Film Score Friday 11/17/00

by Lukas Kendall

Rhino will be reissuing Randy Newman's Ragtime score on CD, possibly adding tracks not included on the previous LP too.

There was a newspaper report in New Zealand saying that the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has been contracted to perform music for the soundtrack to the upcoming Lord of the Rings films (score by Howard Shore). No word on whether this means Shore's music or other material (source music, pre-records, etc.). If it is the score, that's good news for album fans as there are no re-use fees for New Zealand orchestras.

Congratulations to Alf Clausen for winning an "Annie" animation award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music in an Animated Television Production -- for The Simpsons, of course, episode "Behind the Laughter." The Simpsons also won for Outstanding Achievement in a Primetime or Late Night Animated Television Program.

Dave Grusin will be honored at the Santa Fe Film Festival on Thursday, November 30th at 7:30PM with a revival screening of Tootsie. See http://www.santafefilmfestival.com/grusin.html.

Varese Sarabande is reissuing Total Recall (Jerry Goldsmith) on December 5th -- The Deluxe Edition -- and here's the deluxe track list and credits, courtesy Varese producer Robert Townson:

TOTAL RECALL: The Deluxe Edition

Varese Sarabande 302 066 197 2

• 1. The Dream (3:32)
• 2. First Meeting (1:10)
• 3. Secret Agent * (:52)
• 4. The Implant * (2:41)
• 5. The Aftermath * (:30)
• 6. For Old Times' Sake * (3:00)
• 7. Clever Girl (4:30)
• 8. The Johnny Cab * (3:47)
• 9. Howdy Stranger * (2:00)
• 10. The Nose Job * (1:55)
• 11. The Space Station * (:47)
• 12. A New Face * (1:29)
• 13. The Mountain * (1:27)
• 14. Identification * (1:02)
• 15. Lies * (1:04)
• 16. Where Am I? (3:59)
• 17. Swallow It * (3:07)
• 18. The Big Jump (4:33)
• 19. Without Air * (1:15)
• 20. Remembering * (1:50)
• 21. The Mutant (3:16)
• 22. The Massacre * (2:34)
• 23. Friends * (1:40)
• 24. The Treatment (5:36)
• 25. The Hollowgram (5:36)
• 26. End of A Dream (5:46)
• 27. A New Life (2:22)

* World Premiere Release

• Music Composed and Conducted by Jerry Goldsmith
• Produced by Jerry Goldsmith
• The Deluxe Edition Produced by Robert Townson
• Performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra
• Orchestrations by Arthur Morton
• Music Mixed and Edited at CBS Studios, London and
• Studio One, Los Angeles by Bruce Botnick
• Music Editor: Ken Hall
• Mastered by Bruce Botnick
• Assistant to Mr. Goldsmith: Lois Carruth

Max Steiner's Now, Voyager: A Film Score Guide by Kate Daubney (a lecturer from the University of Leeds, England) is a new book now available from Amazon for $45. It's hardcover, 128 pages, published July 2000, Greenwood Publishing Group; ISBN: 0313312532. Here's the editorial description: "Max Steiner's contribution to the formulation of early Hollywood scoring techniques is significant, particularly through his music for King Kong (1933) and The Informer (1935). The Academy Award winning score for Now, Voyager reflects the maturation of the composer's understanding of the dramatic function of music in film. The primary resources incorporated in the analysis include, from the Max Steiner collection at Brigham Young University, Steiner's letters and scrapbooks and his unpublished autobiography Notes to You. In addition to contributing to the composer's own perspective on the music for this film and on scoring practice in general, these papers contribute to a broader debate about how films are interpreted and the part music plays in these schemes of criticism. This study of the film score occurs within the broader theoretical and historical debates currently characterizing film musicology and explores, from varied perspectives, how the score is meaningful and important to the film."

Tomorrow -- Saturday afternoon at 3:30PM -- there will be a Copland in Hollywood concert in Costa Mesa, California at Segerstrom Hall. Works include the first live orchestral performance of The City (documentary), as well as A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man. Call (714) 755-5799.

The Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra in Iowa is performing film music concerts on the 18th (Saturday, 8PM) and 20th (Monday, 7PM), music by Prokofiev (Lt. Kije), Korngold (Concerto for Violin and Orchestra), Herrmann (North by Northwest, Psycho), Williams (Schindler's List), and Rota (The Godfather). Free pre-concert talk at 7 pm (Nov. 18); see http://www.crsymphony.org.

John Mauceri is conducting the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, Germany in "Love and Death in Hollywood" on Sunday (19th, 8PM) and Monday (20th, 8PM). Program includes Herrmann (NxNW, Psycho), Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story), North (25-minute Cleopatra Symphony), Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia), Barry (Out of Africa), Morricone (Cinema Paradiso) and Rota (The Godfather, La Dolce Vita). See http://www.gewandhaus.de.

From: "Jeffrey Graebner" <jgraebner@mediaone.net>

You might be interested to know that the German version of Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.de) has the new "Twilight Zone: The Movie" CD listed. They will ship to the US and the price with international shipping appeared to come to around $30US.

The entire site is in German (which I don't speak) and there is no English-language version, but I didn't have that hard a time navigating through the ordering process since it is pretty much identical to the US version.

Hopefully this will be useful to your readers!

I've been out of town for the past two weeks so here are some of the letters that arrived in response to recent columns:

From: "Matt Manning" <mmanning@uk.packardbell.org>

Anyone catch the BBC's "Omnibus" on John Barry yet? Like most of the radio programmes about Barry and his music that I've caught in the past, (a BBC Radio-2 interview he did with one Ron Pickering some eight years ago is still the best one yet - Barry talks at length about more off-beat projects like "King Kong", "Day Of The Locust" and his rejected score for "Sinful Davy") the brief for "Omnibus" was make it as if the viewer didn't know who Barry was so there was a lot of familair ground covered here - "Goldfinger", "Out Of Africa" and "Dances With Wolves" predicatbly being the most covered. BUT this was still a terrific programme, a very noble one at that, seeing Barry at peace in his island retreat with his son (fishing in the harbour for fag-butts - you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it!). And one thing I didn't know before was the fact that Barry actually SANG with the John Barry Seven! (See him getting jiggy with it on "Six-Five Special" singing "You've Got A Way").

It was nice of Sydney Pollack to mention the wrongfully-forgotten "The Last Valley", a cue from which (probably "To The Shrine") he temp-scored the flying sequence in "Out Of Africa" with. But where was Bryan Forbes? Forbes was to Barry in the 60's as Franklyn J. Shaffner was to Goldsmith ("The Whisperers" and "Deadfall" are two of Barry's finest). Why wasn't Forbes interviewed? (I trust he's still alive!). Also, I noticed when the programme looked at the original James Bond theme, Monty Norman (who wrote the damn thing!) was never mentioned.

Still, a great and sometimes quite touching documentary. I thought Barry had had enough of scoring pictures but he concludes in the "Omnibus" programme that he'd be happy with scoring one really great movie a year. Thank goddness for that!

I didn't see this program -- I'm not in England -- but sat through Sony's "Moviola" snoozer of a documentary around 7 years ago.

From: "Randy Derchan" <rderchan@visualdatainc.com>

I find it very ironic that even in the Golden Age of Hollywood composers and critics were complaining about the very same things we do today, which is "leave the composer alone" and "these movie stinks".

Yes! That is what is amazing about movie criticism: it is ALWAYS the same, complaining about the inferiority of today's works and the decline of standards and quality. Randy is referring to the recent columns we reprinted of a 1930s newspaper columnist writing about film music.

From: Brooks Wachtel, WHY06@aol.com

I enjoyed Mr. Groveman's piece. Many film scores are "classical" and certainly many classical composers have worked, and flourished, in the medium.

Since Mr. Groveman is a violinist, I wanted to recommend a few superb violin concertos written by "film/classical" composers. Check out Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Concerto in D. Op.35 and Miklos Roza's Concerto Op. 24 and Sinfonia concertante Op. 29: II Tema con variazioni.

Most of the "golden age" composers came from classical music and, if you haven't given Korngold, Roza, Herrman, Newman, Tiomkin and company a try, they might appeal to you.

From: "thom tierney" <thomtierney@earthlink.net>

I'll ignore Wong's remarks on the film THE YARDS. The film itself is getting very good reviews from real film critics (by which I mean professionals). I read Film Score Monthly for it's film score reviews, not movie reviews.

I am mystifyed by his remarks of "an array of B list actors", however. Is he referring to Mark Wahlberg, coming off the A list hits, PERFECT STORM and THREE KINGS? Joaquin Phoenix, perhaps, coming off of the megahit GLADIATOR? Perhaps to the Oscar winning actresses, Ellen Burstyn (a good bet for a 2nd Oscar with REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) and Faye Dunaway, leading divas of 70's films but now at that age where they can no longer play the "girl"? Ahhhh, I'll bet it's James Caan, long past his glory GODFATHER days.

Shudder! Imagine having to put up with those mediocre B list losers when he could have had A list thespians like Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Lopez! Poor Cary, the humiliation you have to go through just to write a review!

From: Randy, DSPY007@aol.com

I love listening to the new "Police Story" soundtrack. It's one of the great Goldsmith television dramatic scores of the seventies. The main theme is reminiscent or the "Barnaby Jones" theme and many of the action cues are arranged like the very cool "The Last Run" score, with interesting vintage guitar and bass lines throught.

One of the highlights for me though is the inclusion of Richard Shores's arangements of Goldsmith's music. Shores is an incredible composer on his own right and any one familiar with his original scores from the "Wild, Wild West" will attest that. Police Story is the first soundtrack release of his music that I'm aware of. If anyone knows of any recordings available of his work, I would love to hear from you. I'd trade in half my Horner collection for some of the music previously mentioned. Maybe I will do it anyway. Just kidding. Horner's cool, but a great target these days.

Links

The DreamWorks SKG Fansite is now holding an online soundtrack contest, giving away 10 copies of The Legend of Bagger Vance courtesy of Chapter III Records. See http://www.spielberg-dreamworks.com/legendofbaggervance/Soundtrack_Contest.php

Visit www.soundtrack.net for a new interview with Tyler Bates, composer of the Get Carter remake.

Superfeats: The Ultimate Guide to John Williams' Superman Score is a lengthy article now available at ScoreSheet: http://scoresheet.tripod.com. Writes author Andrew Drannon, "It's got in-depth coverage of every compositional, leitmotivic, and orchestrational nuance of Williams' score, as well as discussions of the unreleased alternate cues (i.e. What do they sound like? Are they anything like the film versions?) and source music, almost 15 excerpts from the printed score, a poll, and sound clips."

Next week: Letters, reactions and rants about the new 2CD Phantom Menace release!

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