FILM SCORE FRIDAY 10/18/02

On November 26, Varese Sarabande will release Jerry Goldsmith's score to STAR TREK: NEMESIS. From their website: "The epic tale of Nemesis has inspired what may be Goldsmith's greatest Star Trek score since his best-selling Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The score for Nemesis is as epic as anything the legendary composer has ever written. Even the musicians themselves gave Goldsmith repeated ovations during the recording sessions and a triumphant round of applause on completion. This is unquestionably the most aggressive Star Trek score ever. Ingeniously dark textures are mixed with action music that soars to apocalyptic heights. Classic Goldsmith!"

Normally I wouldn't print so much of a label's press release, but since Goldsmith is my favorite composer and the first Star Trek is probably my all-time favorite score, I desperately want what Varese says to be true.

The same day, Varese will release Craig Armstrong's score to THE QUIET AMERICAN. Reuiniting Armstrong with Bone Collector director Philip Noyce, American is the second flim of Graham Greene's novel about Western involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s, and stars Brendan Fraser and, in a performance receiving rave reviews, Michael Caine. The previous version was directed by Joseph L. Mankeiwicz and starred Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave.

Dreamworks Records will release John Williams' score to CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, his nineteenth feature for Steven Spielberg. New Line Records will release Rolfe Kent's score to ABOUT SCHMIDT, the acclaimed comedy reuniting Kent with Election director Alexander Payne. No release date has been announced for either CD.

On November 5th, Milan will release Mychael Danna's score to ARARAT (his seventh score for director Atom Egoyan) and Alberto Iglesias's score to TALK TO HER (his fourth film for Pedro Almodovar) in the U.S.

The same day, Disney will release the soundtrack to THE SANTA CLAUSE 2, and Nonesuch will release the soundtrack to PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. No word yet on how much either CD will feature of their scores, by George S. Clinton and Jon Brion, respectively. However, a glance at today's "Did They Mention The Music?" will tell you that the operative words for Brion's Punch-Drunk Love score are, apparently, "swooning" and "percussive."

The soundtrack of THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE (Jonathan's Demme's remake of Charade) features only one cue from Rachel Portman's score. Booooooooo.

For the two or three of you who don't already know this, Lalo Schifrin has a cameo in RED DRAGON as the conductor in the opening scene. Though it would be intriguing to know how Schifrin would have scored the film -- it couldn't be much more over-the-top than Danny Elfman's entertaining score -- Elfman wouldn't have been nearly as good casting in the cameo. With his elegant silver hair, Schifrin looks magnificent in the role.

A Bout de Souffle - Martial Sola - Universal (France)
Abandon - Clint Mansell - Silverline
Dernier Domicile Connu/La Rapace - Francois De Roubaix - Universal (France)
Film Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams - Ralph Vaughan Williams - Chandos
La Metamorphose des Cloportes - Jimmy Smith - Universal (France)
Le Boucherie - Pierre Jansen - Universal (France)
Le Cinema de Bertrand Tavernier - Philippe Sarde - Universal (France)
Le Corniaud/La Grand Vadrouille/Le Cerveau - Georges Delerue/Georges Auric - Universal (France)
Les Tontons Flingueurs/Ne Nous Fachons Pas - Michel Magne/Bernard Gerard - Universal (France)
Mort d'un Pourri - Philippe Sarde - Universal (France)
Swept Away - Michel Colombier - Varese Sarabande
Trafic - Charles Dumont - Universal (France)

October 22
Below - Graeme Revell - Varese Sarabande
Frida - Elliot Goldenthal - UMG
October 29
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever - Don Davis - Varese Sarabande
Ghost Ship - John Frizzell - Varese Sarabande
The Man From Elysian Fields - Anthony Marinelli - Varese Sarabande
White Oleander - Thomas Newman - Varese Sarabande
November 5
Ararat - Mychael Danna - Milan
Far From Heaven - Elmer Bernstein - Varese Sarabande
Talk to Her - Alberto Iglesias - Milan
November 12
Die Another Day - David Arnold - Maverick
The Emperors' Club - James Newton Howard - Varese Sarabande
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - John Williams, William Ross - Atlantic
XXX - Randy Edelman - Varese Sarabande
November 19
Sunset Boulevard - Franz Waxman - Varese Sarabande
November 26
The Quiet American - Craig Armstrong - Varese Sarabande
Star Trek: Nemesis - Jerry Goldsmith - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
About Schmidt - Rolfe Kent - New Line
Alexander's Ragtime Band - Alfred Newman - Screen Archives
The Busy Body/The Spirit is Willing - Vic Mizzy - Percepto
Catch Me If You Can - John Williams - Dreamworks
Children of the Century - Luis Bacalov - Decca
Dragonwyck - Alfred Newman - Screen Archives
The Hours - Philip Glass - Nonesuch
Ivanhoe - Miklos Rozsa - Rhino Handmade
Mussolini: The Untold Story - Laurence Rosenthal - Intrada Special Collection Series
Promise at Dawn - Georges Delerue - Disques CineMusique
Sans Famille/Madame De - Carolin Petit - Disques CineMusique
The Swarm - Jerry Goldsmith - Prometheus CD Club
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - Max Steiner - Rhino Handmade
Uncorked - Jeff Danna - LaLaLand
Zulu Dawn - Elmer Bernstein - LaLaLand

Abandon - Clint Mansell - Score Album on Silverline
Auto Focus - Angelo Badalamenti - Soundtrack on Sanctuary featuring 3 Badalamenti cues
Bloody Sunday - Dominic Muldoon
Formula 51 - Headrillaz
The Grey Zone - Jeff Danna
Naqoyqatsi - Philip Glass - Score Album on Sony Classical
Pipe Dream - Alex Lasarenko
Real Women Have Curves - Heitor Pereira - Soundtrack on Jellybean
The Ring - Hans Zimmer
Safe Conduct - Antoine Duhamel

ASH WEDNESDAY - David Shire

"David Shire's score is too similar to those in other [Ed] Burns pics."

Scott Foundas, Variety

KNOCKAROUND GUYS - Clint Mansell

"Clint Mansell's moody electronic score enhances the brooding tone of the drama without dampening its many lighter moments."

David Rooney, Variety

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE - Jon Brion

"The alternately percussive and swooning music by the brilliant Jon Brion underlines each of its moods in turn -- anger, longing, and ecstasy."

David Edelstein, Slate.com

"The score, by John Brion, is alternately swooning and percussive, and it is as important an element as Mr. Sandler's performance (or the bright blue suit Barry wears in nearly every scene)."

A.O. Scott, New York Times

"Jon Brion's score oscillates between head-splitting percussion and demented Parisian-romantic."

John Powers, L.A. Weekly

"Jon Brion's score, dominated by a wheezing harmonium, is layered under the action so that it swells like a wave slowly gathering devastating force."

Charles Taylor, Salon.com

"Anderson pumps up Jon Brion's radical, unsettling score and keeps the camera fixed on Sandler's facial expression, which conveys just how close he's come to snapping."

Keith Phipps, The Onion

TUCK EVERLASTING - William Ross

"James L. Carter's camera work brings a uniform glow to the film, a quality enhanced by William Ross' romantic score."

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

WHITE OLEANDER - Thomas Newman

"Composer Thomas Newman continues to impress with a subtle piano-based score."

Robert Koehler, Variety

More remarks on film scores from the writings of Pauline Kael:

THE BOUNTY

The picture might be more pleasing without the hype of Vangelis's pulsing, important-movie music during the credits, and without the ominous boom-booms he provides when Christian first touches the Tahitian princess's hair.

(from State of the Art, published by Bookthrift Co.)

The score (a muddy hype) is by Ennio Morricone, who did the hypes for Sacco and Vanzetti and Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion.

(from Reeling, published by Warner Books)

We don't know when the film is fooling and when it isn't, and whether to be tickled or appalled -- and so we sit in discomfort, listening to the fake warmth of John Barry's picture-postcard score.

(from When the Lights Go Down, published by Henry Holt & Co.)

The luscious Nino Rota music (The kind of music you feel you've been hearing on car radios all your life even as you hear it for the first time -- which you sure know won't be the last) is poured on in emotional torrents.

(from Going Steady, published by Marion Boyars)

The music -- cheery, jangling, circusy music, by Dominic Frontiere -- might almost be driving Cameron on. It seems to pick him up and keep him whirling; he gets only a short breather before he's in movement again. The music doesnít reach any kind of completion; it's a repeated vamp that starts up -- loud and boisterous -- each time the mood of the film is frazzled and everything is in motion.

(from Taking It All In, published by Henry Holt & Co.)

The score, by Bill Conti (who did the Rocky music), is heavy on the saxophone -- a blend of Gershwin and Last Tango that is maybe too expressive. It keeps crashing in, drenching us with symphony--of-a-city melancholy sex. Even when the sex is fairly cheerful.

(from When the Lights Go Down, published by Henry Holt & Co.)

Airport Love Theme (Winds of Chance)
Words by Paul Francis Webster, Music by Alfred Newman

The winds of chance
May blow my way
And on that shining day
I'll feel your presence near
And thrill to hear
Your April laughter
No more

I'll sit and sigh again
I'll soar
My heart will fly again
And then
Without a backward glance
I'll follow the winds
The gentle winds of chance

Originally published by MCA Music Publishing

From Hudson J. Whittaker:

I have a nagging question. It's probably not your field to answer some trivia question, but would it be possible if you could consider answering this one:
 
Is there a film without any music in it at all--with no source music, no soundtrack, absolutely no music? Foreign films, American films, any film without music? I must know.

The China Syndrome had no score, but did feature prominent use of a Stephen Bishop song. The electronic soundtrack to The Birds can only arguably considered music, but that maddening song the school kids sing would probably qualify as source music.

Any answers? Any thoughts?

From: "Michael M." <michael_am@hotmail.com>

Just a little correction for the comment on TREMORS. TREMORS 2 reveals that the worms are not from space. I suggest giving it a look, because it's rather pretty good for a direct-to-video sequel. I actually prefer it to the original, though I love all three movies. Just thought I'd let you know.

From: "Gunnar Grah" <gunnargrah@yahoo.de>

Summer's over, as is Dan Hobgood's series of articles on film music. While I think that Dan has made a good effort at describing Jerry Goldsmith' s approach to scoring a film, his writings as a whole leave a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

First of all, his assertion that the most important feature of a good score is narrative coherence can be questioned. He argues as if a film was only made into a coherent whole by a score which was likewise unified by one primary theme. However, Dan overlooks that all filmic means are able to contribute to a coherent narrative. The responsibility of providing coherence doesn't rest on the composer's shoulders alone. And if a film can provide coherence through a unified story, a consistent cinematographic style or a distinguished production design, the music will in fact be free to take over other roles within the film as a whole. Dan doesn't just forget to think of this, he uses this perceived shortcoming of other scoring approaches to plainly dismiss them without much reflection.

Dan was also very selective in his choice of evidence. Goldsmith-scored films are interpreted at great length ("Hoosiers" and "Chinatown" are even analyzed twice, without Dan adding anything new the second time around). Films that do not "work" in the author's view are briefly mentioned and then brushed aside. Thus, one cannot help to get the impression that Dan never had great interest in analyzing other scoring approaches to begin with. However, a more detailed look into film music that supposedly "doesn't work" , or scores that use a different approach and still "work", would be necessary to validate the often dogmatic nature of his statements. Also, his idea of how film music should communicate with its audience is surprisingly uninspired. "Accessibility" is the magic word - which effectively means that composers straying off the trodden path and therefore challenging the audience are unwanted in Dan's world. What about film being a work of art that wants more from its audience than just sit back, relax and get its emotional buttons pushed?

Finally, to use a Goldsmith biography as the background for a snotty dismissal of other great composers and their compositional styles was in extremely poor taste. But it only adds to the impression that this whole series of articles, despite its superficial appearance of a scholarly endeavor, was never much more than a lengthy idolization of Jerry Goldsmith and his followers.

I see no point in countering Hobgood's flawed dismissal of the "leitmotif" approach in this response, as that has been covered most prominently in the following messageboard thread:
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.asp?threadID=1478&forumID=1

Suffice it to say that he is mistaken in believing that the audience was bewildered by the presence of a symphony orchestra in Wagner's operas. Wagner was one of the first to employ the orchestra PIT, in order to give the music a semi-non-diegetic feel. It is not accidental that we credit Wagner as the father of film music.

I'd like to briefly counter Hobgood's following misrepresentation of his dissidents. He writes:

First, some film music aficionados have rejected the Oscar-winner's storytelling approach (and the "leitmotif" approach, too, for that matter) because they insist music should only emphasize a picture's various moods. These "atmospheric" approach proponents not only claim that the average moviegoer is neither concerned with nor attentive to a soundtrack, but that he should not try to be; in their minds, Goldsmith's linear writing is needless -- even foolish, perhaps. They believe that an audience should lose itself in a picture and that music should -- as unnoticeably as possible -- only generate emotional response.

I don't mean to say that Goldsmith's approach is needless or foolish - far from it! - but Hobgood should take notice of the fact that "generating emotional response" is NOT a simple stimuli-response process that can be easily dismissed as insufficient. It is complicated to generate emotional response due to various reasons - the differing backgrounds of the spectators, the "defense" mechanism that attacks clichés etc. If a film is able to make me cry, that's a GOOD film, in my opinion. That does not happen a lot. The triggering of emotions can be a quality in and of itself.

Second, it is possible to have a score BOTH be narrative and LESS narrative-driven at the same time. By that I mean that it is possible to manipulate the narrative dictatorship so that certain moments become "foregrounded" through symbolism, emotions or atmosphere. This is what Goldsmith himself did in ALIEN, for example - as my previous FSDaily touched upon. And I haven't even BEGUN to mention NON-Hollywood films, some of which are frequently devoid of a discernable narrative at all.

In general, though, I'm sorry to report that I became a bit nauseous as I was reading Hobgood's unilateral and seemingly "masturbative" praise of Jerry Goldsmith and his approach to film scoring. Certainly, Goldsmith is one of the greatest Hollywood composers of all time, but he is not exempt from criticism or even scrutiny.

Re: Dan Hobgood's article "To Compose a Story - Part 2"

As I said before, great stuff... keep it coming. I work in a business where most could benefit from reading a piece such as this. It certainly would provoke some serious thinking, if not wholehearted agreement.

For those interested in a German review of our TRAVELING EXECUTIONER CD, go here: http://www.cinemusic.de/2002/travellingexecutioner.php3

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