Film Score Friday 2/9/01

Sorry about the late column today...we're doing massive pre-spring cleaning here at FSM headquarters and I got carried away.

Product plug! Our new CDs to The Stripper/Nick Quarry (Jerry Goldsmith) and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (Bernard Herrmann) are in stock and on sale now! Check them out!

Happy 69th, Johnny!

We missed the boat on Thursday, February 8th. Oh my!

From: Jeff Commings, Jeffswim@aol.com

What's going on out there?!!??!! No John Williams birthday tribute today? I  remember well that you guys did a loving recognition of Jerry Goldsmith's  birthday, and I woke up this morning fully expecting FSM to do something very  nice, even if it was just one paragraph.

I know he's only turning 69 this year, but it's always the thought that  counts! For the past five years I have given him a great tribute -- a private  film festival. As always, the Star Wars series is played, along with the  other four scores he won Oscars for. It lasts two days and I can't think of a  better way to celebrate the greatest entertainer in movies.

Yes, happy birthday, Mr. Williams.

"Bernard Herrmann: More Than the Movies" is the first concert in the EOS Orchestra's sixth season in New York City, at the Ethical Culture Society, Auditorium, 2 West 64th Street. It's next Thursday, February 15th, 8PM, Jonathan Sheffer, conducting. On the program:

Schoenberg   Accompaniment to a Film Score
Herrmann     Melodrams: (Belle Dame Sans Merci, etc)
Herrmann     Sinfonietta for String Orchestra
Herrmann     Suite from Psycho
Herrmann     Excerpts from Wuthering Heights (Nathan Gunn, baritone)

Tickets are available through the EOS office at 212-691-6415.

The new film Valentine has a song with a Planet of the Apes sample in its end credits. Goldsmith is credited accordingly.

On the latest Ally McBeal, Ally was helping Larry (Robert Downey, Jr.) pack to leave for Detroit. The only thing they showed her pick up and put in a box was...the COVER ART OF SOUNDTRACKS book. She bought it from Film Score Monthly! (It's out of print but we have copies.)

Look for a major Bernard Herrmann story in Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section to coincide with the aforementioned EOS concert. I'm a little confused whether it's this Sunday or next Sunday but everyone should read the Sunday Times anyway.

Preston Jones writes to tell us that there was a nice review of a performance of Korngold's violin concerto in Friday's LA Times Calendar section.

Universal is reissuing the blaxploitation soundtracks Coffy (Roy Ayers) and Hell Up in Harlem (Edwin Starr) on March 27th in the U.S.

Forthcoming in Universal's soundtrack series in France: L'Homme Orchestre (Francois de Roubaix), Boulevard du Rhum (de Roubaix), Fanntomas (Georges Delerue), Pierrot le Fou/Weekend (Antoine Duhamel), Les Valseuses/Calmost (Stephane Grappelli/Georges Delerue), Beau-Pere (Philippe Sarde) and Le Train (Sarde).

The following came over MovieMusic.com's news wire. I don't know if it's OK to copy this verbatim but as it's a press release I think it's fine:

Subject: Duesseldorf welcomes Alex North Day, Michael Nyman Band

On Saturday, February 10th, Duesseldorf's (Germany) METROPOL theater presents excerpts from Stanley Kubrik's 2001, scored with Alex North's unused original music. Due the partial work on this movie, there is no full score available. As a special guest, the late composer's wife Anna North will be flown in from California to join us.  We'll see two other movies with North scores: CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964) and THE SHOES OF THE FISHERERMAN (1968).

This event starts at 10:30am and will end at approximately 7:00pm.

On Friday, February 16th, at 8pm in  Duesseldorf's "Tonhalle," the Michael Nyman band will perform live to the film "The Commissar Vanishes."  In addition, more works of Nyman and his collaborator Greenaway will be played by the Michael Nyman Band.

For more information about both of these events, please send an inquiry to 505@gmx.de.

Everybody ready for more "Barry Back in Action" headlines? John Barry will be back in concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, April 28th at 7:30PM, conducting the 90-piece English Chamber Orchestra in a concert of his film scores. Call the box office at 020 7589 8212 or see www.broadband.co.uk/wayahead/web/raymondg.

The movie is now out but it's sort of a tradition for us to feature an early review by our German reader, Roman Deppe.

I have not seen the movie and so I have not read through Roman's reviews...featuring potential SPOILERS!

You have been warned!

Also please be aware, and I mean this affectionately, that Roman has really weird criteria by which he reviews these movies...

From: "Roman Deppe" <roman.deppe@planet-interkom.de>

Yesterday I saw HANNIBAL in a press showing, after the moving being in post-production up until last weeks of January it was quite a short-announced press-showing (as the movie opens already next week and only a week later here in Germany) and hard to get an invitation. Anyway... first I have to say that I didn't like the novel at all. I thought the story was stupid (though I have to admit that at least I liked, that the story was totally different from what I expected, I just didn't like that story), especially the ending was totally annoying and didn't make any sense to me. Also all characters in the novel are sick, even Clarice Starling is pretty wacky (but that doesn't explain the ending) and the idea of the monster-pigs sounded just like pure trash on screen. So I wasn't surprised to hear that Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster didn't want to participate in the film. That Anthony Hopkins agreed to do the role once more wasn't surprising on the other hand, as he starred in many bad movies in recent years and seems to be willing to appear everywhere when the money is right. Moreover when Ridley Scot was on board and Hans Zimmer my expectation got pretty low. Come on, Ridley Scott hasn't been the great ALIEN-director for years anymore (I didn't think that GLADIATOR was such a great movie, besides some really powerful moments) and Hans Zimmer is really the last composer I would ask for a Psycho-Thriller (just listen to THE FAN and you know why)... that David Mamet wrote the script was suprising, but couldn't raise my expectations, but at least Juliane Moore seemed a good replacement for Foster.

Well, so now, there is the movie and is pretty much what I expected: A pretty lame, overlong and most of the time senseless Psycho-Thriller. They kept very close to the novel and I often thought "Would there be at least a little bit of suspense if I hadn't read the novel?", but judging from the yawning of several people around me I guess the answer is "NO".  At least I was surprised how well the idea with the pigs worked. But as the story itself was pretty bad there was not much to save. Ridley Scott suprisingly reduced his style to a minimum (the movie looks really a lot less stylish than the great trailer makes you belive the movie will be), so that the photography is most of the time quite uninteresting and lame. Also, the movie is very unfocused on the characters. Sometimes you stay 30 minutes only with Starling, so you forget there is a Lecter somewhere, and vice versa. Some wild shutter-effects in the killings (like the ones used in the opening battle in GLADIATOR) doesn't make the scenes more intense, but just plain boring. If you don't want to show the gruesome stuff, let it happen in the imagination or let the people talk about it (like in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), but don't show it onscreen with this annoying kind of effect, it just looks cheap. So, the movie is not as violent as the book, although the ending with the brain is included (gross!), but that comes off more like something to please the splatterfreaks than a necessary story-element.

Only the killing on the balcony got me some shivers as it takes so long and you begin to imagine what it must be like to be bound up there, while Lecter is telling you what is going to happen to you. But besides that you are never scared. And in the end (which is the only different thing in the novel) you are just asking yourself what the whole story was about as it has no beginning and no real end. It's just a senseless mix of some killings, sick people and a poor attempt to recreate the tension from SILENCE.... But the really fascinating element in SILENCE were the encounters of Lecter and Starling and the psychology behind it. Also it had a race against time-plot, which also was very exciting... this movie has no such things. Julianne Moore is okay, but the role isn't half as good as Starling in SILENCE. Probably one of the reasons Jodie Foster wasn't interested in it. Hopkins is reliable as usual.

I don't like Howard Shores music for SILENCE much, and think the music didn't do much for the film either, but that was mainly as the movie worked already so well without the music and didn't need a powerful score to scare you. HANNIBAL would have needed such a loud score, but as expected Zimmer wrote an endlessly humming thing, which is almost constantly there, but has no themes or anything interesting going on. It's like THE FAN without the theme and the loud passages. Some choir sometimes, but that doesn't help at all...it never scares, it never hits you emotionally, it just there, but it wouldn't have made any difference if there wasn't any music. Ridley Scott really seems to be not interested at all in his music scores as most of his movies have bad scores or were so horribly re-edited and replaced afterewards, that you really wonder what is going on with this man in the post-prodcution. Anyhow, I don't really think that it is Zimmer's fault , that this music is so boring, as not even Williams could have written anything interesting or supportive for this yawner of a movie.

Probably the opening week will be big, just because it the sequel to SILENCE, but after all I will be suprised if the movie crosses the 100 million mark (which it reportedly almost cost).
But well, if you liked the book, you may find the adaption good, although there won't be any surprises for you, except the ending, but that is only a typical Hollywood-sequel-assured-ending.

I am not that disappointed, as I already was when the novel came out and so I hadn't high hopes for this one, but just don't have such high expectations on it, if yo haven't read the book.

The New York Post had an article on film music in the concert hall by Barbara Hoffman: http://www.nypostonline.com/entertainment/21921.htm

There is a great piece on the late conductor Charles Gerhardt (of RCA Classic Film Scores fame) at http://www.ClassicalCDReview.com/CGREBweb.html, by his longtime friend, Robert Benson. Check it out.

Bye!

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com