FILM SCORE FRIDAY 8/8/03

Varese Sarabande will announce their latest limited edition CD Club releases this Monday, August 11th. They will include three CD Club discs as well as a two-disc set from Masters Film Music.

Le Divorce - Richard Robbins - Score CD on Grandstand
S.W.A.T. - Elliot Goldenthal - Score CD due Aug. 12 from Varese Sarabande
Step Into Liquid - Richard Gibbs

August 12
Open Range - Michael Kamen - Hollywood
S.W.A.T. - Elliot Goldenthal - Varese Sarabande
August 19
Freddy vs. Jason - Graeme Revell - Varese Sarabande
Gigli - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
Passionada - Harry Gregson-Williams - Varese Sarabande
August 26
Jeepers Creepers 2 - Bennett Salvay - Varese Sarabande
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life - Alan Silvestri - Varese Sarabande
September 23
Major Dundee - Daniele Amfitheatrof - DRG
Date Unknown
The Abominable Dr. Phibes/The Shuttered Room - Basil Kirchin - Perseverance
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
Battle Cry - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
The CBS Years vol. 1: The Westerns - Bernard Herrmann - Prometheus
The Hellstrom Chronicle - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation - Henry Mancini - Intrada Special Collection
Night and the City - Franz Waxman/Benjamin Frankel - Screen Archives
A Summer Place - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music

August 8 - Victor Young born (1901)
August 8 - Nathan Wang born (1956)
August 8 - Louis Levy died (1957)
August 9 - Dmitri Shostakovich died (1975)
August 11 - Ron Grainer born (1922)
August 12 - David Munrow born (1942)
August 12 - Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score to The Traveling Executioner (1970)
August 12 - Marty Paich died (1995)
August 13 - Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score to Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
August 14 - James Horner born (1953)
August 14 - Oscar Levant died (1972)

AND NOW LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - Michel Legrand

"The majestic Michel Legrand score is every bit as gooily delectable as [Francis] Lai's [score for A Man and a Woman]."

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly

"His visual compositions are as lush and suave as the score by Michel Legrand, which shares the soundtrack with some heart-stopping numbers sung by Ms. Kaas."

A.O. Scott, New York Times

"It's filled with beautiful people in gorgeous, exotic locales -- principally Morocco -- and interspersed in a classic Michel Legrand score are a clutch of great love songs, vintage international standards, including 'My Man,' 'I Wish You Love,' 'What Now My Love,' 'La Mer' and 'If You Go Away.'"

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

GIGLI - John Powell

"'Gigli' doesn't need a review; it needs an inquest. The movie is dead on arrival. Who or what killed it? There are multiple suspects: Was it the endless prattle? The ludicrously inappropriate soundtrack? In 'Gigli,' when the mentally challenged teenager says he loves 'Baywatch' because 'that's where the sex is,' sentimental violins play on the soundtrack. And almost every time Gigli refers to his penis, a soulful acoustic guitar is heard -- the penis theme, as it were. This is a fairly demented film, but not nearly demented enough to be interesting." [I had originally intended to include an even larger excerpt of this review, but in it the critic actually managed to give away the solution to the mystery in Murder on the Orient Express, and I was afraid some of our readers hadn't seen that wonderful film yet -- SB]

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"Then there's Brian (Justin Bartha), one of those mentally challenged young people that movies like to portray as innocent man-children rather than three-dimensional human beings. Bartha apparently has downloaded Dustin Hoffman's 'Rain Man' performance; he's got the agitated muttering and blurted non sequiturs down cold. And when he smiles, Brest never fails to thrust the camera right up to his face. At such moments, the orchestral score becomes coated in so much syrup, it could open its own IHOP franchise."

Marc Caro, Chicago Tribune

THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS - Gary DeMichele

"The score by Gary DeMichele gooses you past the rough spots: DeMichele uses some sort of electronic instrument to approximate the sound of a dentist's drill, and at times it seems to be keening, plaintively, while the filmmakers drill for fresh nerves."

David Edelstein, Slate.com

"The film also glows with the clear light and cool tones of cinematographer Florian Ballhaus' images, and its shifting moods are expressed beautifully by Gary DeMichele's distinctive score, at once spare yet dramatic."

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

FROM: "David Coscina"

SUBJECT: Doug Adams Strikes Back
 
Bravo Doug!

Not only was your response to Charles Christesson's email well fortified by musical fact but it was quite entertaining! And it's also TRUE for all of the reasons outlined in your rebuttal. I never thought that Doug's initial review slighted those composers who write melodically nor those of us who like listening to a good tune. Man, some film score fans are waaaaaaaaay too sensitive -- or insecure.

Give Doug a raise Lukas! He's a great contributor to Film Score Monthly and continues to raise to bar for film score journalism.

FROM: "Preston Neal Jones"

SUBJECT: North -- seldom melodic?!

I'm not sufficiently well-versed in the works of the talented Mr. Elfman to comment on Doug Adams' assessment thereof. But boy, do I have a "tender and brutal" bone to pick with Mr. Adams about Alex North. "Seldom outwardly melodic"?! Okay, DRAGONSLAYER I'll grant you, even 2001 -- but these are far from typical North. I'm speaking of the Alex North who wept for homesickness in Moscow when he heard Duke Ellington, and so returned to America to write (eventually) "UNCHAINED Melody," and the equally lyrical title song for THE LONG, HOT SUMMER. By the mid-fifties, he'd penned enough melodies for his movies that he easily filled two LP's for RCA with jazzy and romantic tunes worthy of Mancini. Even SPARTACUS, brutal and dissonant as it sometimes can be, overflows with great themes and character motifs, masterfully interwoven for maximum dramatic effect. I'm sick and tired of hearing this marvelous, emotionally moving composer spoken of as "difficult to warm up to," and I will not tolerate the canard that he was "seldom outwardly melodic." It just ain't so!

FROM: "Dennis J Logsdon"

SUBJECT: To Melody or Not to Melody, that is not the issue.
 
After reading today's daily I just had to add my humble opinion to the issue. I love my melody and complain a lot about the lacking so called themes. But what I really miss is the composer's presence in the total movie experience. OK, Planet of the Apes is not melodic but what it brings to the picture ups the ante of the total movie as a whole along with the talents of everyone else who had a part. I don't find that much in today's offerings. For those in the know a mature score is more of an experience but for a pure fan like me, Bond and the Bond theme and the Bond sound are etched in mind's eye and ear, Daredevil, Lara Croft, Hulk, and Spiderman are not. For those movies that are character and location driven much of the music is lovely and forgettable, but where is Waxman and A Place in the Sun when you need them? It is almost like the Director and or Producer don't want the composer to add anything to their creation other than be an addition to it.

FROM: "Randy Derchan"

I don't think the lack of melody is due necessarily to 20th century music, as it is to the frenetic pacing of movies today. It wonderful to hear high action scoring with gorgeous melodic writing still alive like Silvestri's Mummy Returns and The Cradle of Life. I personally think directors and producers have problems with melodies. If I hear one more half-of-a-motif figure via Danny Elfman I'm gonna scream.

FROM: "Ian Smith"

SUBJECT: Re: NO MORE MELODIES
 
Interesting comments in the HULK mailbag column. I think the ultra-tight, AVID-era editing is what is spoiling movie music these days, and the films themselves too. I find it hard to believe that the John Williams that wrote TESB score is the same guy that wrote the AOTC score. Where in TESB the music had room to breathe and flow into operatic grace like the theme for Vader or the frenetic Asteroid Field cue, the editing of AOTC is so punishing that there is hardly any space for melody at all.
 
Perhaps some prefer the lack of melody and consider it a sign of maturity in technique, but I for one miss the good old days. Sergio Leone had the right idea for film music, give it space and make it a major character in the film. HULK is a similar noise to SPIDERMAN and PLANET OF THE APES, and I dread seeing Elfmans name attached to a movie these days. Its becoming background noise, hardly music at all. Well, thats just my tired old opinion.
 
But consider the LOTR scores; fine movie music in films that follow a stately, steady pace. Indeed, a trilogy of movie music perhaps closest in quality to the original STAR WARS Trilogy than anything since those Golden Days.
 
Elfman did BATMAN? Tsk, surely not, must have been some other Elfman fella.

FROM: "John Archibald"

SUBJECT: John Schlesinger Tribute
 
Mr. Bettencourt:
 
I enjoyed your account of Mr. Schlesinger's career. I was particularly enlightened to learn that he directed both "An Englishman Abroad," and "A Question of Attribution." Both are little gems of dramatic nuance. "Englishman" appeals on several levels, especially since it features Coral Browne, a much underrated actress, known only on these shores for her over-the-top screen performances as Vera Charles, Rosalind Russell's "dearest friend," in "Auntie Mame, and later as an equally melodramatic, predatory lesbian in "The Killing of Sister George." The fascinating aspect of her role here is that she is literally re-enacting events that actually happened to her. And doing it very believably, I might add.
 
"A Question of Attribution" is a marvelous little duel between Queen Elizabeth and her Pictures Curator, who was actually a spy. Based on a stage play, as I recall, the whole piece operates on several levels, being mostly an indirect verbal confrontation between the two characters, in what the author has imagined as a colloquy between them. It's very well done, and beautifully played.
 
I have always considered "Day of the Locust" much better than the reception it received when first released. It's a film that still has many beautifully constructed, memorable sequences. Remember Donald Sutherland, retired at last in the California of his dreams, sitting all alone in his back yard, as an orange falls nearby, to land on the ground near all the other untended oranges? Or the marvelous montage leading to Burgess Meredith's eventual death? Or that almost inaudible buzzing whenever those hungry fans appear? Fascinating. However, it also had its flaws, most notably a badly miscast William Atherton in the lead role, too opaque to really convey the sensitivity of an artist who sees Apocalypse in Hollywood. And, to top it all off, the genuinely horrific scenes of the climactic riot seem like an artistic non-sequitur, chiefly because Atherton's artistic vision has never been explained enough to make the inclusion of scenes from his paintings understandable. There's even a moment when Sutherland comes into his house, to find Atherton working on his canvas. All we needed was Atherton to explain his vision. But it never happened; consequently, a lot of audience members were mystified by those almost Expressionist images, as if to say, "Where did all that come from?" Oh well. It's still a good film. But it could have been a great one.
 
Perhaps Schlesinger's work will seem more important with the passage of time.
 
I wouldn't be surprised.
 
P.S.: Barry's score for "Day of the Locust" should be released on CD. It's certainly worth it.

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