2002 Grammy Winners
by Scott Bettencourt
Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television
Or Other Visual Media
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Various Artists, Lost Highway Records.
Best Score Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television Or Other
Visual Media
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tan Dun, composer
Best Song Written For A Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual
Media.
"Boss Of Me" (From Malcolm In The Middle), They Might Be Giants,
songwriter
Best Instrumental Composition
Cast Away (End Credits), Alan Silvestri, composer
In Stores Today
Invincible - Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt - Milan
King of Kings - Miklos Rozsa - Rhino (2 Disc Set)
Last Orders - Paul Grabowsky - Varese Sarabande
Monsoon Wedding - Mychael Danna - Milan
Laine & Dankworth in Concert
Cleo Laine and the John Dankworth Group will be performing at the California
State University at Northridge Performing Arts Center on March 9th. Tickets
are available in Side Orchestra for $40 and Rear Orchestra for $20. Golden
Circle and Front Orchestra seats are sold out.
Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling 818-677-2488. The Ticket
Office is located in the University Student Union, West Lobby, behind Subway
and is open Monday thru Friday 9:30am to 5:00 pm and one hour prior to
curtain. The Performing Arts Center is located on Zelzah Avenue, between
Prairie and Plummer Streets in the Student Union Complex on the second
level of the Courtyard of Community.
For more information contact: William C. Martin, Director of Marketing,
Center for the Visual and Performing Arts: 818-677-7687, Fax 818-677-6617
or e-mail: william.c.martin@csun.edu
Oskar Sala, 1910-2002
BERLIN - Oskar Sala, the German composer and physicist
whose novel musical instrument produced the sound effects for Alfred Hitchcock's
THE BIRDS, has died. He was 91.
Sala died Tuesday, Peter Friess, the former director of the German
Museum in Bonn, said Thursday.
Born in the eastern German town of Greiz, Sala is known for developing
and mastering the trautonium, billed as the world's first electronic musical
instrument on its invention in 1929.
He performed with the Berlin Philharmonic several times, and the
instrument - a precursor to the synthesizer - was frequently used in German
ads in the 1940s and 1950s.
The trautonium was most famously employed to produce the bird calls
in Hitchcock's 1963 film. Few people realized the cacophonous calls on
the film were produced electronically.
Sala donated his original Mixtur-Trautonium to the German Museum
for Contemporary Technology in Bonn in 1995.
There was no information on survivors.
Balls, Q?
Here are the "official" results to the recent poll asking which was
the best James Bond score not written by John Barry:
For Your Eyes Only
249 votes 36.6 %
Tomorrow Never Dies 147
votes 21.6 %
Casino Royale
98 votes 14.4 %
Live and Let Die
48 votes 7.0 %
The Spy Who Loved Me 43 votes
6.3 %
The World is Not Enough 35 votes
5.1 %
Dr. No
18 votes 2.6 %
Licence to Kill
16 votes 2.3 %
GoldenEye
14 votes 2.1 %
Never Say Never Again 13 votes
1.9 %
Total Votes: 681
You may be surprised to see For Your Eyes Only scoring so highly
(my vote went to The World Is Not Enough, though Live and Let
Die was a tempting choice as well). I was surprised too, especially
when early in the poll, the number of votes nearly doubled in one night,
with For Your Eyes Only receiving virtually all of the new votes.
Hmmm. Could this be the work of SPECTRE? SMERSH? ZOWIE?
I've decided to present an unofficial and unscientific alternate set
of poll results, in which I make the perhaps unfair assumption that the
143 votes which appeared in that thirteen hour period were virtually all
cast for For Your Eyes Only, and not by 143 different readers either.
If one were to subtract 143 votes from For Your Eyes Only, these
are the results you would get--
Tomorrow Never Dies
147 votes 27.3 %
For Your Eyes Only
104 votes 19.3 %
Casino Royale
98 votes 18.2 %
Live and Let Die
48 votes 8.9 %
The Spy Who Loved Me 43
votes 8.0%
The World is Not Enough 35 votes
6.5 %
Dr. No
18 votes 3.3 %
Licence to Kill
16 votes 3.0 %
GoldenEye
14 votes 2.6 %
Never Say Never Again
13 votes 2.4 %
Total votes: 538
That still seems a little off to me, but perhaps For Your Eyes Only
has more fans than I realized. Lukas told me before I started the poll
that Tomorrow Never Dies would win -- maybe I just wanted to see
the young man's dream come true.
Top Forty Letter Countdown, Part One
40. From: Joseph Esrey <joeesrey@ufl.edu>
This should be obvious, but I thought I'd mention anyway
that the "Top Grossing Films" lists for the composers are extremely misleading.
Simply taking the numerical dollar values of the various films' grosses
at the times of their respective initial releases and ranking them from
highest to lowest without taking inflation into account is pretty meaningless.
I realize you probably don't want to do all that computation (I know I
wouldn't), but the least you can do as an alternative is offer the release
years of the respective films, so there's some context for the dollar figures.
As it stands, the reader has to go look up the release years of all the
films he or she doesn't know in order to understand what the grosses reported
here actually mean (and this, of course, presupposes that ranking films
by US box-office is meaningful in the first place - though for the purposes
of this article, I suppose it's actually legitimate, as sad as that might
be).
Aside from that, it seems solid. Of course, rankings like these
will be extremely subjective, unless you have some actual formula for making
these determinations, and I'm sure you're going to make at least a few
people in the biz pretty angry (and understandably so). Ah, well... any
sacrifice for an interesting article, right?
If the list ever makes it to the print FSM, by the way, I hope you'll
be kind enough to include the whole thing in a single issue, so one doesn't
have to jump back and forth among four different issues to see the whole
thing.
One argument against adjusting the grosses for each era is that until recent
decades, theaters were the only venue in which to see movies, so attendance
was inclined to be greater than today, when one can simply wait five months
after a movie's release and watch it on a pristine, letterboxed DVD transfer
with extra footage and director's commentary.
A more important reason for not adjusting the grosses is that the whole
point of the article is to figure out who is most employable right now.
Producers and studios don't care how much the grosses of The Ten Commandments
would be if adjusted to 2002 dollars. They want to know what kind of money
Elmer Bernstein movies have done lately, which is why he's number
forty instead of in the top five where he belongs. (Also, because most
of the films listed are from the last decade or so, adjusting for inflation
is moot)
When a composer's most successful films were released ten, twenty, thirty
years ago, it illustrates why they aren't in such demand anymore. On the
other hand, for a film released in 1978 to gross 141 million (as Animal
House did) is pretty damn impressive. Great movie, too.
39. Here comes another letter about the Top Forty
Countdown, and, gosh, it's from Nalton!
I'm only going to print a few short excerpts, since the letter in its entirety
nearly broke my Spell Check software.
For those wondering what qualifies Nalton to view those who disagree
with him re Hans Zimmer as "clowns" and "amateurs," here are his qualifications:
I am Not a film score composer. I do have a rather profound
background in mixing instrumental music, having interned & worked for
the reknown NFL Films under several smaller known composers, going back
to Sam Spence - who many NFL football fans would easily recongnize many
of his famous tracks.
Another Nalton comment I'd like to discuss, purely as a clarification,
is this, re Trevor Jones:
Now here is a personal fave of mine that YOU simply just
have COMPLETELY deadwrong! "Hasn't written any scores as popular as Last
of the Mohicans since that film came out in '92"??? What planet are you
living on??? Yes, I Loved Last of the Mohicans... but your moronic statement
really dissapoints me. Dark City... GI Jane...The Mighty. Could it be possibly
that some of his recent scores tend to have some Zimmer-like qualitites
that make You downgrade his recent assigments.
I still believe what I wrote was valid. Whatever the merits of these later
Jones scores (and Dark City has some genuinely exciting action music,
featured prominently in the X-Men trailer), would anyone honestly
argue that any of them has been as popular as Mohicans? Mohicans
was a rare crossover score, one that appealed to civilians as well as film
music fans, like a Somewhere in Time or a Titanic (though
probably not selling as well as those two). Does anyone meet many non-filmmusic
fans who have the Dark City CD on their shelves?
For a more revealing look at the Nalton mindset, here is a passage from
his defense of Randy Edelman:
How on Earth do you fail to mention his reknown stirring
patriotic music from Gettysburgh... for its frequently heard on many sports
shows, demonstrating dramatic moments, Not to mention is Often used in
the Olympic figure skating (a sport I figured is RIGHT up your alley!)
Strange, in my columns so far I haven't made any reference to my taste
in sports. Olympic figure stating? I'm a little confused here.
Wait -- did he -- is he implying I'm gay?
My God, the man is a genius! He has found the perfect way to refute
my criticisms of Zimmer. If I were gay, then all of my opinions would automatically
be deemed invalid, and thus Hans Zimmer could finally and officially be
declared KING!
Of course, now that I look over all my recent columns, the telltale
signs of gayness are abundantly clear. The quotations from Star Trek
V and The Boys From Brazil, two infamous gay cult classics.
My well documented hatred of Moulin Rouge, one of the most defiantly
heterosexual films of our time.
Hans Zimmer's swaggering machismo epitomizes everything that gays are
vainly struggling against. And Gladiator itself, a movie which prominently
features Russell Crowe bedecked in Roman fighting gear, couldn't possibly
offer any interest to the gay moviegoer.
Nalton, I salute you.
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back in The
Mailbag
And just as I was ready to put this column to bed, I received yet another
lengthy missive from our friend with the profound background. Here is a
section worth addressing:
Question...why, if you received NO emails praising my thoughts
on the KING, have I received 4 emails from 3 separate individuals over
the weekend, each pretty much endorsing my thoughts on Hans. You see...
you CANNOT have it both ways... because you can decide what/how comments
can be put on this site STRICTLY to conform & support YOUR opinion,
while at the same time making light of the opposite view is SO transparant
to any reasonably-educated, its simply absurd. That issue has been brought
to my attention. Thus, its unlikely you'll agree to print this for it goes
DIRECTLY against your alleged objectivity and non-bias in discussing these
matters.
It's nice that other Zimmer fans are writing to you to express their support
for their beloved composer. This is all good. However, unless they write
to Film Score Monthly, I am unable to print their letters since I have
not seen them.
I would think that the generous excerpt I printed of Nalton's first
letter would indicate that I am willing to present opinions differing from
my own, even if I do proceed to mock them. It's my damn column, after all.
Readers, if you feel that your pro-Zimmer viewpoints are insufficiently
represented here, please write in. As I've said, I buy all of his CDs,
and I even like some of his scores. Though I don't think it's great music,
the Black Hawk Down score is often quite effective.
But honestly, I can't print letters I don't receive. I love printing
letters. The more letters I print, the less writing I have to do.
(And yes, I know the "you won't dare print this letter" gambit is a
cheap yet surefire way to get your letter printed. I'm new to the column,
so I fall for that crap. What can I say? I'm a Village Voice-reading
Lefty. I like hearing other people's opinions. If I didn't, I'd just get
my own show on Fox News Channel.)
Beneath the Planet of Moulin Rouge
From: Dan Finkelstein <danf@wam.umd.edu>
Since today's Mail Bag seems wildly off-balanced in terms
of anti-Moulin (2) to pro-Moulin (0) letters, I figured I'd drop you a
note you might want to include next time in your column.
I saw Moulin three times in theaters, and have watched it about
six times since buying the DVD. I show it to everyone I know who hasn't
seen it, and for the most part they agree that it's one of the most original
films to come around in a long time. For that reason alone I'd give it
the Best Picture -- simply because it shows me something I've never seen
on-screen but also while combining visuals and music in such an innovative
and skillful way. This year was full of film cliches (LOTR is really just
a typical adventure film, which will be indistinguishable I bet from the
next two films) and rehashes of old ideas (did anyone else notice "Beautiful
Mind", while a good story, was really just a reconfigured "Good Will Hunting"?):
Moulin Rouge was one of the only films, in my opinion, to really stand
out on its own.
Personally, I love the movie, and while I'm already pretty sure
it won't win Best Picture, its clinching of the Best Musical Golden Globe
at least tells me there are others out there who feel the same
way about this gem of a film.
As I said, I print nearly all the letters I receive, and haven't omitted
any pro-Moulin mail. In fact, it was mere weeks ago when "Jim Wilson
Redux" wrote in to defend Rouge and questioned my taste in "imaginative
cinema." It's not Lurhmann's originality I question (though the romantic
triangle seems to be derived from the worst elements of Titanic,
complete with murderous manservant) but his ability to execute his ideas.
The editing is showily awful, the humor is excruciating and laboriously
unfunny, and his unwillingness to let a song be performed in its entirety
only emphasizes Lurhmann's need to showcase his own "talent" at the expense
of everyone else's.
To help balance things, here is another letter writer taking the Baz-Luhrmann-Shouldn't-Be-Executed-For-Crimes-
Against-Cinema viewpoint:
From: Kirk Henderson <kirksworks@attbi.com>
Hi Scott,
You're doing a good job. Can't agree with you about Moulin Rouge,
however, but you've got strong opinions and that's good. I have a question
and/or suggestion. Have you guys ever considered putting a database search
engine on your website for all the soundtrack reviews ever to appear in
FSM over the years? Your website (and other magazine's websites for that
matter that carry reviews) would do well to have one. Why? For one, it
would make it easier to go into past issues to see what was said about
such and such a soundtrack. Right now I rarely do it unless I happen to
remember which issue held which review. Otherwise it's a matter of figuring
out what year the film came out and guessing which issue the review was
in. A time consuming and sometimes fruitless process (when no review is
found). If your website had a search engine for reviews that would allow
people to type in the name of the film and/or composer and get a list of
which issue the CD or LP reviews were, that would be just wonderful. You
don't have to have the actual review online, just a list of the issue number
the reviews appear in. I realize creating that database would be quite
a job, however, it sure would be a great thing for your readers to have
and it would encourage people to go back into past issues and perhaps even
read articles they skipped the first time(but then of course, who skips
articles?).
Good idea. Lukas?
Unpeeling The Onion
From a recent Horoscope column in the brilliant humor magazine The
Onion
Aquarius: (Jan. 20óFeb. 18)
Gustav Holst will appear to you in a dream and refuse to leave
until you agree that John Williams has been ripping him off for years.
Jeff Foxworthy Department
You know you're a soundtrack geek when --
-- your pet euphemism for masturbation is "Teasing the Korean."
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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