Film Score Friday 11/2/01

I just attended the premiere DVD screening of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Director's Edition at Paramount Pictures. Cast members William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig and George Takei were in attendance, along with director Robert Wise, Jeffrey Katzenberg (a Paramount executive at the time of the original production), and the restoration team, Michael Mattesino, David Fein and Daren Dochterman. Plus a whole bunch of sci-fi luminaries, and the original six-foot model of the Enterprise itself. A pretty weird site to see this icon of Americana on the middle of a buffet table....

The new edition of the film incorporates footage from the theatrical and television cuts, but subtly trims and shapes the material to make it flow better as a movie -- and adds some needed special effects which were incomplete at the time of the film's release in December 1979. It does not exist as a film print -- being produced for home video release only -- but the DVD projection was impressively clear.

It's a must-get DVD -- available shortly.

Just when it seemed John Barry would never, ever return to the James Bond series, the composer recently appeared on BBC TV and hinted that he'd like to come back for Bond 20. The exchange was very cryptic, but it is possible that Barry has assembled demos for the film's producers. Barry said that everything was in the "early stages" and added, "I think one would bring a freshness to it now, you know, having been away and done so many other things in between time. It might be a fun thing to do, on the other hand it might not -- we'll see."

David Arnold's representatives confirmed that as far as they know, Arnold is signed as the composer for the next Bond movie, having scored Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. Then again, Arnold was going to do The Patriot, and was replaced by John Williams...thanks to Stephen Woolston for the scoop.

Personally, I found the last two Bond movies so grotesque and overblown that I don't know how John Barry's style would possibly be still appropriate. It would be like serving fine wine at McDonald's.

John Van Tongeren has won his second Gemini award from Canada's Television Academy, this one for Best Score for a Dramatic Series, "Simon Says" from The Outer Limits. Van Tongeren won last year for the 100th episode of The Outer Limits, "Tribunal."

Located and sent in by everybody's favorite Hollywood newspaper archivist, Gary Hamann:

2/1/1947 HCN

EVEN MUSIC IN DUEL FILM CALLED SPICY

By Aline Mosby

Parents, if you intend to keep your children from seeing Duel In the Sun, you'd better not let 'em hear it either.

Even the music in the film is sexy.

The composer, Dimitri Tiomkin, told us so.

"It's sensual, full, round, exciting and full of meaning, but subtle and obvious," he said.

He's not worried, though, about feeling the long arm of the censor. The average movie-goer, he said, won't notice the pulsy notes unless he reads this first, which puts you a step ahead of the guy who didn't.

"The music contributes just as much passion to the picture as the action and dialogue," Tiomkin explained. "But it's blended so well that you won't notice it's sexyòit's just background."

There was a mighty fuss kicked up hereabouts after the Duel premiere, so the movie is being toned down before it reaches your family theater. Tiomkin's music got by, but some of the action didn't.

The cut scenes reported included those in which some actors, including a preacher, cast longing glances at sloe-eyed Jennifer Jones. Those scenes weren't set to music, so Tiomkin's suggestive tunes remain intact.

"There's nothing wrong with sensual music, anyway," Tiomkin insisted. You can hear sex in a lot of long-hair tunes.

"Listen to Ravel's 'Bolero' and Richard Strauss' 'Don Juan,'Ç suggested Mr. T., but we detected a not of caution. "They're based strictly on sex."

From: "Yannick Fortin" <egopire@hotmail.com>

I was recently perusing Wendy Carlos' website (www.wendycarlos.com) and came across her summary of the current state of her attempts to get a remastered TRON score released (http://www.wendycarlos.com/faqs.html), which I have pasted in below:

Q: When will the CD to TRON be released? (Note the other variations on this most common request below...)

A: The short answer is: when Disney permits it. We've made several good attempts to suggest to them that a definitive new remastered edition, Hi-D and ultra-polished as all our other ESD releases have been, is way overdue. So far it's been rather like the old joke about getting the mule's attention: we've not found a large enough 2 x 4 to do the job yet. But we do have other ideas we're trying to explore. I wish I could tell you some of the absurdities and frustrations this has brought about, but let's leave it at that right now. You possibly can help, if you write to Disney to express your impatience and show that there are enough of us out here to make it worthwhile for the sleeping giant to scratch our tiny itch. Who to write there is anyone's guess, an exercise in creativity and intelligence, to be sure.

I think it might be a good idea to do a story on this in Film Score Daily, just to get some publicity for this project. I'm sure you people know or can find out who to contact at Disney... maybe with some extra publicity and a valid target at Disney to pester, we might see this happen, perhaps in connection with the 20th Anniversary DVD Edition of TRON in January? One can only hope...

I would LOVE to have a Tron CD release, but as much as I appreciate Carlos's efforts, and past releases on her label, Disney is unlikely to license to any outside label -- no matter how many letters they receive. Vertical integration, baby!

See Wednesday's column for an interesting piece:

From: "Karl Morton IV" <kmiv@ix.netcom.com>

The Liliane Covington interview was one of the most enjoyable things I've seen on your site since I can remember! Thanks so much for resurrecting it and I hope you can dig up more of these people in the future. Mmmmm, the stories they could tell, the sacred cows they could slaughter - especially if you find a particularly elderly and loose-tongued individual.... ;)

From: "Lester Sullivan" <lsulliva@xula.edu>

Your most recent Lost Issue Wednesday (October 31), an interview with Liliane Covington, who performed in the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra, is a wonderful thing. Ms. Covington's comparisons of Steiner and other composers are fascinating, and, as much as I enjoy Tiomkin's music, something about it--I don't know if it is its Day-Glo colors, peculiar structure, or marked aggressiveness--always made me suspect that he wasn't the nicest kind of guy, which she seems to confirm. Every time FSM does one of these things, it makes a major contribution to history.

See Roman Deppe's interview and review of this score:

From: "John Takis" <takisjoh@msu.edu>

To begin with, in my review of the soundtrack CD I never called "Metropolis" the "best anime ever" (I haven't even seen the film!) ... only that it had the potential to be the biggest "mainstream" anime to hit American theaters since "Princess Mononoke."

Also, I regret to inform you that you have advertised a bootleg CD. Ever Anime is a bootleg-producing company based out of Hong Kong, NOT Japan, that does get a pretty wide distribution. If you really want to support the film and Marco d'Ambrosio, buy a copy of the original. The real label is Avex Mode, Catalog No. AVCA-14161. There were two pressings. The first featured limited edition packaging and a booklet and is out-of-print, but the standard release features the exact same music. Both are available from www.amazon.com -- just look up "Vampire Hunter D."

From: "Jason Strohmaier" <jstroh@wam.umd.edu>

Agh, bootleg alert! In your review of Marco d'Ambrosio's Vampire Hunter D soundtrack, you listed its distributor as Ever Anime and its catalog number as A8-1368. Ever Anime, along with others like Son May and Archer Records, is a bootleg company based in Taiwan which creates illegal copies of CDs and sells them at relatively cheap prices. EA, SM and all the rest have been the bane of the anime and game music community for a while now. Some of the first Japanese CD stores carried only Son May CDs, which meant that many of us bought the bootlegs without realizing that they were fraudulent merchandise.

The authentic version of the new Vampire Hunter D soundtrack is AVCA-14214. It can be found at certain Japanese CD stores including CDJapan (www.cdjapan.co.jp). Hopefully readers will see this before deciding to buy a bogus copy.

Mea culpa! I did not know.

John also added the following about another recent anime production:

From: "John Takis" <takisjoh@msu.edu>

The recently released Japanese animated film "Metropolis" will be released stateside on a limited basis in January of 2002, NOT this November (as previously announced in my soundtrack review.) You can go to the new website at www.metropolis-movie.com to see if it will be playing in a city near you. There is a trailer available for download which features a decent cross-section of music from the soundtrack. The website also reveals that Ray Charles' classic song "I Can't Stop Loving You" will receive prominent use in the film. It's probably safe to expect a DVD release soon after "Metropolis" finishes its limited-engagement run.

The "Metropolis" trailer on the new "Final Fantasy" DVD is the original theatrical trailer from Japan. For some reason, the DVD producers decided to eliminate the original trailer soundtrack (probably because of the Japanese dialogue -- horrors!) Hence the horrible techno-vamp you hear is tracked in, and bears NO RESEMBLANCE to the film's actual score! When you watch the trailer, I advise you to kill your DVD audio and pop in a Ray Charles CD. This is NOT the same trailer that is currently on the official website! If you want to see the it with the original audio (which is from the film), you can find a download in the trailer section of http://movie-asia.de/ The site is in German, but it's pretty easy to navigate for English-speakers.

From: mmee1541 <mmee1541@postoffice.uri.edu>

I read the article "So you want to be a Film Composer" and I must say I'm definetly glad I did. I am a freshman at the University of Rhode Island, and I had planned to transfer to USC next year as a film scoring major, but I just recently found out that they only accept about 8 new students per year, and that because it is a four year program, transfer students are rarely accepted. That really discouraged me. I had put so much energy towards going to this school that I didn't think about other options. Now, I might be considering going to Berklee in Boston. After reading this article I now know what it REALLY takes to be successful, and Im glad I have gotten rid of all those preconceptions about how my talent (and schooling) will carry me all the way. I now know that its more about survival skills. I feel better now because some of the mystery about this career has been cleared. Thank you very much for writing it!

Thanks for your nice note. The article in question is one of our most popular at the site: http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/features/beacomposer.asp.

Here's a critical email we received of a recent CD review of Evolution, followed by the reviewer's reply:

From: "Bondo 321" <bondo321@hotmail.com>

I just have to say that Josh Gizelt wrote a terribly poor review of the EVOLUTION soundtrack by John Powell. The review is based on ignorance. Mr. Gizelt is obviously not familiar with Powell's other music, because if he WERE, he would find this very similar to other types of works besides MediaVentures. In fact, it is a GREAT departure from the typical MediaVentures soundtrack. In addition, he seems to forget that the music was written not for someone to listen to on a CD, but for a MOVIE. If he'd seen the movie, he'd know that the music fits in perfectly with the movie.

This site is the only site I've seen that has given the EVOLUTION soundtrack such a poor grade. The only thing similar would be those people on Amazon.com complaining that there are no "songs".

The soundtrack has several things going for it:
1. Memorable theme
2. Exciting music
3. Varied music (chase, terror, funny, etc)
4. 40 minutes (not long, not short)
5. Full orchestra

I'm sorry, but the review is very poorly written, and is based upon the ignorance of the reviewer.

From: "Josh Gizelt" <swashbuckler332@hotmail.com>

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with this assessment of my review. While Bondo321 is certainly welcome to his opinion about Evolution, I wish to take issue with the fact that my writing style has come under fire. If Mr. Bondo321 had taken the time to read some of my other works, including several plays written under my pen names William Shakespeare, he would realize that I have a significantly developed writing style that bespeaks of my considerable intelligence, copious wit and abundant modesty.

Seriously, though, I make no apologies for my opinion, but I wish to say that I didn't find the theme that memorable, the music was more frenetic than exciting, the variation within the score wasn't held together by anything, the length is immaterial if you're not enjoying the CD in the first place, and while I like orchestras, it is not a prerequisite for my liking a score. And while there will always rage a debate as to whether it behooves a film score to work as an album as well, I wish to point out that many film composers, from Max Steiner to Jerry Goldsmith, from Franz Waxman to John Williams, have found ways to create scores that not only work within the films themselves, but make great albums. I found Evolution to be just tiresome and loud.

Doug Fake has written about our Illustrated Man CD release at his weekly column for Intrada. See http://www.intrada.com/doug/doug1001.htm.

Wolfgang Jahn has updated his site on Italian film music -- with info on lots of rare LPs from the past. See http://www.italiansoundtracks.com.

Visit www.traxzone.com for the second part (of three) of Pierre Andre's interview with composer Cliff Eidelman (in French): http://www.traxzone.com/content/index.asp?section=itvs&num=45

Visit Adam Corn's website, http://www.SoundtrackCentral.com, for a variety of Anime and game soundtrack reviews.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com