Film Score Hanukah 12/22/00

by Lukas Kendall

The 58th annual Golden Globe nominations are out. Here are the music-related nominees:

Tan Dun - CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

Maurice Jarre - SUNSHINE

Ennio Morricone - MALENA

Rachel Portman - CHOCOLAT

Marty Stuart, Kristin Wilkinson, Larry Paxton - ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

Hans Zimmer, Lisa Gerard - GLADIATOR

"I've Seen it All" - DANCER IN THE DARK; Music by Bjork, Lyrics by Lars Von Trier, Sjon Sigurdsson.

"My Funny Friend and Me" - THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE; Music by Sting and David Hartley, Lyrics by Sting.

"One in a Million" - MISS CONGENIALITY; Music and Lyrics by Steffan Olsson

"Things Have Changed" - WONDER BOYS; Music and Lyrics by Bob Dylan

"When You Come Back to Me Again" - FREQUENCY; Music by Garth Brooks, Lyrics by Garth Brooks, Jenny Yates

The Golden Globe Awards will air live on NBC on January 21. See www.goldenglobes.org for a list of all of the nominees.

Bernstein Concert

This came in too late for the magazine we're next finishing but we wanted to pass the news along via our website. Richard Kaufman will conduct a "Tribute to Elmer Bernstein" with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on January 5, 6 and 7, 2001. To Kill a Mockingbird, Hawaii, Heavy Metal, Hollywod and the Stars (TV series theme), The Great Escape, and The Magnificent Seven will be among the pieces performed. Bernstein himself is scheduled to make a guest appearance.

Chapter III Classics

Chapter III's next batch of releases from the MGM Records catalog include some Rozsa goodies: WHERE EAGLES DARE (1969, Ron Goodwin); EL CID (1961, Miklos Rozsa) THE VIPs (1963, Miklos Rozsa); BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL (1968, Riz Ortolani) coupled with ZIGZAG (1970, Oliver Nelson); HOTEL PARADISO (1966, Laurence Rosenthal) coupled with THE COMEDIANS (1967, Laurence Rosenthal). Street date is March 6, 2001.

Mail Bag

From: Stephane Michaud <s.michaud@videotron.ca>

How come the new Deluxe Edition CD of Total Recall, Goldsmith's hurricane-of-a-score, at a generous length of 74 minutes, still doesn't seem to include that wonderful cue played briefly at the beginning of the film, after Lori (Sharon Stone), worried of what it could trigger in her husband's (Schwarzenegger's) mind, switches channels from Mars TV news to a bucolic landscape, a track full of fluttering melodic lines and dreamy LEGEND-like electronics? Maybe it has been discarded because it has no build-up per se, and sounds perhaps like fake source music, but God forbid, it has always been one of my favourite moments from the score, and I'm disappointed that, in what purports to be the definitive version of this work, the producers - Mr. Goldsmith himself, namely - managed to deprive us of that cue, short as it is, again...

As for Laurence Rosenthal's mythical CLASH OF THE TITANS reviewed in yesterday's column, I have to add it is worth much, much more than Jeff Bond's assessment! From the moment I heard it 19 years ago when the movie opened, blasting from the poor overworked mono speaker of the drive-in I attended, to my old overplayed copy of the CBS LP, to its new digital incarnations, each note of this full-blown-symphony-disguised-as-a-film-score (much like, say, John Williams' Romantic DRACULA), with its magical drive, Wagnerian grandeur and breathtaking coda, is engraved in my heart, mind and soul forever. Flawlessly orchestrated, performed and recorded, it is every bit as rousing and priceless as any big-time soundtracks of its era, and deserves a place at once in your collection. Along with his strikingly beautiful RETURN OF A MAN CALLED HORSE (geez, what should we do to get a CD of this one???), it shall remain, in my opinion, this composer's finest hour. Believe me, they just don't do'em like that anymore...

From: Adilson Aquino, "Always Discos Ltda" <always@uol.com.br>

re: our recent CD review of Grand Prix:

I don't know what happens with the person that written in this site or magazine about what they don't knew. I always had read about the perfection of scores of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Hans Zimmer and anything else, but the scores of Maurice Jarres always is wrong, is bad, is incorrect or so many things that I couldn't to remember anymore. I ask you Jason Comerford, are you a musician? Do you really understand what is correct or not for a movie? I don't think so, First and enough, Grand Prix is a great and very appropriate score, yes! like all scores that Maurice has composed for almost 50 years in Film Music, I know what it means ? I need to answer ? So, think well and try to refine your taste before write things that you don't know and you didn't live, Grand Prix was very important and autentic when it was done and still now is a very effective music for where it was done.

I want to congratulate Adilson Aquino on the occasion of his 5,000th letter to Film Score Monthly praising Maurice Jarre. I love Jarre too!

From: Frank Pepito <frankp@jmpcreative.com>

I've been meaning to let you guys know... I received my BATMAN soundtrack in the mail a couple of weeks ago and it is absolutely incredible. I bought PATTON from you when that came out, having last heard that record about twenty years ago myself (Thanks for the V-S review, by the way, I'm glad I didn't buy it in favor of your CD). Now, you guys producing a soundtrack for this film and Nelson Riddle's music was a great idea. I love the CD!!!

I don't have any ideas for new CD's, but it sure is a pleasant surprise to find you guys doing one that's a home run for me. Keep up the excellent work!

From: "Rowell Gormon" <imaginator@lynxus.com>

Thanks for mentioning one of my music heroes, Hoyt Curtin...who never got enough credit for all he did to make limited animation work. i especially loved what he did for the original Jonny Quest series (and would love to have you folks take a crack at the complete library of cues for that one sometime).

Also, thanks again for taking the trouble to do quality checks on the recent batman cd BEFORE it was shipped...rather than having to take care of the problem once it became a problem. maybe your staff should consider holding seminars for corporate giants like Ford and Firestone? anyway, your attention to putting out a quality product more than offset the wait for the cd (which was great fun to listen to when it did arrive, by the way).

Link

ASCAP.com is currently featuring an audio portrait of Simpsons composer Alf Clausen and his music from two Rhino Simpsons albums. See http://www.ascap.com/audioportraits/audioportraits.html

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com