Film Score Friday 3/24/00
by Lukas Kendall
Today is my mom's birthday. Please send all happy birthday messages
to Mom@filmscoremonthly.com
for forwarding to my mother.
That's today's news! Enjoy the Oscar telecast on Sunday and if you don't,
blame Canada! My guess for the winner of the Best Score Oscar is Thomas
Newman for American Beauty, who of all of the people working today truly
does deserve it.
Mail Bag
From: John Rowland, Rang41@aol.com
Recently I caught a viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW, wonderfully
restored by Robert Harris and James Katz. I've seen REAR WINDOW many times
before, but never on the Silver Screen, so the whole experience was simply
fantastic.
My only disappointment was that Franz Waxman's great score didn't
receive a soundtrack release. I was hoping for one, since the original
recordings of VERTIGO were released upon that film's restoration a couple
of years ago, but to no avail. Just today (3-17-00) I picked up Vol. 3,
No. 1 of FSM's magazine (Superman coverage, etc.) and noticed that you
have REAR WINDOW in the "NOW PLAYING: Films and CDs in Current Release"
box on Pg. 6, with Waxman's credit, but unfortunately no label (which I
knew wouldn't be there, of course, but it was added salt to the wound).
Is there any reason why Waxman's score didn't receive a release, since
this would have been an opportune time to see to it.
It would be a great time, and I don't know why it did not happen...
suffice it to say that it is still the norm for a CD of an older movie
NOT to happen rather than to happen. So, what can I say? Hopefully this
and hundreds of other worthy scores see the light of day on CD but it's
going to be a long, slow process to say the least.
From: Stephane Michaud <s.michaud@videotron.ca>
I have to react to Andrew Shepherd's "corrections" in
last
Friday's page regarding Michel Legrand. First, Mr.Shepherd simply didn't
quote the right guy, as it was someone named C. Lauliac, not me, who talked
about Jean-Paul Rappeneau the week before ("Umbrellas Question-Answered")!
Secondly, he completely misinterpreted the quotes in his sentence, as this
Lauliac person just mentioned "Cyrano" and "Horseman on
the Roof" in brackets, as mere illustrations of this director's work,
NOT Legrand's! Anyone reading it the right way would have gotten it. And
thirdly, as much as I like Jean-Claude Petit's lovely"Cyrano"
score, beware: his blatant copy of Danny Elfman's BATMAN theme at one point
("La Porte de Nesles", 2:08), brass and all, remains thoroughly
unforgivable! But I still prefer this over his bland "Horseman"
any time: the latter, like the movie that inspired it, was a major critical,
commercial and artistic disappointment...
Sammys
See yesterday's
article...
From: Randall Derchan <DSPY007@aol.com>
The awards seem as mundane as the Oscars. From just looking at past
winners , it seems like the same awards. Should be called The Hammy Awards.
From: Cprokofiev@aol.com
Marc Shaiman, not Michael Kamen, co- wrote the music for the song
"Blame Canada" from "South Park". And, I'm glad the
song is among the Oscar nominees this year. It's quite satirical in my
opinion.
Free Enterprise Cameo
See Wednesday's
article...
From: Howard Liverance <Public_User_E2@public.lib.ci.clearwater.fl.us>
From: "Dennis Logsdon" <logied@mediaone.net>
Non film music topic!!! Guility we all are of liking our rubbing
elbow stories now and then. It was one of my favorite topics on the old
messageboard.
"LOCAL MAN MAKES GOOD IN HOLLYWOOD WITH COMUPTER STARTED FAN
MAGAZINE." Did that headline ever make it on the Island?
I didn,t always agree with your familiar writing approach but I
enjoyed some of your early articles on attending musical events when you
first arrived. Keep rubbing elbows, it rubs off on us.
From: Kyle Beatty <lounge@appleogue.net>
Whoever is promoting Free Enterprise must be doing a good job, because
I've been hearing about it from several unrelated vectors. Mostly from
the Shatner = campy fun crowd as well as the slightly-apologetic-but-Trek-enthusiast
crowd as well as the generalized geek crowd.
I am of course a member of all these demographics.
From: Adam Bromberek, DCJ45@aol.com
Today's (Wed.) column is one I was happy to see. I saw the movie
a while back and I also saw the credit for you guys, but I kept forgetting
to write and ask. The movie was a blast and now I have a reason to see
it again. No reason to apologize for this one. Thanks.
El Dorado
From: FoxMulderQ@aol.com
It's been a while since I have written in since conversation for
the last few months seems to have drfited away to outher scoring topics
and compsers that I've never had much interest in. But I couldn't stay
silent about "The Road To El Dorado" which I have to say I am
very impressed with. Yes it sucks that there are only three Hans Zimmer
cuts but what amazing cuts they are. He truly is one of the most talented
composers working today. He definately, to me anyway, seems more in his
element doing fun adventure like "El Dorado" over his last and
more serious animated outing "The Prince Of Egypt." Elton John
did an on/off job I thought. Both "El Dorado" and "Someday
Out Of The Blue" I think are truly incredible--up there with Phil
Collins "Tarzan" contributions. Unfortunately after those two
it tends to get pretty bland. But the point of this mini-review is that
there are some gems on this release and I was very surprised how much I
enjoyed it.
From the Earth to the Moon
From: "josh rocha" <joshrocha@hotmail.com>
I'm not sure if this request will come to any fruition, but I need
somebody to tell Tom Hanks to go to Amazon.com and to look at all the reviews
that appear for the "From the Earth to the Moon" score. Pass
this along to all the Tom Hanks, HBO, and Imagine Entertainment websites
that you know.
The series was incredible, the music (and when I say music I don't
mean the '60s rock music) composed for it was even better. However somebody
put out a soundtrack that was more like a Time-Life 60's anthology. See
what you guys can do about this. Like I said, pass it along. Maybe Mr.
Hanks will get word of this and do something about it. After all, he was
the Executive Producer.
Uh, see my above comment about Rear Window. Maybe if a hundred thousand
people wrote Tom Hanks his company would see fit to do a From the Earth
to the Moon score CD, but a couple dozen won't make much difference. Sorry!
CD Reviews
See
this column...
From: Sean Carpenter <SCarpenter@cpr.org>
Again appreciated your reviews today, particularly the information
on Reizenstein. Except for reading his name around the Mummy score, I'd
not heard of him before, but now I know he was a concert composer as well
- and in fact found two discs featuring his chamber music on Amazon as
a result of your article.
The more you connect the world of film music to other musical worlds,
the broader all our horizons become. Thank you.
From: joe@blow.com
Three Kings has been available from mp3.com for the longest time.
"exclusive to CDNOW" is, shall we say, incorrect?
I don't know... what would Spock say?
Visit Filmtracks...
For a review of FSM's CD of The
Flim-Flam Man/A Girl Named Sooner; the review is here: http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/flim_flam.html.
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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