FILM SCORE FRIDAY 5/16/03

Universal will release Danny Elfman's score for THE HULK on June 17th.

Marco Beltrami scores his first mega-budget action movie with TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, in which the talented Jonathan Mostow (U-571, Breakdown) takes over as Terminator director from James Cameron, who is probably busy tunneling to the center of the Earth with a camera he designed himself. The title character, some kind of robot from the future, is played by (I kid you not) an Austrian bodybuilder named "Arnold Schwarzenegger." Let's see how that plays in the sticks.

Mark Wahlberg follows up his Planet of the Apes and Charade remakes with THE ITALIAN JOB, a reworking of the 60s caper film (scored by Quincy Jones) which starred Michael Caine, Noel Coward and Benny Hill (surprisingly, Coward & Hill never proved to be the smash hit comedy team people had predicted). In this new version, it's the opening heist that takes place in Italy, while the Turin-set climactic heist/chase from the original film has been transposed to Los Angeles. Directed by F. Gary Gray (Set It Off, The Negotiator), the cast includes Charlize Theron (after The Yards, audiences worldwide demanded another Wahlberg/Theron teamup), Edward Norton (literally fulfilling a contractual obligation to the studio), Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham, and the great Seth Green. Oh, and John Powell did the score.

The CD I'm referring to is Perseverance's release of John Gale's 1972 score to DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN. That a label would take the trouble to release a thirty-year old score, from an obscure film scored by a composer who only scored one feature, and give it a loving presentation including a color booklet and quotes from the composer and the director, is enough to warm the heart of even the most jaded collector.

Bones - Elia Cmiral - Intrada
Down With Love - Marc Shaiman, various - Warner Bros.
Something Wild - Aaron Copland - Varese Sarabande

Down With Love - Marc Shaiman - CD featuring 4 score cues and 1 song by Shaiman, plus additional songs, on Warner Bros.
The Matrix Reloaded - Don Davis - Song and Score 2-disc set on Warner Bros.
Spellbound - Daniel Hulsizer

May 20
Finding Nemo - Thomas Newman - Disney
June 3
Bruce Almighty - John Debney, various - Varese Sarabande
Whale Rider - Lisa Gerrard - WB
Wrong Turn - Elia Cmiral - Varese Sarabande
June 10
The Third Man - Anton Karas - Silva
June 17
The Hulk - Danny Elfman - Universal
June 24
Baby Doll - Kenyon Hopkins - DRG
The Buccaneer - Elmer Bernstein - DRG
Harlow - Neal Hefti - DRG
The Italian Job - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Marco Beltrami - Varese Sarabande
Date Unknown
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
The Big Sky - Dimitri Tiomkin - Screen Archives/BYU
The Dreamer of Oz - Lee Holdridge - Percepto
From Beyond - Richard Band - La-La Land
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Denny Zeitlin - Perseverance
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
A Summer Place - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
The White Buffalo - John Barry - Prometheus CD Club

May 17 - Hugo Friedhofer died (1981)

DADDY DAY CARE - David Newman

"Even the movie's poo-poo jokes are subtle, and one of them is scored, brilliantly, to the same screeching string sound used during the shower scene in 'Psycho.'"

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

MAN ON THE TRAIN - Pascal Esteve

"The composer Pascal Esteve varies the music, with tricky, primal chords for Milan and soft, regretful fugues for Manesquier."

Elvis Mitchell, New York Times

"Pascal Esteve's score strongly identifies the two main characters, using Ry Cooder-esque guitar tunes for Milan and classical themes for Manesquier, letting the two styles collide when the men come together."

David Rooney, Variety

THE SHAPE OF THINGS - Songs by Elvis Costello

"Elvis Costello, whose songs provide occasional bumpers between the talky, shapeless scenes, has managed more corrosive insight in a single verse than Mr. LaBute has in entire plays, and more compassion as well."

A.O. Scott, New York Times

"He [writer-director Neil LaBute] keeps the action divided into 10 discrete scenes, with snippets of Elvis Costello's poisoned-romance songs (the musical equivalent of velvet-sheathed knives) serving as the links between them."

Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune

"From its cast to its production design, right down to the Elvis Costello songs that blare out between chapters, 'The Shape of Things' seems every much as finely calibrated as 'In the Company of Men.'"

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

"Sparsely used, excerpts from songs by Elvis Costello provide an ideal, propulsive musical commentary."

Dennis Harvey, Variety

"They're stock characters who seem to have wandered in from other movies -- Adam from Woody Allen's 'Sleepers [sic],' maybe, and Phillip from, like, 'St. Elmo's Fire' -- and been handed this weird script full of torment and angst and painfully artificial dialogue. Not to mention bad feminist performance art, college productions of 'Medea,' cavernous coffee bars, Elvis Costello songs (circa 'This Year's Model') and dueling psycho-bitch girlfriends. This might be the edgiest film of the year -- if the year were 1982.

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

From Keith Phipps, in The Onion A.V. Club:

More than a few of Shakespeare's plays have never been documented on film in any meaningful way. In spite of rumors, it now looks like Martin Scorsese's biopic of Dean Martin will never happen. Sergio Leone had plans to shoot a mammoth restaging of the siege of Stalingrad, but he died before he could fulfill those plans. Someone did manage to make The Lizzie McGuire Movie, however.

FROM: "Edgar Soberón Torchia"

SUBJECT: MARK ISHAM & ALAN RUDOLPH
 
Just as Alan Rudolph's "Trouble in Mind" and "The Moderns" were omitted from Mark Isham's scores in a recent poll, his association with Rudolph (perhaps his main relationship with a filmmaker) was not included in his profile [in the Top Forty Composer Countdown]. I also believe that his best scores are the jazz oriented, not the folk-based ones.

FROM: "James Phillips"

SUBJECT: Maurice Jarre poll
 
I would love to see an in-depth profile of Maurice Jarre in FSM. He is certainly overlooked by American audiences, and doesn't deserve the maligned comments made by uninformed members of the message board. I just wish the following scores were listed in the current poll: THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, IS PARIS BURING? GORILLAS IN THE MIST, MOON OVER PARADOR, FATAL ATTRACTION, DREAMSCAPE, SHOGUN, and WINTER KILLS.

FROM: "Michael Akil Davis"

SUBJECT: I need help with a film score
 
I am desperate to find out the name of this particular score I hear in SO many movie previews. I've been waiting forever for somebody to use it and I found it in Pirates of the Caribbean, the preview that is. I'm not sure where the actual score begins, but the part I recognize is right after the pirate says "You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner, you're in one" then the music starts. If you know it or you know anyone who can help please let me know! To fully express my thanks I'd need Webster himself. All I can say right now though is thank you! Please take your time if you are willing to help! Thanks again.

FROM: "Christopher Shaneyfelt"

In the 5/2/03 column, under the heading, "On Goldsmith Past and Present," you posted a question by Louis Banlaki, who asked for information about a recent Alex North biography "co-authored" by Jerry Goldsmith. There is a recent biography entitled, "Alex North, Film Composer," written by Sanya Shoilevska Henderson with a forward by Jerry Goldsmith. The publication date is 2003 (London: McFarland, 256 p., ISBN 0786414707). It can be purchased at Amazon.com for $48.50. Evidently, in 1998 Henderson wrote a dissertation entitled, "Alex North: The Life and Career of a Composer," at Novi Sad University. If you are curious about how I came by this information, I simply looked it up in the World Cat database through my university library.

SUBJECT: Alex North biography
 
About the Alex North biography: It's titled "Alex North, Film Composer," and Goldsmith didn't exactly "co-author" it -- he just wrote the afterword. It's listed at amazon.com, but no publication date given yet.

I know I wrote yesterday and I had mentioned a biography on the late Alex North and had discovered that it is actually called Alex North, Film Composer: A Biography by Sanya Shoilevska AND Jerry Goldsmith. The publisher is McFarland and Company, is 256 pages and sells for $48.50. However, I am having a hard time finding it and was wondering if you or sopmeone in your staff has heard about this book.

Also, perhaps in one of your future issues you could write something on the late Nelson Riddle? I know he may not have been considered a film composer of the first rank and he is best remembered as the greatest vocal arranger of all time (that's what I believe, anyway), but he did write some film music and got an Academy Award for one of them. I love your CD to his BATMAN score and was wondering if there were any plans to release an album of his score from the original OCEAN'S ELEVEN? I hated the remake and as much as I like George Clooney he is no Frank Sinatra.

So I'd appreciate any feedback you may have.

SUBJECT: Alex North biography (ADDENDUM)
 
Sorry, amazon.com does give a release date: September 2003. And a pretty hefty price -- $48.50

FROM: "Erik Chapin"

SUBJECT: Indiana Jones and the Tomb of John Williams
 
Now that the Indiana Jones films have officially been given a [DVD] release date of November 4th, wouldn't it be a good time to ask the question, "What about the scores"? Although the complete, or near complete, score to Raiders of the Lost Ark saw its way to the store shelves many years ago, neither of the two sequels have been given the same deluxe treatment. Why is that? I'd really like to see all three scores released to coincide with the boxed DVD set, and not just slapped onto CD with extra tracks and a half ass restoration job like what was done with Superman and the so called special edition versions of the original Star Wars films. I'm talking about a full blown restoration of the complete scores. Restoration doesn't just mean cleaning up and then remastering. Restoration includes a process called REMIXING! Those individuals who work on the limited edition FSM and Varese Sarabande restorations seem to know the important role that remixing plays within the process. So did Shawn Murphy when he did E.T. and Close Encounters.

I guess my question is, if it can be answered, will the complete scores to the Indy films ever get a commercial release? I would think that if Laurent Bouzereau got Jaws and the other two scores I mentioned above released, he would do the same for the Indy films as well. I'm certainly hoping that he will.

One more question, whatever happened to the release of the complete score to Attack of the Clones? If this was discussed before, forgive me, I must have missed that one.

FROM: "Mike Skerritt"

SUBJECT: The Donner Parting

Donner's an amazingly gifted kinetic director, but the guy's not above clunkers like Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4, and while he can make decent source material better simply through style, what he's working with in Timeline is mediocre at best. The book was a bland retread of genres done much better many times before. So the possibility is there of the film being a "generic action suckfest," regardless of the director's pedigree, an argument I stand by. Of course, no one has seen the film or heard any of Goldsmith's music, so really this is all moot -- right? (Look at it this way, if I let myself think it was going to suck, the pain of missing out on a classic Goldsmith action score is lessened.)