FILM SCORE FRIDAY 6/28/02

Just another reminder that the latest Film Score Monthly CDs are in stock. Our Golden Age disc, ON THE BEACH/THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, pairs two Oscar®-nominated Ernest Gold scores for director Stanley Kramer. Our Silver Age entry unites two scores written for movie versions of Richard Stark's superlative "Parker" heist novels -- POINT BLANK and THE OUTFIT, by Johnny Mandel and Jerry Fielding respectively. Mandel's score especially brings new meaning to the word "cool."

Composer/conductor Carlo Savina passed away on June 21st, at the age of 82. He composed over one hundred scores, including Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil and the 1981 3-D release Comin' At Ya! Savina conducted for other composers as well, including the scores for The Godfather, Tess, Amarcord, and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. He also conducted the first album of his friend Miklos Rozsa's Ben-Hur score, "Musical Highlights From Ben-Hur," leading the Symphony Orchestra of Rome.

In the most shocking film music news of the month, Sony has announced that they will be releasing the soundtrack to MEN IN BLACK II on July 2nd, the day before the film's release. Not a song compilation titled "Men in Black II: The Album" but an actual score album with eighteen Danny Elfman cues (no "Final Confrontation," however) and only two songs, one by Will Smith and one by Tim Blaney, who is the voice of "Frank the Pug" in both MIB films and was also the voice of Number Five, the Jar-Jar Binks of the 1980s, in the Short Circuit movies.

A score album in place of a song album, and released the day before the movie. Could this be the start of a trend? Doubt it.

On July 16th, Sony will be releasing the soundtrack to MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, and on that same day, Hollywood Records will release Klaus Badelt's score to the period submarine thriller K19: THE WIDOWMAKER.

On August 6th, Varese Sarabande will be releasing Carter Burwell's score to the new Al Pacino comedy (yes, I know you're thinking "Not another Al Pacino comedy!") SIMONE. Simone is the second film from director Andrew Niccol, who previously made Gattaca and wrote The Truman Show, and tells the story of a filmmaker who creates a computer generated actress who becomes a megastar. Insert Denise Richards joke here.

The Bishop's Wife - Hugo Friedhofer - BYU/Screen Archives
On the Beach/The Secret of Santa Vittoria - Ernest Gold - Film Score Monthly
Point Blank/The Outfit - Johnny Mandel/Jerry Fielding - Film Score Monthy
Pumpkin - John Ottman - Citadel
Road to Perdition - Thomas Newman - Decca
Romeo and Juliet (new recording) - Nino Rota - Silva
Sunshine State - Mason Daring - Daring Records
Wilson - Alfred Newman - Screen Archives

The Emperor's New Clothes - Rachel Portman
Lovely and Amazing - Craig Richey - Soundtrack on Lion's Gate due July 9th
Mr. Deeds - Teddy Castellucci - Song Album on RCA
Pumpkin - John Ottman - Score Album on Citadel

MINORITY REPORT - John Williams

"John Williams supplies an energetically supportive score."

Todd McCarthy, Variety

"And at times, Williams's score seems to reference Hitchcock's favorite composer, Bernard Herrmann."

Desson Howe, Washington Post

This week, we link two talented American orchestral composers who received Oscar® nominations early in their careers yet never achieved the feature success they deserved and went on to do many movie scores for network TV and cable -- Laurence Rosenthal and Bruce Broughton.

Billy the Kid - Tombstone
Brass Target - The Presidio
Clash of the Titans - The Monster Squad
Consenting Adult - Bobbie's Girl
Easy Money - For Love or Money
George Washington - George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation
Logan's Run (tv theme) - Logan's Run (episode scores)
Mark Twain and Me - Roughing It
The Miracle Worker - Square Dance
The Power and the Glory - Last Rites
The Return of a Man Called Horse - Silverado
The Story of David - Jeremiah
Who'll Stop the Rain - Jacknife

Alex Wurman's elegant chamber music for 13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING shows just how effective scoring for a small ensemble can be, while Trevor Rabin's score for BAD COMPANY begins with promising moodiness but soon degenerates into the generic action cues befitting this dispiriting exercise in paycheck-cashing.

David Newman's typically busy score for SCOOBY-DOO (his fourth score this year, and his third without a score album) is of no help to this horribly directed disaster, while Stanley Clarke gives the amusing UNDERCOVER BROTHER a decent pastiche score.

Despite its prominently publicized songs, the lovingly shot but muddled DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD features a traditional orchestral score by David Mansfield and T. Bone Burnett, which, though adequate, only adds to the warmed over, familiar feeling of the rest of the film.

From: MRCHRISWELL@aol.com

Your note of Roger Rabbit got me thinking, what does the Academy have against Alan Silvestri? I can't think of a contemporary composer with more high profile popular films to his credit who has been more consistently passed over.

From: "IAN SMITH" <IAN@clairestheboss.freeserve.co.uk>

Subject: Re: HOW TO WIN A BEST SCORE OSCAR®

On the subject of the above article, how about a follow-up, 'How NOT to win a Best Score Oscar®'? Seems to me that every year the best and most deserving score never wins. I'm still gutted from 1982 when Vangelis failed to win with BLADE RUNNER, one of the most original and ahead-of-it's-time scores in memory, far superior to CHARIOTS OF FIRE that won it the year before (whoops, can't let the Greek guy win two years in a row). A few years earlier FAME won when everyone knows that TESB deserved it more. And last year, surely AI deserved it over the over-rated LOTR? I could offer an alternative to every Oscar® winner of the last twenty years. Seems to me scores often win because the film has failed to win Best Picture so the score award is a consolation (ET anyone?). There is always the exception - TITANIC won simply because it was record-breaking mood at the Academy and it leveled the BEN-HUR record. Agh. You'd think if the Academy were going to give Horner the award they'd have done it a few years earlier for the superior GLORY.

However, if I have any complaints about the Academy's Music Branch, it's not that Vangelis doesn't have enough Oscars®.

I was rather shocked at how dramatically off-key the battle scoring was for Windtalkers. Especially in the opening Solomon Islands battle, the music sounded like it was tracked in from somewhere else.
 
I actually enjoyed the "off-key" cues you were talking about. They reminded me of the old war pictures of the 40's and 50's, when tracked-in music was used often. Can't give any examples, but it had an old-fashioned feel to it. More than likely it was a studio or producer-director decision than Horner's. If you read the Film Music Hollywood Reporter last month, you'd find an article with James Horner and Windtalkers, where Horner describes how he wasn't entirely happy with the outcome due to studio interference and changes in the picture.

The problem with "Windtalkers" rests in three places, all of which could have been avoided. Prior to the film's delay in early fall of last year there was only one editor on the project, after the delay and the subsequent additional photography sanctioned by MGM (without the presence of John Woo), two new editors were brought onto the project in order to re-cut the director's cut. Big no-no, do not re-cut a John Woo film, its too obvious and distracting.

The additional photography is all too evident in attempting to create a conventional opening and closing to the picture, particularly in the opening and closing shots of the canyons (remember how those same canyons looked so clear in "Mission: Impossible 2" and now in "Windtalkers" the same canyons look so grainy, almost as if the shots were blown-up video images), and in the finale where Adam Beach's character places Nicholas Cage's dog-tags around his son's neck. It is obvious that these sequences were not part of John Woo's work, since Woo employed Jeffery L. Kimball as director of photography whose work for John in "M: I 2" was so clean as were most of the shots in the better half of "Windtalkers."

And, now, the third problem which could have easily been avoided within the time of the delay and its release this June. Yes, the inclusion of James Horner. Like Scott mentioned, the war sequences were horribly spotted by Horner, the action music was cheesy and uninteresting; I felt as if I were watching an episode of "Combat!" A composer could have been found in that timeframe to replace the awful score the film received. As much as people do not like Media Ventures, I think either Hans Zimmer or John Powell, whom John Woo has previously worked with, would have done an excellent job with "Windtalkers." Most likely, I would imagine Zimmer would have augmented the Native American sound to the music. Speaking of which, another idea would have been to just use the flute Roger Willie's character plays and the harmonica that Christian Slater plays for the score, leaving everything else unscored.

"Windtalkers", is simply another example of a major studio messing around with John Woo. Paramount has been the only studio to give Woo fair treatment, where he has the final cut, not the studio.

The strangeness of the battle cues could just be another aspect of Woo's odd musical sensibility. Beyond my general ambivalence toward Zimmer, I find his choral cues for Broken Arrow and Mission: Impossible 2 absurdly over the top, going beyond irony into outright pompous laughability. Is laughability a word?

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

I have to agree completely with the reader who said that he was fine with the AOTC sound mix. I myself would agree that the ideal is an unedited score, but I cannot disagree with the dramatic choices made by Lucas and Wannberg. After the film pacing has changed, so must the music, and I actually enjoyed hearing the Phantom Menace cues in there since they are fantastic action pieces. And I myself, after 2 viewings, didn't even notice Yoda's theme during the conveyor belt sequence. At least we have all of Johnny's original cues to look forward to when the 2 CD set of the score is released unedited and in the originally intended sequence, right Sony?

From: Les Jepson <LJepson@GDEngineering.co.uk>

Did I detect a comment a while ago that mailbag letters are being pruned of any criticisms of FSM soundtrack releases? Well, speaking for myself, I've bought quite a few FSM CDs and I have no complaints so far. For the most part I've bought only the ones that feature scores from films I've seen, and so I know I'm going to like them before I play them. The exception to this buying habit is 36 HOURS. Although I'm more than old enough, for some unknown reason I've never seen this picture. However, the name Dimitri Tiomkin was enough. Of the great Golden Age composers Tiomkin must surely be the most neglected in terms of film score releases. No doubt this is due in part to the fact that the complexities in his music make it difficult to re-record - especially on a low budget - with fidelity, a problem he shares with Alex North, Leonard Rosenman, and Ennio Morricone.

Anyway, 36 HOURS is a good score. It is interesting in that it features none of the bombast that Tiomkin's detractors are fond of complaining about. My ears really pricked up with the track, "Lisbon Cha-Cha". The way it lulls one into a false sense of security and then pulls the rug out is masterful. I've always liked dramatic music when it changes mood with a collision of styles. A few years ago much was made of Elliot Goldenthal's COBB score, which employed this technique. Other fine examples that come readily to mind are Riz Ortolani's THE VALACHI PAPERS, Laurence Rosenthal's THE COMEDIANS and BECKET, Jerry Fielding's THE WILD BUNCH, Ernest Gold's INHERIT THE WIND and CROSS OF IRON, and Jerry Goldsmith's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. Another notable piece, although non-film, is "The Death of Andri" movement from Leos Janacek's TARAS BULBA RHAPSODY FOR ORCHESTRA.

Anyway, thanks for 36 HOURS, a great surprise I hadn't anticipated.

I greatly enjoyed MINORITY REPORT, both the movie and the score, though I thought the ending of the film was unsatisfying and the script, though often extremely clever, was full of plot holes that are large even by the standards of contemporary screenwriting. Also, in the disappointing final reels, the filmmakers rip off one of my favorite moments of the last ten years of American cinema -- I won't tell you the scene or the original film, for fear of spoiling your enjoyment of either, but it involves Colin Farrell's character.

Williams' score is all over the place in the best possible way, energetic and inventive. Much as I'm looking forward to Goldsmith's Star Trek: Nemesis (and even Arnold's Die Another Day), "Anderton's Great Escape" is the cue to beat for Best Action Music of the Year, wonderfully evoking Williams' scores for Irwin Allen TV shows. However, am I the only one who feels that "Eye-Dentiscan" keeps threatening to turn into Superman's "March of the Villains?"

Technically, the film is stunning (as you'd expect), especially the effects and Alex McDowell's dazzling yet plausible production design. Cruise gives his best performance since Jerry Maguire, Samantha Morton is remarkable, and Colin Farrell is fine in his first movie role that someone besides me will actually see. And along with everything else, it's a treat to have Spielberg shoot a movie in scope again, his first since Hook.

Is the movie better than A.I.? Probably. It's certainly more coherent and satisfying on first viewing. But there's something about A.I. that stays with me in a way that I suspect Minority Report won't, which is why I saw A.I. over and over again.

As a critic once wrote, in the Village Voice, "I'm getting a little tired of In the Mood For Love. But then I have seen it six times."

From: Paul Andrew MacLean <p.maclean@worldnet.att.net>

Subject: Jesus Christ is not sci-fi/fantasy/horror...

I feared my inclusion of Ben-Hur as sci-fi/fantasy/horror might incur some controversy -- I'm glad your response was so reasonable. I included it for the scene in which Jesus Christ cures Heston's mother and girlfriend of their leprosy. This puts the film in the realm of the supernatural, and thus fantasy.

I must cordially take exception to that classification. In my experience miracles are not fantasy. In fact divine healings are in most cases not miraculous at all but merely what results from the application of faith.

I could spend a lot of time getting into a whole discussion, but I'll just say this: my best friend was healed from asthma and chronic migraines after she prayed to Jesus Christ. Now she can breathe just fine, and exercises every day, and hasn't suffered a migraine in years.

Believe me that's not fantasy!

"After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive." -- Acts 1:3

Subject: Ben-Hur Supernatural=Fantasy
 
Scott Bettencourt: As Margo Channing opined in "All About Eve", "Everybody has a heart, except some people". So sad that you consider "Ben-Hur" 'supernatural, therefore fantasy'. First, it's not Judah's girlfriend but sister who is cured, along with his mother. There's YOUR fantasy. Medical history is replete with examples of 'unexplained' cures. To millions of people, religious faith is real. The Bible (probably more fantasy to you) records miraculous healings, even resurrections. As Christ said, "Blessed are they who have not seen and believed." Ask Him to enter your life and He will, Scott. Here's hoping!