FILM SCORE FRIDAY 7/5/02

John Barry has been signed to score his first feature length animated film, the new Pixar/Disney CGI feature THE INCREDIBLES, from Iron Giant director Brad Bird.

The Prometheus CD Club has announced three upcoming releases, due this fall. THE SWARM will be a 75 minute long disc of Jerry Goldsmith's spectacular score to Irwin Allen's spectacularly bad film. This will be followed by Pino Donaggio's BLOW OUT, the fourth of Donaggio's six scores for director Brian DePalma (and only available before as a bad re-recording on a Japanese LP), and James Newton Howard's THE PACKAGE, the first of three scores he wrote for Fugitive director Andrew Davis.

Hollywood Records will release Howard's score for M. NIGHT SHAMALYAN'S SIGNS (that's what it's called on the posters, friends) on July 30th. Director Shamalyan disproves the rule that itís a good idea for young composers to team up with rising directors, since the directors tend to bring the composers with them when they hit the big leagues (such as Bryan Singer and John Ottman, or Christopher Nolan and David Julyan). Shamalyan's first two films were scored by Edmond Choi, but he apparently forgot all about Choi when he started making studio films.

Varese Sarabande will release Jerry Goldsmith's score to STAR TREK: NEMESIS at the time of the film's release this December, having outbid GNP Crescendo for the rights. There have been rumors regarding upcoming releases from the Varese CD Club, mostly involving first-rate scores from Williams, Goldsmith, and Silvestri, but these are only rumors and the label has yet to report anything official.

Men in Black II - Danny Elfman - Sony

Like Mike - Richard Gibbs - Song Album Available on Sony
Men in Black II - Danny Elfman - Score Album Available on Sony
The Powerpuff Girls Movie - James L. Venable

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES - Rachel Portman

"Rachel Portman's busy score works overtime."

Derek Elley, Variety

"Rachel Portman's string-heavy score transforms the film into an instant classic."

Gregory Weinkfauf, New Times

"Rachel Portman's score, at once romantic, majestic and vital, completes this beguiling film."

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

This week's pair are two composers specializing in thrillers, and more concerned with writing inventive, unusual music that gets under the skin of a film than in penning crowd-pleasing melodies -- Jerry Fielding and Christopher Young.

Advise and Consent - Murder at 1600
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure - Hard Rain
The Black Bird - The Man Who Knew Too Little
The Big Sleep - Judas Kiss
Demon Seed - Virtuosity
Escape From Alcatraz - Murder in the First
Funeral Home - Tales From the Hood
The Gambler - Rounders
The Gauntlet - Rapid Fire
The Getaway - Entrapment
High Midnight - Unforgettable
The Killer Elite - Swordfish
Little Ladies of the Night - Avenging Angel
The Outfit - Set It Off
Straw Dogs - The Vagrant

From: Tor Harbin <choyt19@yahoo.com>

My name is Tor Y. Harbin, a film score fan.

First of all, I think that those comments about Number 5 and Denise Richards, while mildly amusing, were out of line. "Short Circuit" was significant in that it's one of the first films I can remember seeing and it's score by David Shire is one of the first that I noticed in a film. As for that Denise Richards remark...I honestly don't see why so many people rag on her.

Now to business: I love that game of skill you concocted, "The Mark Snows of Yesteryear". Now, I'm no expert, but I think that I have an interesting pair of composers. It has been said that Marc Shaiman is a lot like Vic Mizzy, but I think of him as a latter day John Morris.

Blazing Saddles - South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Clue - Misery
Dirty Dancing - Sleepless in Seattle
The Elephant Man - Ghosts of Mississippi
High Anxiety - One Night at McCool's
In God We Tru$t - Sister Act
The In-Laws - The Out-of-Towners
Life Stinks - What's the Worst That Could Happen?
The Producers - In and Out
Scarlett - 61*
Silent Movie - Mr. Saturday Night
Stella - Patch Adams
The Twelve Chairs - North
The Woman in Red - When Harry Met Sally...
Young Frankenstein - The Addams Family

You like?

Have a nice day.

I saw Short Circuit twice in 1986, once at a recruited screening with a temp track, and once in general release with the David Shire score, and though Shire is one of my favorite composers he wasn't able to make that film palatable. I don't remember what I wrote on my response card at the preview screening (director John Badham himself was there), but I'm sure it wasn't mean enough. However, I found Short Circuit 2 reasonably innocuous (though much less slick), and Charles Fox's score had a catchy end title theme.

Bless you for contributing to the Mark Snow game. I think Frankenstein/Addams is your best pair, though Twelve Chairs and North, two picaresque comedies, make a nice (though, in the case of North, unwatchable) duo. I have another composer lined up to pair with Shaiman in the weeks ahead.

In a recent column I reprinted a journal entry from Alan Bennett's collection Writing Home, detailing his friend George Fenton's first experience at the Academy Awards. Fenton scored many TV plays for Bennett as well as The Madness of King George. However, they first met when Fenton was 17, playing a schoolboy in Bennett's play Forty Years On, starring John Gielgud:

It is a bloody day. The boys are restless and thunder about the set, drowning the dialogue and irritating the principals. George Fenton, the biggest and gentlest of the boys, is sick. He lies down on the child's bed we used in the nanny scene, and as we go off to lunch he is fast asleep with a gollywog cradled in his arms. It is the one nice thing about the day.

From: "Alex Lira" <alexlira@attbi.com>

I do not see the connection between "Eye-Dentiscan" and "March of the Villains." Rather, it is clearly a copy of Alan Silvestri's "Death Becomes Her!"

From: "Darren MacDonald" <mayor_mccheese55@hotmail.com>

I have recently heard the male vocal line from the "Moon Rising" track from Williams' A.I. sampled in two television cartoons: an episode of Batman Beyond and in an episode of Spawn. On Batman Beyond the vocal line was unaltered and of course, the score behind the vocal was not Williams'. On the Spawn episode, the vocal was electronically distorted but was definately recognizable as the exact vocal used in A.I. There was no instrumental accompaniment as far as I remember. This of course leads me to believe it was not written by Johnny for A.I. but is rather a widely available piece accessible to many, perhaps in the Warner Bros. archives (A.I. and Batman are both Warners, but I don't think Spawn is). Has anyone out there heard this in any other films or television shows, or know the origin of this vocal?

From: JAVESSO@aol.com

If you have not already -- everyone that loves scores should rent / or buy the new Ultimate Legend - on DVD it is the most tactile and impressive demonstration of tasteful and excellent scoring (Goldsmith) versus the out of place and tacky (Tagerine Dream). The first makes the film classical and deepens the fairy tale etherworld, the second make the whole thing toss-away. It is quite a jarring comparison contained in one 2 disc set.

From: "Robert E. Bowd" <bbowd@interlog.com>

I think Benjamin Frankel's name might be missing from your Hammer poll - i.e. CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.

Those who read the Upcoming Assignments section of the magazine may have noticed a Marco Beltrami project called The First 20 Million. Well, that film officially just came and went, released in two theaters in the U.S. with virtually no advertising.

Its actual title is THE FIRST 20 MILLION IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST, and could be described as a cross between Jerry Maguire and Real Genius, the story of a young marketing whiz who quits his job in order to join a research institute, and gets teamed up with a group of oddball geniuses to design a $99 laptop computer.

This comedy, co-written by Swingers' Jon Favreau from a Po Bronson novel, was made by 20th Century Fox over a year ago, right before the industry was expecting to be shut down by two strikes that didn't happen. It stars Adam Garcia (not Andy -- Adam, no relation), and your puzzled expression is another reason why the film didn't get a real release. Garcia is the Australian dancer who played Piper Perabo's boyfriend in Coyote Ugly and Drew Barrymore's grown son in Riding in Cars With Boys, even though he's actually older than Barrymore. You know, that guy.

Garcia's personality is as waxed as his chest, while Rosario Dawson (currently seen in Men in Black II) manages to make a better impression with her beauty and her enormous smile, though she's not helped by faux-hip lines like "News flash!" and "Big ups to you." I was surprised to learn from the amazon.com reviews of the novel that her character was in the book and not just added for the movie -- she seemed like the kind of gratuitous love interest shoe-horned into a film to reassure us that the main character isn't gay. Someday, someone should write a thesis on how American filmmakers have always seemed more comfortable dealing with male-male relationships than male-female. A remarkable number of classic Hollywood films (Gone With the Wind is a key exception) focus on nonsexual male love.

The First 20 Million (which grossed $2535 last weekend) is not very good, but is the kind of pleasant time killer you might enjoy on cable late at night. The script may have read well, but the director, Mick Jackson (L.A. Story, Volcano, The Bodyguard) insists on cutting to a new angle at every opportunity with no sense of comic timing. The score is utterly forgettable, and the end credits list a whopping number of people under "Additional Music," so it's hard to give Beltrami much of the credit or blame.

A mess as the movie is, it's still miles better than the disastrous PUMPKIN, a mystifying attempt at a Farrelly Brothers-style comedy (at least, I think that's what the filmmakers were going for -- the movie is so long, dreary and unfunny that it's hard to see what anyone had in mind), where spoiled sorority girl Christina Ricci (talented as ever, but since she gets a producer credit she deserves a share of the blame) falls in love with the "retarded retarded" student she's assigned to mentor in "the Challenged Games" (though it's never clear what exactly is medically wrong with the boy -- his disability seems to change from scene to scene at the whim of the filmmakers). Even the usually reliable John Ottman is unable to do much for the film, except for an amusing pastiche "rumble" cue that ultimately adds to the film's confusing tone. When they talk about movies that filmmakers leave off their resumes, Pumpkin is what they have in mind.

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