Film Score Friday 9/29/00
by Lukas Kendall
The official Star Wars website has released more information
and a track list for the Ultimate Edition of the Star Wars: Episode
One: The Phantom Menace soundtrack, due November 14 (not the 7th) from
Sony Classical. See http://www.starwars.com/episode-i/news/2000/39/ultimate.html.
Now available from Super Tracks is The Adventures of Conan, featuring
the orchestral score by Basil Poledouris to the Conan attraction at Universal
Studios, adapted from his themes to the Conan theatrical films. Forthcoming
are Battle of the Planets (1978 animated series, Hoyt Curtin and
Bob Sakura) and promotional CDs of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
(Mark Mothersbaugh) and The Duellists/Riddle of the Sands (Howard
Blake).
Super Collector has acquired
copies of deleted CDs on the late Pendulum label, including Clash of
the Titans (Laurence Rosenthal, with three previously unreleased tracks)
and Dune (Toto, original score, remastered to correct tape damage
on the initial pressing).
Lalo Schifrin Dinner
Tickets to the Film Music Society's Career Achievement Award dinner
for Lalo Schifrin are still available! The event is next Friday, October
6th at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel here in Hollywood. Jerry Goldsmith
has been confirmed as a guest speaker -- reserve your seat today to hear
Jerry praise Lalo. Call the Society at 818-248-5775. See http://www.soundtrack.net/news/article/?id=142
for the complete press release.
Where Is John Barry?
From: Matt Perkins <mdperkins@ftnetwork.com>
Does anybody know what's happening with John Barry's long-time-in-the-works
Celtic non-film music album? I've been hearing about it on-and-off for
the last year or more but the news seems to have dried up. I'm dying to
hear some new work from the great man - it seems as if he's practically
retired from the film-scoring scene due to, I guess, his no longer being
able (or willing) to stomach the kind of studio politics and interference
with his music that seems to be part-and-parcel of the aggressive marketing
machine of Hollywood music departments. Whilst I admire Barry's integrity
in sticking to his principles and his take-no-crap attitude (in this sense
he's become almost like a latter-day, less volatile, Bernard Herrmann!)
the ever-lengthening gaps between his film-scoring assignments is, I feel,
a major loss to movies (and to his legion of fans).
I had a Barry blow-out last night ("Across the Sea of Time",
"Ruby Cairo", "The Beyondness of Things" -truly gorgeous,
achingly beautiful stuff) and it struck me how sorely I'm missing his uniquely
soulful, hauntingly melancholy music from the current movie scene (his
rare musical/dramatic gifts grow ever more precious in this age of hideous,
soulless, anonymous, wall-to-wall Zimmer-esque noise that passes for so
much film music these days).
Or if we can't have new Barry stuff, is there any update on the
Bond re-issues - ie: is EMI going to give us some previously unreleased
stuff? I'd trade half the discs in my collection to have that gorgeous
OHMMS cue of Bond's dinner-scene with all the 'sixties chicks -vintage
haunting/sexy Barry bliss.
Or Lukas, dear friend and fellow Barry-ite (you have fine taste
sir): any chance of another Barry disc or two in your lovely Silver Age
series? "The Dove", or "The Last Valley", or "Walkabout"
- my God, the list of exquisite gems is endless. "The Black Hole"
would be cool too, but I wouldn't envy you trying to open negotiations
with Disney on that...
The bottom line is: Where are you John?? Come back to us - we need
you!!
John Barry is currently scoring the film Enigma for director
Michael Apted, a romantic thriller with Kate Winslet written by Tom Stoppard.
There is no news on his reported Celtic album for Decca.
About the EMI Bond reissues, the word now is that they are still tied
up in legal problems between MGM and EMI and such reissues are still no
closer to happening. Sorry!
Sadly we don't have any Barry CDs in the works here at FSM. But we did
release Deadfall
(on our Retrograde label, distributed to stores) and Monte
Walsh (as a limited edition Silver Age Classics release), a pretty
solid pair of which copies are still available.
Williams Opera Non-News
A few weeks ago reports circulated that John Williams would be writing
an opera for The Los Angeles Opera in a few years. Williams told the Boston
Globe's Richard Dyer on September 15th that such talks were merely preliminary
and that he wouldn't begin a project for a couple of years -- it happens
at all. He did say that if he were to do an opera, the work "would
be on the light side, which may be a good thing; so much contemporary opera
takes itself so very seriously."
Williams also said in the article that he recently did a "hot new
arrangement" of The Star-Spangled Banner to be conducted by Seiji
Ozawa for a Boston Red Sox game but it wasn't able to happen this season.
FSM CDs
Our newest FSM CD is out and it's The
Undefeated/Hombre, two westerns by composers seldom represented or
discussed (Hugo Montenegro and David Rose, respectively). Here's some feedback:
From: "Randy Derchan" <rderchan@visualdatainc.com>
I really love "The Undefeated" soundtrack album. Very
lush and musical. I had an old bootleg LP from years back, but those sound
like crap anyway and don't represent the score properly. Funny thing about
Montenegro. I would really love his sixtie-ish scores for the two Matt
Helm flicks, "The Ambushers" and "The Wrecking Crew".
Of course those are Columbia Pictures. Another unrepresented composer.
From: "L. Rob Hubb" <blackrose@valise.com>
Got THE UNDEFEATED/HOMBRE the other day... not much being said about
them, so I thought I'd add something:
... on the whole, it's a really solid disc that I normally wouldn't
have picked up if I'd just saw it in the store. I've seen both films only
partially, so nothing musically really stuck in my head regarding them.
I'm familiar with both Montenegro and Rose's television work - Montenegro
always struck me as a dilittente, for some reason; I'd never heard much
of his film work - UNDEFEATED does make me want to reverse that thinking;
the sound is big, but not quite 'epic'... best description that comes to
mind is a melding of Bernstein/Moross with some slight pop overtones.
David Rose is mostly known for "The Stripper" and BONANZA/LITTLE
HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE/HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN; I know he did other albums (he
got mentioned a lot in the 'Elevator Music/Cocktail Nation subculture that
was the rage 5-6 years ago) - HOMBRE is worlds away from that side. I'll
have to take a few more listens.
I was fairly lukewarm about the titles when announced, but this
was a nice surprise; FSM has yet to make a misstep in their selection of
titles (which means probably giving them a lot of my money in backordering
the earlier titles).
I have to admit, you guys are doing a great service and actually
'walking the walk' when it comes to the archival purpose of these discs...
have been following these ongoing discussions regarding labels/bootlegs/score
availability for the past few months, and while the discussing of minutae
is amusing to read every now & then, life is too short to spend bickering
over slight changes in tempo, or bashing composers - time better spent
enjoying the music I've discovered/in process of discovering. Call it aging,
I guess... Regarding the 'mystery track' - could it possibly be some music
for LOST IN SPACE? There's something about it that's vaguely familar.
For the uninitiated, we found on the master tapes to Hombre music
marked as "Trailer." It turned out to be some Fox library music
we could not identify as well as a snippet of Jerry Goldsmith's The
Loner theme, a television score we previously released along with Stagecoach
as our first CD. NOBODY knew what this library music was but we put it
on the CD anyway -- does anyone know? It does have that "Lost in Space"
sound but is not specifically from that show.
Die Hard Question
From: Sander de Regt <sderegt@globalxs.nl>
I was watching 'Die Hard With A Vengeance' today and I had the feeling
that when you get to the frontal shot where John McClane's dumpster truck
is being chased by the water from the dam I could hear the first few notes
from Singin' in the Rain mixed in there with the score. Was that just me
or did any of you hear it as well? I thought it would be kind a cool if
it actually is.
I don't remember this exact scene but the Die Hard scores do
feature a lot of amusing pop-culture quotes, especially "Singin' in
the Rain." This originated because director John McTiernan and composer
Michael Kamen chose to reference both Beethoven's Ninth and "Singin'
in the Rain" in the original Die Hard (1988) as a tribute to
the music associated with Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
Mail Bag
From: Michael Heintzelman, Bugjuicestudios@aol.com
For those who recognized the music on "Shark Attack" cue
from the Decca release of Jaws--you absolutely correct. The music was used
for the regular trailer for the film (if you've had the box set of the
movie on laserdisc, you probably recognized it immediately).
From: giles edwards <gilesfde@yahoo.co.uk>
The only other of William Ross's score available is THE EVENING
STAR. Lousy movie, beautiful score. Dont know if it's available any more
but if you hurry and live in UK there are two copies at TOWER RECORDS in
Piccadilly. A least there were as of Sat 26th September. He souns a lot
like Silvestri as a scorer - but then he has orchestrated him for so long
it's probably inevitable - just as Mark McKenzie sounds like Randy Edelman
by way of John Barry. Still, not a bad thing as the music is luscious!
Have a Chilling Weekend
The Exorcist scared up an impressive amount of money last weekend
-- not bad for a 27-year-old film. If you want the soundtrack
CD and don't want to buy the video package containing it -- use our
mail order store. We've got it.
Enjoy the autumn weekend...
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
| 
