:

The Reel World: Scoring for Pictures is a new book by composer Jeff Rona. It was originally intended as a compilation of his Keyboard articles but grew into something much more comprehensive. Interviewed are John Williams, Hans Zimmer, James Newton-Howard, Mark Isham, Basil Poledouris, Marc Shaiman and Carter Burwell. Order the book from http://www.reelworld-online.com -- do it now and get your copy autographed by Jeff Rona at no additional charge.

Another new film music book is Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat and Tears of Writing for Cinema by David Morgan, published by Harper Collins. It should be available from amazon.com.

Elmer Bernstein at the Eames Gallery

From: Preston Jones

Thanks for the heads-up about Elmer Bernstein and the TOY TRAINS screening at the Eames emporium Sunday. Mr. Bernstein was his usual charming self, and the film, as always, was a treasure. Among the composer's remarks, as best I can recollect: "When you're in the performing arts and show business, you basically have only two periods: invisible, and visible. I was still in my invisible period when Charles and Ray Eames approached one of the greatest film composers of them all, Franz Waxman, about scoring one of their short films. Franz was too busy with features at that time, but he very kindly and graciously recommended me to the Eames. They invited me to meet them over dinner, and from the very first moment in the Eames' presence I never felt anything but visible."

(After the screening, during a discussion between the audience, Bernstein and Eames Demetrios, grandson of the Eames's, I noted the similarity between one of the TOY TRAINS effects-shots and the imagery in a production number in Coppola's FINIAN'S RAINBOW. Demetrios responded that the Eames family had never gotten any acknowledgment of their influence from Coppola, "nor from the makers of CONTACT for appropriating THE POWERS OF TEN," (another memorable Eames Short).

Today's L.A. Times Calendar has two articles about Ernst Toch, apparently undergoing a much-belated renaissance overseas. (Mention of Toch always puts me in mind of DR. CYCLOPS, which in turn recalls my naivete when, as a high school student on a Broadweay field trip, I posed this question to Albert Dekker after a performance in Robert Bolt's A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: "Do you enjoy getting a meaty part in a fine play like this, as opposed to something like DR. CYCLOPS?" The actor's reply: "Do you have any idea how much I was paid for DR. CYCLOPS? DR. CYCLOPS was one of the meatiest parts I ever had!"

Soundtrack.net has a photo from this event: http://www.soundtrack.net/news/article/?id=166

FSM in the News

Look for a FSM plug in the new January 2001 of Playboy of all things, where Leonard Maltin was nice enough to mention us in his Movies-Entertaining Gifts column.

Our Batman CD got a nice mention from Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool -- see http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=7609.

Also, see scifi.com for a review of the Batman disc by Jeff Berkwits of Asterism magazine: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/current/sound.html.

Link

Jeff Berkwits also passed on this link to an interview worth checking out. It's with Golden Age TV music director Irving Robbin. See http://www.slick-net.com/space/interviews/robbin.phtml.

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