FILM SCORE FRIDAY 3/30/07

Director Stuart Gordon and composer Richard Band will be signing copies of the new DVD edition of their film Re-Animator, as well as La-La Land's CDs to Re-Animator and their From Beyond, this Saturday, March 31st at Dark Delicacies, at 4213 W. Burbank Blvd. in Burbank, California at 7:30 p.m. If you can't attend, you can order signed CDs and DVDs from Dark Delicacies at www.darkdel.com

Kubrick is a broad comedy about the infamous Alan Conway, a man who impersonated the famous director in the 1990s (and actually died mere months before Kubrick passed on). The minor but enjoyable Kubrick benefits mostly from John Malkovich's brazen performance as Conway - his variety of accents is especially hilarious, and it's a particular pleasure after his phoned-in work in films like Eragon - as well as a gallery of small roles for such familiar figures as Honor Blackman, Lesley Phillips, Ken Russell, Robert Powell, Barry Lyndon star Marisa Berenson (as Alex Wichtel) and the late William Hootkins as Wichtel's husband, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich (Hootkins, one of that handful of American actors who lived and worked in England, was a familiar face from such roles as the heavyset rebel pilot in Star Wars and one of the "top men" at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark).

If that weren't confusing enough, Cliff Martinez scored the recent indie First Snow. The film's posters claim that Superb will be releasing the soundtrack, so to find more information I Googled the phrase "First Snow Soundtrack" only to find that "First Snow" is also the title of a cue from the soundtrack to The Fountain by, of course, Clint Mansell. Coindidence?

After the Wedding - Johan Soderqvist - Milan
Author! Author! - Dave Grusin, Johnny Mandel - Varese Sarabande CD Club
The Big Country - Jerome Moross - La-La Land
The Creature Wasn't Nice - David Spear, Bruce Kimmel - Buysoundtrax
David Shire: At the Movies (re-release) - David Shire - Kritzerland
84 Charing Cross Road - George Fenton - Varese Sarabande CD Club
The Karate Kid (box-set) - Bill Conti - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Meet the Robinsons - Danny Elfman - Disney
Shooter - Mark Mancina - Lakeshore
The Ultimate Gift - Mark McKenzie - Varese Sarabande
The Vanishing - Jerry Goldsmith - Varese Sarabande CD Club

After the Wedding - Johan Soderqvist - Score CD on Milan
Blades of Glory - Theodore Shapiro - Song CD on Lakeshore with 3 score cues
The Lookout - James Newton Howard
Meet the Robinsons - Danny Elfman - Score CD on Disney
The Page Turner - Jerome Lemonnier - Score CD on Varese Sarabande (import)
Race You to the Bottom - Ryan Beveridge

April 3
Firehouse Dog - Jeff Cardoni - Lakeshore
Grindhouse: Planet Terror - Robert Rodriguez - Varese Sarabande
The Reaping - John Frizzell - Varese Sarabande
April 10
Perfect Stranger - Antonio Pinto - Lakeshore
Year of the Dog - Christophe Beck - Lakeshore
April 17
Miklos Rozsa: A Centenary Collection - Miklos Rozsa - Varese Sarabande
Premonition - Klaus Badelt - Varese Sarabande
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (re-recording) - Miklos Rozsa - Tadlow
April 24
Pathfinder - Jonathan Elias - Varese Sarabande
May 15
Blood and Chocolate - Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek - Lakeshore
Date Unknown
Amazing Stories: Anthology Three - John Williams & various other incredible composers - Intrada Special Collection
Angel on My Shoulder - Dimitri Tiomkin - Screen Archives
The Blob (and other creepy sounds) - Ralph Carmichael - Monstrous Movie Music
D.O.A. - Dimitri Tiomkin - Screen Archives
The Enforcer - Jerry Fielding - Aleph
Film Music of John Addison - John Addison - Chandos
Goodbye Bafana - Dario Marianelli - Varese Sarabande
The Intruder and other music - Herman Stein - Monstrous Movie Music
Spellbound (re-recording) - Miklos Rozsa - Intrada

March 30 - Luis Bacalov born (1933)
March 30 - Eric Clapton born (1945)
March 30 - Dimitri Tiomkin wins Oscar for High and the Mighty score (1955)
March 30 - Ennio Morricone, inexplicably, doesn't win the Best Score Oscar for The Mission, which was pretty much the only score album anyone in Hollywood listened to during the late '80s; Herbie Hancock wins Oscar for Round Midnight score instead (1987)
March 30 - Alan Menken wins his third and fourth Oscars, for Beauty and the Beast's score and title song (1992)
March 31 - Michael Gore wins his first two Oscars for Fame's score and title song (1981)
April 2 - Serge Gainsbourg born (1928)
April 2 - Marvin Hamlisch wins Oscars in all three music categories, for adapting The Sting and for The Way We Were's score and title song (1974)
April 3 - Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco born (1895)
April 3 - Edward Ward born (1900)
April 3 - Marvin Hatley born (1905)
April 3 - Jungle Book released in U.S. theaters (1942)
April 3 - Richard Bellis born (1946)
April 3 - Ferde Grofe died (1972)
April 3 - Lionel Bart died (1999)
April 4 - Elmer Bernstein born (1922)
April 4 - Monty Norman born (1928)
April 4 - Miklos Rozsa wins his third and final Oscar, for his Ben-Hur score(1960)
April 5 - Bernhard Kaun born (1899)
April 5 - Leo Erdody died (1949)
April 5 - Bent Aserud born (1950)
April 5 - Robert B. & Richard M. Sherman win Oscars for Mary Poppins' score and song "Chim Chim Cher-ee" (1965)

FIRST SNOW - Cliff Martinez

"A noirish thriller that revels in ominous visual moods, deepened by Cliff Martinez's spare, shivering guitar score, this heartland 'Appointment in Samarra' is a mind-teaser that speaks the flat, evasive language of its seedy characters."

Stephen Holden, New York TImes

THE HILLS HAVE EYES II - Trevor Morris

"Meanwhile, director [Martin] Weisz, known for his commercial and video work, fails to work in any tangible tension or underlying suspense, leaving that heavy lifting to Trevor Morris' bombastic score."

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter

THE LAST MIMZY - Howard Shore

"The original 'Mimsy' [the short story 'Mimsy Were the Borogoves,' by Lewis Padgett] was a fantasy about the generation gap; at the end, the children simply vanished into thin air, leaving their dad horror-stricken. Here the screenwriters have festooned the tale with modern political parallels and pop mythic touches including an upbeat song by the film's composer, Howard Shore, and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters called 'Hello (I Love You).' (It bears no resemblance to The Doors ballad)."

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"A moody original song, performed by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, bemoans technology's potential for severing us from one another. But don't be fooled. 'Mimzy' is no Luddite undertaking."

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

"The film is clearly well-meaning but hampered by the heavy-handed direction of Robert Shaye (who's also the founder and head of New Line Cinema) and egregious use of James Horner's [sic] score, constantly cuing the warming of the heart."

Michael Ordona, Los Angeles Times

"Fortunately, Shaye manages to win enough of them over with the help of his inventive visual effects team, his energetic cast and a gently expansive Howard Shore score, assuring 'Mimzy' a promising future."

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter

MEMORY - Cliff Bennett, Anthony Marianelli

"From its Philip Glass-biting score to a C-level cast that includes Dennis Hopper and 'Battlestar Galactica''s Tricia Helfer, 'Memory' itself feels cobbled together from the foggy recollections of other psychological whodunits."

Tim Grierson, L.A. Weekly

"Thrills aren't so much experienced as indicated, although a more suspenseful score might have transformed 'Memory' into a genuinely frightening affair."

Peter Debruge, Variety

PRIDE - Aaron Zigman

"Aaron Zigman's conventional orchestral score makes less of an impression than soundtrack's parade of stirring '70s soul hits."

Dennis Harvey, Variety

REIGN OVER ME - Rolfe Kent

"From the opening images of [Adam] Sandler's Go-ped sailing through lonely intersections to the simplicity of Rolfe Kent's stripped down score, the picture insists on intimacy."

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

SHOOTER - Mark Mancina

"An incomparable marksman, stealthy, silent, relentless, hiding among snowcapped peaks; the muzzle of a high-powered rifle aimed directly at the camera; helicopters swirling over mountains and city streets, pursuing the hero from the sky; gunmetal colors everywhere, and the chuggah-chuggah-chuggah of pounding drums and electronic music, a sound both primal and advanced at the same time: 'Shooter,' directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Mark Wahlberg, as Bob Lee Swagger, a betrayed Marine marksman who becomes a vigilante crusader for justice, is a virtual textbook of action cliches."

David Denby, The New Yorker

FROM: "John B. Archibald"

Thanks for including the opening date of THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
 
I was 15 that year, and full of wonder at spectacle movies of ancient times. I can remember an ad for EMPIRE in the Sunday New York Times, which took up the bottom section of several pages in the Arts and Leisure Section 2, and marveling at the drawings of dramatic moments from the film.
 
EMPIRE was perhaps the swan song of the trend for movie spectacles. When it tanked, it was quickly taken from roadshow status, and cut by about 30 mins. or so, and failed in that format too. Perhaps it was too baroque for its time, what with its emphasis on incipient destruction. Looking back, though, it seems that the United States was in a similar situation, poised at its position of greatest international prestige, before it too succumbed to trying to work its will on others. EMPIRE foreshadowed that whole image, with its emphasis on the corridors of power losing touch with the peoples they affected.
 
Even the Tiomkin score was his swan song of sorts as well. He wrote a few more scores after that, most notably for GREAT CATHERINE, which is wonderful, but he never had any further projects as prestigious. It was a time of changing attitudes towards film music; sumptuous orchestral scores from the likes of Tiomkin were being discarded for the breezy sound of Henry Mancini and his ilk, as "cocktail music" supplanted the last of the Romantic-styled composers.
 
It's strange to live through a period of great change like that, and to be so little aware of it at the time. At 15, I was awed by those incredible sets, against that azure sky, as Tiomkin's chords boomed over the sound system. I was lucky enough to see EMPIRE when it was still a roadshow, at the Nixon Theatre, in Pittsburgh. A week later, when I returned to see it again, I was shocked that it had been hacked up, with even the overture/entr'acte/exit muisic cues gone as well.
 
With its over-magnificent sets and over-the-top score, EMPIRE was a last gasp of the spectacle genre. Curiously, like many failures in their own day, it has acquired a devoted kind of underground interest, perhaps more from the fact that it was directed by Anthony Mann, who has risen in recognition higher than the status he held then.
 
I loved it then, at 15, flaws and all, and still love it. And I'd love to get a decent print of it on DVD. It took years before anyone thought to restore it to its original format and running time, though there is still a short scene that I've never seen since its opening, when Stephen Boyd and Christopher Plummer stand above a holding pen, and choose barbarian women for their amusement. That bit has never been restored, to any version I've seen.
 
Thanks for reminding me of those long-ago days, when films were events, and anticipation ran high.

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