FILM SCORE FRIDAY 4/05/02
By Scott Bettencourt
In case the images at the right of this column aren't reminder enough,
we have two brand new CDs available, THE
MAN WHO LOVED CAT DANCING and JOY
IN THE MORNING, composed by those two plucky little underdogs,
John Williams and Bernard Herrmann. Remember -- if you don't buy orchestral
score CDs, then the music supervisors win.
DUDLEY MOORE (1935-2002)
Oscar nominated actor/comedian/musician Dudley Moore died on March 27th,
2002 in New Jersey of pneumonia as a complication of progressive supranuclear
palsy. While his acting work was widely covered in obituaries, especially
his star-making turns in 10 (a role he got when George Segal backed
out) and Arthur (Best Actor nominee, 1981), Moore also composed
six film scores.
BEDAZZLED (1967), directed by Stanley Donen, was based on a screenplay
by Moore and his partner, the late Peter Cook. Cook and Moore starred in
this skit-influenced modern version of Faust, with Cook as the devil, aka
George Spiggot, who makes a deal with lovelorn fry cook Stanley Moon (Moore),
giving him seven chances to win the love of co-worker Eleanor Bron in exchange
for his soul. Moore's score features two songs for the rock star segment,
"Love Me" (sung by Moore) and "Bedazzled" (sung by Cook), and the film's
main title was a thrilling orchestral arrangement of "Love Me" over snazzy
Maurice Binder titles. The soundtrack was released on CD last year on the
Harkit label.
The film was recently given an amusing but inferior remake by Harold
Ramis, with a David Newman score and starring Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth
Hurley and Frances O'Connor in the Moore, Cook and Bron roles. An updated
version of the rock singer segment was filmed but went unused when preview
audiences hated it. Brief homage was paid to the original stars with Hurley's
pet dogs, named Peter and Dudley.
30 IS A DANGEROUS AGE, CYNTHIA (1968) was a British precursor
to 10, a romantic comedy with Moore as a man having an early mid-life
crisis. Like Bedazzled, the soundtrack was also released on CD recently
by Harkit.
Moore served as composer only on his next two films. INADMISSIBLE
EVIDENCE (1968) was a change-of-pace project for Moore, a drama based
on John Osborne's play and starring Nicol Wiliamson as a troubled barrister.
This was followed by the controversial STAIRCASE (1969), reuniting
Moore with Stanley Donen for this comedy-drama about a bickering gay couple
played by those famously gay actors Richard Burton and Rex Harrison.
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1977) was a little-seen and hugely
disappointing spoof of the Conan Doyle classic, with Cook and Moore as
Holmes and Watson. The film was directed by Andy Warhol staple Paul Morrisey,
and is most memorable for a scene where a small dog urinates on Moore for
an unconscionably long time, foreshadowing the cinematic era of the Farrelly
Brothers.
Moore's final score was for the failed tearjerker SIX WEEKS (1982),
which improbably cast him as a California politician who falls for the
mother (Mary Tyler Moore) of a girl dying of leukemia. Eight minutes of
Moore's music for the film were available on his piano CD, Songs Without
Words.
DINO-MIGHT NOT
Despite an e-mail sent out by Varese
Sarabande that claimed it would be releasing Trevor Jones's score to
the mini-series Dinotopia, directed by Marco Brambilla, they will
NOT be releasing it after all, thus foiling my planned headline "FROM THE
DIRECTOR OF DEMOLITION MAN." However, they have announced four new score
CDs to be released on May 14th:
David Newman's lively and charming score for the surprise smash
hit ICE AGE (116 million and counting) is actually Newman's fifth
score for an animated feature, the previous ones being The Brave Little
Toaster, Ducktales: The Movie, Rover Dangerfield and
Anastasia.
INSOMNIA is the American remake of the Norwegian thriller which
starred Stellan Skarsgard as a troubled cop who unwillingly enters into
a cat-and-mouse relationship with a serial killer. The new version stars
Al Pacino as the cop, Robin Williams (!) as the killer, and Hilary Swank,
thus making an Academy Award winner trifecta. Christopher Nolan directs,
and the film reunites him with his Memento composer David Julyan.
JASON X is the tenth film in the Friday the 13th series,
but despite the tag ending to the most recent in the series, Jason Goes
to Hell: The Final Friday, Jason will not have his long promised grudge
match with Freddie Kreuger. This new installment is actually set in the
year 2455 (yes, I'm serious), and is scored by the John Barry of the Jason
series, Harry Manfredini. The film was directed by James Isaac,
who also directed The Horror Show and worked on the makeup effects
for films such as The Fly, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ
(Cronenberg himself reportedly has a role in Jason X). I go on at
length about Mr. Isaac's career only because I went to college with him.
Right on, Jimmy!
UNFAITHFUL is the latest erotic drama from director Adrian Lyne
(Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal), and stars Richard
Gere as a man who suspects his wife (Diane Lane) is cheating on him with
some hunky French dude (Olivier Martinez, from The Horseman on the Roof).
The film is scored by Polish composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, most noted
for his collaborations with director Agnieska Holland -- Total Eclipse,
Washington Square, The Third Miracle.
IN THEATERS TODAY
Big Trouble - Score by James Newton Howard
High Crimes - Score by Graeme Revell
National Lampoon's Van Wilder - Score by David Lawrence - Song
Album on Artemis
DISNEY RERELEASES
On April 16th, Disney Records will be re-releasing two of their rarest
soundtrack CDs, Alan Silvestri's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Bruce
Broughton's The Rescuers Down Under, as well as the 1977 musical
Pete's Dragon.
ISHAM KOSHER?
I must offer a correction to Mark Isham's entry in the Top
Forty Countdown. Not that there are any factual mistakes in my exhaustive
and extraordinarily accurate ranking of today's film composers. Far from
it.
However, in my list of Isham's Ongoing Filmmaker Relationships, I shamefully
and accidentally omitted the name of director Alan Rudolph. But after all,
they only did NINE movies together, more films even than Hitchcock made
with Herrmann.
Those films are Trouble in Mind, Made in Heaven, The
Moderns, Love at Large, Mortal Thoughts, Mrs. Parker
and the Vicious Circle, Afterglow, Breakfast of Champions,
and Trixie.
SCORING THE SUPERHEROES
From: "Greg Bryant" <gbryant@isoc.net>
Despite talk that John Williams was interested in the
gig, MYCHAEL DANNA has been signed to score Ang Lee's feature The Hulk.
This sounds like a most unusual gig. I've heard Danna's scores for
Ice Storm, Felicia's Journey and The Sweet Hereafter. The Hulk just doesn't
seem his style.
Danna's score for Lee's little seen Ride With the Devil is much
more orchestral and traditional than his typical work, and suggests that
Danna is likely to provide the Hulk with more than gamelan sounds and Moroccan
percussion. It's also a fine album, well worth picking up.
From: David Coscina <dcoscina@sympatico.ca>
Does anyone know if any record company has released the
incidental music for the '60's Spiderman cartoon? Telatoon has been playing
those old shows of late and the underscore KICKS. I've been searching high
and low for it over the past few years but to no avail...
THE OSCAR MEDLEY OF 2002
From: "Terrence Brown" <tbrown@mabts.edu>
In reference to your listing concerning the medley of film
music which John Williams conducted at the Academy Awards last week, one
slight correction should be noted. On your list you mentioned THE BRIDGE
ON THE RIVER KWAI and Malcolm Arnold's name. Sure, it is true that Arnold
wrote the score for KWAI and received an Oscar for it, but the segment
which Williams conducted was the familiar "Colonel Bogey" march written
by Kenneth Alford. Arnold merely incorporated Alford's march into the film;
Arnold did not compose the much-whistled march. Still, "Colonel Bogey"
is what most folks would recognize from this masterpiece, so it is no wonder
that Williams chose that selection. BTW, Jarre also included another Alford
march in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.
The oscars.com
listing of the medley actually credits Arnold with "adaptation" for the
Kwai piece. As the rest of the score is typical Malcolm Arnold bombast,
I wonder if the Academy voters assumed he wrote the Bogey march himself.
From: Steve Kilfoy <steve@bloodpage.com>
I'm sure I won't be the only person pointing this out,
but while you are 100% correct that Alex North didn't write the song "Unchained
Melody" for the film GHOST, he did in fact write it for the utterly forgotten
1955 film, UNCHAINED. So it did potentially qualify for the Oscar film-music
medley.
Potentially, yes. But since he wrote it for one film, and it became famous
for a different one decades later which he didn't score -- you get the
picture.
UN FILM DE RICHARD DONNER
From: "Jean-Michel CAVROIS" <jm.cavrois@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: If He Must Be French, Then Let He Be A Good Composer...
Well, sure, a French composer would be a great idea. But, excuse
me, with Jean-Claude Petit, TIMELINE would drown in syrup... I think that
Bruno Coulais (Haven't you heard VIDOCQ or THE CRIMSON RIVERS ?) or even
Alexandre Desplat would do a greater job !
And I must confess I ignored that the poor Pete Carpenter wasn't
among us any more. Well, his (a-)themes have survived, alleluia !
PS : following your logic, what planet is John Williams from ?
I have heard Crimson Rivers (I've even seen the movie, a highly
recommended guilty pleasure) and some of Desplat's music as well, but I
felt that Petit seemed the most plausible French choice for Timeline.
Syrupy or not, his music fits into the orchestral tradition of American
scoring and thus seems a more likely choice for Richard Donner, unless
he goes the Ladyhawke/Andrew Powell route again. Actually, since
Timeline is about contemporary Americans travelling in time to medieval
France, the Ladyhawke approach might actually be appropriate. Did
I really just say that?
And John Williams is a man, therefore he is from Mars. Didn't you read
that book?
FORGET POIROT, THE MYSTERY IS SOLVED
From: "Christian Lauliac" <clauliac@wanadoo.fr>
Hi !
As they say : better late than never ! Being the fellow who wrote
these reviews
four years ago I thank you for publishing them online. My name is Christian
Lauliac !
I have to apologize to Monsieur Lauliac. I neglected to inform my fellow
column editors of his identity in a timely fashion, and thus another
of his pieces went published without a byline. Je regrette.
From: Pulliam, Ron: RPULLIAM@co.alameda.ca.us>
Subject: Just a little query about the Delerue review...
If the writer ever steps up to take credit, would someone kindly
ask him or her (has there ever been a review/article of any sort in FSM
by a female??) what is meant by the remark "Ken Russell's wacky 'Women
in Love'"?
"Women in Love" is one of the more profound movies of the 1970s,
IMO, and is the best adaptation of D.H. Lawrence to film.. It is Ken Russell's
masterpiece. The adaptation is brilliant, the production values totally
superb and the acting is on a par with the best work done in any film at
any time in the history of cinema. Witness Glenda Jackson's well-earned
Oscar for it and Rusell's nomination for best director! It is also one
of the most beautifully photographed films anyone will ever see.
Wacky? Wacky? What is meant by "wacky"?
Sigh.
To quote from my high school valedictory speech, the Oxford English Dictionary
defines "wacky" as "crazy, mad, eccentric, peculiar, weird." It can also
be defined as "any film directed by Ken Russell" or "any film where two
heterosexual men wrestle in the nude."
And as far as I know, no women have written for Film Score Monthly.
This is probably due to the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" sign we hang outside
our palatial Culver City offices, which also helps to keep people from
interrupting our continuous nude heterosexual wrestling.
UN FILM DE YUEN WO PING
From: "Michael Ware" <akumascope@hotmail.com>
Ni hao! This isn't a huge issue or anything but I noticed
one of my colleagues on the March
26 FSM Daily somehow managed to perpetuate the idea that Quentin Tarantino
had anything to do with IRON MONKEY. Let me state this succinctly: Tarantino
had NOTHING to do with it beyond having his name plastered all over the
Miramax reissue in a marketing attempt to draw Cool News fanboys! IRON
MONKEY is a Tsui Hark production of a Yuen Wo Ping film released in 1993.
It's been available on Tai Seng video for years in every mall in the USA
at Suncoast Video. I love this film-- it's one of my all-time favorites
featuring some of the most beautiful and eloquent fight choreography committed
to film, framed in the style of a working-class comedy. Millions of stars!
If you blinked and missed Donnie Yen's wasted appearance in BLADE 2, this
is the film to gain a better appreciation of this gifted performer(yeah
he's a bit arrogant in real life, but so are a bunch of people!). I don't
know of very many Martial Artists who don't know this film perhaps a little
too intimately! If it's even more readily available on Dimension dvd's,
that's great. But despite the hilariously opportunistic claim by Tarantino
last fall to Reuters that he should be considered the film's "de facto
director," this film has and will continue to be a Kung Fu classic directed
by the great Yuen Wo Ping. Sorry for the rant and peace!
THE REAL KEYSER SOZE
The brand new deluxe edition DVD of The Usual Suspects features
a seventeen minute video interview with composer/editor John Ottman, conducted
by our own Senior Editor and Eric Mabius lookalike Jeff Bond. The interview
is hidden and can only be accessed by taking this circuitous path, according
to the DVD review
from Ain't It Cool News:
Scroll up and select the logo on the main Special Features
menu. You'll end up in a menu featuring a collage of items from the police-office
bulletin board and surrounding environs. There are five highlight-able
items; select one of them and it tells you there's a puzzle to solve: "Every
picture tells a story select them in order and see two additional
featurettes." Select the pictures in the following order: "Quartet," "Guatemala,"
woman, and coffee mug.
This should lead you to the interview with Ottman and Bond, who, according
to the reviewer, "looks like he's about 12." Enjoy!
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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