THE TOP FORTY COUNTDOWN 2005: PART THREE

By Scott Bettencourt

The list so far:

21. Michael Giacchino
22. Mychael Danna
23. Mark Isham
24. Christophe Beck
25. Trevor Rabin
26. Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
27. Patrick Doyle
28. David Arnold
29. Carter Burwell
30. Edward Shearmur
31. Graeme Revell
32. Gabriel Yared
33. Alexandre Desplat
34. George Fenton
35. Klaus Badelt
36. Christopher Young
37. Jon Brion
38. Steve Jablonsky
39. Teddy Castellucci
40. Richard Gibbs

But wait, there's more...

2004 RANKING: 35
AGE: 33
BIRTHPLACE: Washington D.C.
REPRESENTATION: Gorfaine/Schwartz
BACKGROUND: Julliard, concert composer
ONGOING FILMMAKER RELATIONSHIPS: Tod Phillips, John Hamburg, Karyn Kusama
FAN FAVORITE: Heist
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story--114 (U.S. gross in millions)
2. Starsky & Hutch--88
3. Along Came Polly--87
4. Old School--74
5. 13 Going on 30--57
6. Not Another Teen Movie--38
7. Heist--23
8. View From the Top--15
9. State and Main--6
10. Girlfight--1

Despite having an impressive four hit films released in the first half of 2004, Shapiro suffers from two disadvantages -- all four of those films were comedies, which is at once probably both the hardest and the least respected of film scoring genres, and distressingly little of his film music is available on CD (the only commercially available Shapiro score CD is his surprisingly forgettable work for State and Main). Hits like 13 Going on 30 and especially Starsky & Hutch benefited hugely from his deft scoring, but on soundtracks his work is pushed aside in favor of the inevitable songs. Since his 2004 hit streak, Shapiro seems to have slowed down his schedule, but his next major feature is a reunion with Girlfight director Karen Kusama, which gives him a potentially strong setting to display his gifts -- the sci-fi action movie Aeon Flux.

WHAT'S NEXT: Aeon Flux

2004 RANKING: 11
AGE: 50
BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York
REP: Gorfaine/Schwartz
1 OSCAR, 4 NOMINATIONS
1 EMMY NOMINATION
2 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS
RELATIONSHIPS: Neil Jordan, Julie Taymor
BACKGROUND: Manhattan School of Music (under Aaron Copland & John Corigliano), concert and stage composer
FAN FAVORITE: Interview With the Vampire
TYPECAST IN: Sci-fi adventure
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Batman Forever--184
2. SWAT--116
3. A Time to Kill--108
4. Batman and Robin--107
5. Interview With the Vampire--105
6. Heat--67
7. Demolition Man--58
8. Pet Sematary--57
9. Alien 3--54
10. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within--32

While SWAT proved again that Goldenthal can successfully score a film that has nothing but boxoffice on its mind, the classically trained concert composer has spent the time since that summer 2003 hit working on a project closer to his heart -- an opera based on John Gardner's novel Grendel (Beowulf as retold from the monster's point of view), directed of course by Goldenthal's perennial partner and collaborator, Julie Taymor. We eagerly await what is likely to be his most ambitious work, and hope that by the time it's had its world premiere in Los Angeles in May 2006, he has returned to film scoring (and a project more creatively demanding than SWAT).

2004 RANKING: 27
AGE: 46
BIRTHPLACE: Glasgow, Scotland
REP: First Artists Management
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Moulin Rouge, Ray
RELATIONSHIPS: Baz Luhrmann, Philip Noyce
BACKGROUND: Royal Academy of Music, pop songwriter/arranger
FAN FAVORITE: Moulin Rouge
TYPECAST IN: Action/thrillers
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Ray--75
2. The Bone Collector--66
3. Love Actually--59
4. Moulin Rouge--57
5. William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet--46
6. Kiss of the Dragon--36
7. Fever Pitch--12 (as of 4/10/05)
8. The Quiet American--12
9. The Clearing--5
10. The Magdalene Sisters--4
 
Armstrong is developing an impressively eclectic career, and though for a while he seemed stuck writing same-sounding scores for thrillers and brooding dramas (Bone Collector, Quiet American, Magdalene Sisters), his more recent work is showing some welcome range and warmth. His score for the Oscar winning Ray was effective and impressively discreet, by necessity weaving through the spaces not filled by the Ray Charles music that was one of the film's most essential elements, and while the score album is reportedly marred by needless dialogue and sound effects intrusions, the rare For Your Consideration promo CD gives a good example of how unusually restrained his score is. His latest project, the surprisingly enjoyable Americanization of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, is a successor to his Love Actually score, showing his skill at writing light romantic comedy music, and his work in Pitch is used much less intrusively than in Actually.

2004 RANKING: 17
AGE: 44
BIRTHPLACE: Haselmere, England
REP: Kraft-Engel
1 OSCAR, 3 NOMINATIONS
2 GRAMMY NOMINATIONS
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: The Cider House Rules, Chocolat
RELATIONSHIPS: Harvey Weinstein, Jonathan Demme, Doug McGrath, Wayne Wang
BACKGROUND: Oxford, British TV composer
FAN FAVORITE: The Cider House Rules
TYPECAST IN: Period comedy-drama
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Chocolat--71
2. The Manchurian Candidate--65
3. Mona Lisa Smile--63
4. The Cider House Rules--57
5. To Wong Foo--36
6. Addicted to Love--34
7. The Joy Luck Club--32
8. Because of Winn-Dixie--31 (as of 4/10/05)
9. The Legend of Bagger Vance--30
10. Emma--22

As befitting Hollywood's tendency towards composer typecasting, Portman has largely been hired for warm, intimate "people stories," the kind of films considered suitable for a female composer, though her gentle, melodic style and the Oscar attention given to her work in the genre certainly help to reinforce that casting. Last year, she successfully broke the mold (thanks to her ongoing collaboration with director Jonathan Demme) with the well reviewed remake of The Manchurian Candidate, providing the engrossing thriller with a brooding, Howard Shore-esque score, and though her outstanding melodic sense was missed, the film showed she could successfully work in darker territory. More recently, she wrote an appealingly restrained score for the family film Because of Winn-Dixie, and, most impressively, composed an opera based on Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, material which had previously inspired a Lerner & Loewe film musical and a flop John Barry stage musical. Unlike Elliot Goldenthal, whose opera work is keeping him away from the screen for the time being, Portman is keeping busy in the cinema, with two intriguing upcoming projects -- the Jodie Foster suspense thriller Flightplan, and Roman Polanski's remake of Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S NEXT: Flightplan, Oliver Twist

2004 RANKING: 20
AGE: 40
BIRTHPLACE: San Diego, California
REP: Kraft-Engel
RELATIONSHIPS: Bryan Singer, Joel Silver
BACKGROUND: USC, film editor
FAN FAVORITE: The Usual Suspects
TYPECAST IN: Thrillers
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. X2--214
2. The Cable Guy--60
3. Gothika--59
4. Halloween H20--55
5. Hide and Seek--50 (as of 4/10/05)
6. Cellular--32
7. Lake Placid--31
8. The Usual Suspects--23
9. Urban Legends: Final Cut--21
10. Eight Legged Freaks--17

Ottman's friend and regular collaborator, director Bryan Singer, has become the kind of A-list director that only makes a film every few years, which is a good thing for the scoring career of composer-editor Ottman, who has the time to work on an impressive variety of projects between Singer films. He wrote an efficient thriller score for the surprisingly enjoyable Cellular, and this spring his music for Hide and Seek showed impressive restraint. He has followed in the footsteps of James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Michael Kamen, Don Davis and John Frizzell by becoming producer Joel Silver's primary composer, and his next films for Silver are the youth oriented reworking of House of Wax and Lethal Weapon creator Shane Black's directorial debut, the action-comedy noir Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. The enormous success of X2 means that Danny Elfman isn't the only composer producers go to for superhero films, and before he reunites with Singer on the much anticipated, long delayed Superman Returns, he scores this summer's comic book blockbuster Fantastic Four.

WHAT'S NEXT: House of Wax, Fantastic Four, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Superman Returns

2004 RANKING: 12
AGE: 51
BIRTHPLACE: Los Angeles, California
REP: First Artists Management
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
RELATIONSHIPS: Brian Levant, Danny DeVito, Stephen Herek, Raja Gosnell, Steve Carr
BACKGROUND: Son of Alfred Newman, studio musician, low-budget films
FAN FAVORITE: Galaxy Quest
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Ice Age--176
2. Scooby-Doo--153
3. The Flintstones--130
4. The Nutty Professor--128
5. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps--123
6. Dr. Dolittle 2--112
7. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days--105
8. Daddy Day Care--104
9. The Cat in the Hat--100
10. The War of the Roses--86

David Newman is one of the most in-demand composers for Hollywood comedies today, but unlike the heyday of Henry Mancini (or even John Morris), comedy scores garner little attention from audiences and critics, and are usually only noticed when they're bad. Newman's most recent hit, the Ice Cube vehicle Are We There Yet?, is likely to do little to change that, and his other spring comedy, the guilty pleasure Man of the House, opened with a rare Newman action cue, but the film made only a fraction of the grosses of its tough-guy-softened-by-young-people competitor, The Pacifier. Hvaing dropped out of the Steve Martin Pink Panther, he signed on to a project that combines two of the most popular genres in film scoring -- sci-fi adventure and Westerns. Joss Whedon's Serenity is a terrific opportunity for Newman to explore new territory and gain new fans, and with any luck there'll even be a score album (considering how many big movies Newman has scored, it's shocking how little of his work is commercially available).

WHAT'S NEXT: Serenity

2004 RANKING: 23
AGE: 36
BIRTHPLACE: Fornero, Italy
REP: Greenspan Artist Management
2 EMMY NOMINATIONS
RELATIONSHIPS: Wes Craven, Bob Weinstein, Guillermo Del Toro
BACKGROUND: Yale School of Music, USC (under Jerry Goldsmith)
FAN FAVORITE: Mimic
TYPECAST IN: Horror, Action
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines--150
2. I, Robot--144
3. Scream--103
4. Scream 2--101
5. Scream 3--89
6. Blade 2--81
7. Hellboy--59
8. The Faculty--40
9. Resident Evil--39
10. Dracula 2000--33

The late, great Jerry Goldsmith reportedly spoke quite favorably of his former pupil, Marco Beltrami, and the student is following in the master's footsteps by specializing in sci-fi thrillers and action adventure. His three projects last year -- Hellboy, I, Robot, and Flight of the Phoenix showed his imaginative use of orchestration, and demonstrated a strong musical personality despite the limited scoring time today's composers are subject to. In the context of the film, Phoenix's score seemed secondary, but the CD is a much more satisfying listening experience (it sounds as if some of his strongest cues were dropped from the film). His reunion with Scream makers Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, the aptly titled Cursed, was a disappointing affair for all concerned (especially the audience), but he'll work again with Craven on the plane-bound thriller Red-Eye, as well as scoring the latest in the XXX franchise and Tommy Lee Jones' feature directorial debut, an offbeat Mexico-set drama.

WHAT'S NEXT: XXX: State of the Union, Red-Eye, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

2004 RANKING: 18
AGE: 41
BIRTHPLACE: Scotland
REP: First Artists Management
BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: Sideways
RELATIONSHIPS: Alexander Payne, Mark Waters, Richard Shepard
BACKGROUND: Self-taught musician, stage composer
FAN FAVORITE: Election
TYPECAST IN: Comedy
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Freaky Friday--110
2. Legally Blonde--90
3. Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde--89
4. Mean Girls--86
5. Sideways--71 (as of 4/10/05)
6. About Schmidt--64
7. Kate & Leopold--46
8. 40 Days and 40 Nights--37
9. Someone Like You--27
10. Nurse Betty--25

Sideways has proved to be director Alexander Payne's biggest boxoffice hit as well as arguably the most critically acclaimed film of last year, and Kent's light jazz score was a fitting accompaniment (and likely to be the best selling of all of Kent's far too few score CDs). The underrated The Last Shot again demonstrated Kent's comedic skills, while Mean Girls proved to be both a critical and commercial hit, though none of his music ended up on the delayed soundtrack release. Once upon a time, Kent actually scored movies that weren't comedies, indie thrillers like Richard Shepard's Oxygen and Mercy (he even received a producing credit on Mercy), and his latest project with Shepard, the dark comedy thriller The Matador, was one of the most talked about films of the most recent Sundance Film Festival. He will work in lighter territory with the Vince Vaughan/Luke Wilson comedy The Wedding Crashers, and his fourth film for director Mark Waters, the Reese Witherspoon fantasy comedy Just Like Heaven .

WHAT'S NEXT: The Wedding Crashers, The Matador, Just Like Heaven

2004 RANKING: 16
AGE: Unavailable
BIRTHPLACE: England
REP: Kraft-Engel
RELATIONSHIPS: John Woo, Dreamworks, Ron Underwood, Sandra Bullock, F. Gary Gray, Charles Stone III, Doug Liman
BACKGROUND: Trinity College of Music, advertising music, Media Ventures
FAN FAVORITE: Chicken Run
TYPECAST IN: Action, animation
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. Shrek--263
2. The Bourne Supremacy--176
3. The Bourne Identity--121
4. Face/Off--112
5. Robots--111 (as of 4/10/05)
6. Chicken Run--106
7. The Italian Job--106
8. Two Weeks Notice--93
9. Antz--90
10. Drumline--56

While he's yet to score the kind of projects that garner Oscar attention (except for I Am Sam), Powell is managing to strike a nice balance in his assignments between thrillers and lighter entertainment. Energy is the most distinctive element of his scoring style, both in his action movies (The Bourne Supremacy, The Italian Job, Paycheck) and in his more family oriented scores (Robots, Chicken Run). If there's any drawback to his work it's that he's yet to develop a strong melodic voice, though some of his themes (like Pluto Nash) are appealingly catchy, and the nature of Hollywood today and the kind of assignments he takes may not encourage melodic exploration. His first solo animation score, Robots, is proving to be one of his biggest hits, and he returns to the genre with George Miller's penguin film Happy Feet (he was once announced to score Miller's aborted Mad Max sequel, Fury Road) and works in more grown up turf with the high concept romantic thriller Mr. and Mrs. Smith, from Bourne director Doug Liman.

WHAT'S NEXT: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Happy Feet

2004 RANKING: 10
AGE: 46
BIRTHPLACE: Burbank, California
REP: Kraft-Engel
1 OSCAR NOMINATION
3 EMMYS, 5 NOMINATIONS
RELATIONSHIPS: Tom Shadyac, Robert Rodriguez, Garry Marshall
BACKGROUND: Orchestrator, TV composer
FAN FAVORITE: Cutthroat Island
TYPECAST IN: Comedy, adventure, kids movies
TOP GROSSING FILMS:
1. The Passion of the Christ--370
2. Bruce Almighty--242
3. Liar, Liar--181
4. Elf--173
5. Spy Kids--112
6. The Princess Diaries--108
7. The Pacifier--100 (as of 4/10/05)
8. Inspector Gadget--97
9. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement--95
10. Cats & Dogs--93

Though the score was not universally loved by film music fans, Debney's Passion of the Christ was in other ways the great film scoring success story of 2004, selling remarkably well for a score soundtrack, earning the extremely prolific composer his first Oscar nomination, and moving him into fresh (for him) dramatic and stylistic territory. What's surprising is that Passion's success has done little to change the nature of Debney's assignments. His other 2004 scores included such tapioca entertainments as Welcome to Mooseport and TWO Garry Marshall comedies, and this year's The Pacifier, while a boxoffice success, was not exactly a creative stretch. Sin City is a nice change of pace (and an amusing flip side to Passion), but Debney shares the credit with Graeme Revell and Robert Rodriguez so it's hard to think of it as truly a Debney score. The newly expanded Cutthroat Island CD shows what Debney is capable of, but one can only assume that he's content scoring light entertainments, because if he isn't it might be a good idea for him to take a little time off and be more selective in his projects -- Princess Diaries 2 probably pays the bills just fine, but it's not likely to earn him much respect. His best chance for a creative challenge comes with the upcoming Duma, a Carroll Ballard-directed adventure film whose scenic landscapes should provide the backdrop for some foreground scoring.

WHAT'S NEXT: Duma, Chicken Little

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