Film Score Friday 7/20/01

Our two new Classics CDs are now available!

First of all we are thrilled finally to have an album of music by the great Hugo Friedhofer, one of the best composers of the "Golden Age" who wrote in a progressive, thoughtful style and has woefully few albums available for an innovator of his magnitude.

Our new release has his complete score to Between Heaven and Hell (1956, war movie starring Robert Wagner) and everything that could be salvaged from Soldier of Fortune (1955, Hong Kong adventure starring Clark Gable and Susan Hayward). Between Heaven and Hell has one of the all-time great uses of the Dies Irae -- and a powerful action finale -- and Soldier of Fortune has a dynamite, irresistibly memorable main theme. Check out the CD page for full details and sound clips.

The Silver Age Classics release, meanwhile, also presents composers new to our series -- in this case the team of Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter who wrote some of the classic '50s monster/adventure music like The Fly and The Lost World. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is their thrilling underwater scoring for Irwin Allen's 1961 feature film that launched his later TV series of the same title and arguably his entire television production career. Again, see the CD page for sound clips.

We have the Friedhofer in stock now and we're expecting Voyage any day. Please place your order now -- thanks and I hope we once again satisfy your film music appetites!

The recent reports about Danny Elfman being asked to rewrite portions of his Planet of the Apes score "more heroically" ("like Gladiator") are an exaggeration...Jeff Bond has interviewed the composer for an upcoming FSM, and Elfman relates that although he did some rescoring, it was par for the course for a summer event movie and there was no drastic reconception of the score's approach.

Look for Elfman and remix artist Paul Oakenfold to appear on MTV's "Making Of" special about the movie, rerunning Sunday, July 22, at 9:30 PM.

Fans of Vince DiCola: no less than three CDs of the composer's music to The Transformers: The Movie were just available at BotCon 2001, the Transformers convention. The first is "Lighting Their Darkest Hour," the complete movie score minus the Stan Bush and other rock tracks; the second is "The Protoform Sessions" (demos, outtakes and interview material of and about the film); and the third is "Artistic Transformations" (new solo piano renditions of the score). See www.botcon.com, although as of now the new titles don't appear to be listed.

Film composer Larry Groupe (The Contender) is touring with the rock group YES in their summer concert series ("The "YESsymphonic" Tour"), conducting a symphony orchestra for the band.

Here are the dates:

Wed 25 July San Diego, CA Navy Pier
Thu 26 July Tempe, AZ Gammage Auditorium
Sat 28 July Kelseyville, CA Konocti Field Amphitheater
Mon 30 July Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl
Tue 31 July Concord, CA Chronicle Pavilion
Thu 02 Aug Vancouver, BC Queen Elisabeth Theatre
Fri 03 Aug Woodinville, WA Chateau St. Michelle Winery
Sun 05 Aug Englewood, CO Fiddlers Green Amphitheatre
Tue 07 Aug Minneapolis, MN State Theatre
Wed 08 Aug Chicago, IL Arie Crown Theatre
Fri 10 Aug Cuyahoga Falls, OH Blossom Music Center
Sat 11 Aug Columbus, OH Auditorium
Sun 12 Aug Clarkston, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
Tue 14 Aug Interlochen, MI Interlochen Center
Wed 15 Aug Milwaukee, WI Riverside Theatre
Thu 16 Aug Kettering, OH Fraze Pavillion, Lincoln Park
Sat 18 Aug Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sun 19 Aug Portsmouth, VA Harbour Center
Tue 21 Aug Philadelphia, PA Mann Music Center
Wed 22 Aug Lewiston, NY Artpark
Fri 24 Aug Vienna, VA Wolf Trap Farm Park
Sat 25 Aug Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun Resort
Sun 26 Aug Quebec City, QUE Colisee de Quebec
Tue 28 Aug Toronto. ONT Molson Amphitheatre
Wed 29 Aug Montreal Molson Centre
Fri 31 Aug Boston, MA Fleet Boston Pavilion
Sat 01 Sep Wallingford, CT Oakdele Theatre
Sun 02 Sep Saratoga Springs, NY Saratogo Perf Arts Center
Mon 03 Sep Danbury, CT Charles Ives Center
Thu 06 Sep Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
Fri 07 Sep Wantaugh, LI Jones Beach
Sat 08 Sep New York, NY Radio City Music Hall

Southern California residents, check out this season's FREE concerts held at the Wadsworth Theatre by the Henry Mancini Institute, two of them guest-conducted by Elmer Berstein (Aug. 4) and Jerry Goldsmith (Aug. 11) respectively. No tickets, just first-come, first served! See www.manciniinstitute.org.

To clarify about the CD series of soundtracks to Akira Kurosawa films (see last Friday's news column), the CDs are not technically "reissues" as many/most have never been available before (these are new productions from the master tapes). Each CD will cost 2500 yen which is about $20. The first box set is available for pre-order now, to be released September 6, (price: 12000 Japanese yen). See: http://www.toho.co.jp/music/kurosawa/index.htm.

From: James Luckard <jamesluckard@excite.com>

I've seen A.I. four times now, and am still astounded by its haunting brilliance. I was also blown away by John Williams' gorgeous, minimalist-influenced score. However, the CD is confusingly ordered as well as including tracks not in the film, and others that were misleadingly named. Here, then is the correct order if you want to burn your own, chronologically accurate, A.I. album.

6) Cybertronics
4) Hide and Seek
2) Abandoned in the Woods
7) The Moon Rising
1) The Mecha World
3) Replicas
11) The Search for The Blue Fairy
8) Stored Memories and Monica's Theme
12) The Reunion
9) Where Dreams Are Born

As for the three tracks not on the list, #s 5 and 13 are vocal versions of Monica's theme which are never played in the film, and which I, personally, can't stand. Track 10, which is called "Rouge City," does not, in fact, appear there in this form. The first half of the track is just a repeat of track 2, music not heard anywhere else but in that scene, and the second half is the opening of "The Mecha World," as David and Joe fly out of Rouge City, but it crazily fades out just before the music reaches the climax as they find the weeping lion. In other words, track 10 is repetative and unnecessary.

Also, some of the names needed changing, so I came up with these replacements-

1) Where The Lions Weep/I'm David: The actual name is completely misleading and inaccurate.

3) Replicas/Carried by the Current: Replicas is only the first half, the second half needed a title.

6) Pending: Cybertronics is a misleading title, this music is actually from the scene at the CRYOGENICS facility where Martin is frozen.

8) Ice Planet/Back Home/The Blue Fairy: I found the original title vague, and it didn't describe two thirds of the music.

So there you go, as carefully researched as I could make it, having listened to the album extremely closely and watched the movie this last time specifically for the music.

Hope this helps other music-lovers out there who were confused by the organization of the album, and didn't want to be blindly skipping around tracks.

Friends, many of us who have been collecting John Williams' soundtracks for decades know that he ALWAYS (I think always...maybe there are exceptions) re-orders the tracks into a different, non-chronological program for the album, and also provides track titles that are not literally accurate to the movie.

You cannot stop him...you can only hope to contain him.

My advice is, just enjoy the music. Nevertheless, thank you, James, for the breakdown.

From: Captain Robert Charles Mitchell II, Silhouet98@cs.com

I just want to say one thing, I think Alan Silvestri did a wonderful job on the musical score for The Mummy Returns. The music mesmerized me with a haunting sound. Very well done, no wonder he is legendary.

Lukas Kendall wrote:

I LOVE the Ace Eli CD. I hope our happy readers like the music as well, or at least adjust to having Ace Eli be the first CD in their Goldsmith rack, ahead of Air Force One and Alien.

Just a quick note to correct this glaring inaccuracy: Obviously, Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies, paired with Room 222, would NOT be placed by Air Force One, Alien, Along Came a Spider, Angie, etc. (not to mention 100 Rifles -- a numeral!), by any self-respecting collector. No, since the Ace Eli disc also contains an "additional work," the placement of the album only in the 'A' section would be an absolute insult to the immense performance and production talent pool that was TV's "Room 222."

Since it contains music for multiple projects, it is relegated to the section of the CD rack reserved for multi-score discs. Too, the "additional work" is for a *TV* project, thus pushing it over two further sections -- past the Goldsmith "Television Compilation" area and into the Goldsmith "Film AND Television Compilation" section, where it at last nestles between "Stagecoach"/"The Loner" and a to-remain-nameless quasi-bootleg from a certain suspicious label in Germany (who's put out a lot of Jerry's apparently pre-film-music avant-garde/industrial/musique concrËte "Tape Hiss" experiments).

Anyway, just thought I'd bring that error to your attention. I mean, hello...?

P.S. Your Patton/Flight of the Phoenix disc aggravated me to no end as well. Instead of being able to claim home between Papillion and Poltergeist, I was obligated -- FORCED -- to move it all the way down, down, down an entire six rows -- past Yared, Young, and Zimmer -- to the "Paired Scores" section (right before the multi-score "Compilations"). And as if that weren't bad enough, it couldn't even fit into single-composer "Paired Scores," no! It had to be the MULTI-composer "Paired Scores" -- right by all those recent Chapter III albums and on the outskirts of the big Silva Screen/edel wasteland. (No one's ever returned from there alive, you know.)

Anyway, not that Phoenix doesn't rock, of course, but how COULD you?

I must take issue with statements made in two letters posted on Thursday. First off, Mr. Haga's letter, while well worded and informative, has an underlying implication regarding film as a communicative art. Actually, Haga states it explicitly, "The only film direction that is truly centered around the story, is the "invisible", aristotelian Hollywood film." This simply isn't true. Film is and has been primarily a narrative medium in all the countries where movies are made. Hollywood is not the only influence on this fact. Movies are an extension of the theater. They have much greater potential (and have occasionally achieved it) than the stage because of the nature of the melding of nearly all the different types of art that exist to create a film. But the root of films is the same - storytelling. However, storytelling is not held in monopoly by Hollywood. The examples Mr. Haga's cites are all important examples of the art. But they are exceptions at best. I do not suggest that artists should not try to push the creative envelope. I do suggest that Mr. Haga is not giving enough credit to the storytelling aspect of films.

Mr. Haga states:

Film is, among other things, a visual art form - in many ways a moving semi-painting (tableau). For one person, satisfaction can thus be gathered from the visual effects or the way shots are cross-cut, the way meanings are communicated through a montage. For another person, the portrayal of a certain character becomes the most important thing. The way the character acts and behaves correlates very much to himself. For him, subjective identification is more important than the story itself. For a third person, a SINGLE SCENE in a movie becomes the "essence" of the entire experience (e.g. the "ET FLying Scene") that is separated from the rest of the story. For a fourth person, the ATMOSPHERE is the most important thing - whether it is a deserted space station or the pastoral english countryside. The list goes on.

All of the above examples, as well as the "agenda" Mr. Haga refers to, derive from the script/story. The very first thing filmmakers start with (once a project is set in motion to be made) is the script. I am not trying to belittle or attack Mr. Haga. His points are valid. I am trying to point out something that I think few readers know - a writer/writers work very hard in the development of their scripts to have all many of these elements come logically through the progression of the story (I am not including those movies that attempt nothing above the level of "entertainment").

Perhaps my reaction is more fueled by Joel Koehler's s claim that Herrmann's music for Vertigo is more important than the script. A definitive statement like this is very troubling (but may come from the public's lack of knowledge about the screenwriter and what a script does - it isn't just dialogue). Herrmann was composing his score and, one assumes, getting his inspiration from viewing the film. The film - ANY narrative film - cannot exist without a script. What is more perplexing is that Vertigo is one of the best examples of solid writing to come out of Hollywood. Hitchcock (and any self-respecting director) worked with his writers very closely, but he did not write his films.

The vast majority of audiences around the world prefer narrative films. This is not a slight on those films that push beyond the narrative realm. It is, however, a very evident fact from looking at the history of any country that produces films for a large audience. In my profession (I work at a production company based at Fox), the constant struggle and goal for those that love what film can be is to make strong narrative films that will leave the audience with something more than just an entertaining two hours...and it all starts with the writing.

Please see the Message Board for two letters about A.I. which I don't have room for here, one by David Coscina, another by Tim Kurkoski: http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/Forum1/HTML/002498.html.