FILM SCORE FRIDAY 5/9/08

Film Score Monthly has announced their (well, our) latest CD releases.

In stock and available to order now is UNDER FIRE, Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated, critically acclaimed (by no less than Pauline Kael, who proclaimed it "one of the best movie scores I've ever heard") score for the 1983 drama about American journalists in Nicaragua in 1979, starring Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy, Gene Hackman and Ed Harris. The FSM disc features only the LP tracks -- the full original score tapes are presumed lost -- which have never been released on CD on the U.S. before, and the disc includes brand-new and extensive liner notes.

Due next week is a CD pairing two courtroom dramas from the late '50s/early '60s. THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE is a nautical mystery which was originally planned as a collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman; when they weren't able to work out the story problems, they decided to make North by Northwest instead. Mary Deare pairs Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston, and features an score by 5-time Oscar nominee George Duning. Duning's score is paired with John Green's score for TWILIGHT OF HONOR, which was Richard Chamberlain's first lead movie role after Dr. Kildare made him a household name.

WARGAMES was the 1983 summer sleeper hit directed by John Badham, starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman and John Wood. It was the third of seven Badham features scored by Arthur B. Rubinstein (they also worked together on two TV movies), and while WarGames was released on LP in '83 featuring selections from the score as well as dialogue excerpts, Intrada's release (limited to 2500 copies) features the complete, hour-plus Rubinstein score (and no dialogue!) for the first time.

THE NIGHTCOMERS was the 1972 prequel to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, a dark psychological thriller starring Marlon Brando as Quint, and directed by Michael Winner. Jerry Fielding's score is one of his finest and most classically styled works, and this release presents the complete, remastered score (limited to 1500 copies).

The Dark Hour - Alfons Conde - MovieScore Media
Fugitive Pieces - Nikos Kypourgos - Milan
Iron Man - Ramin Djawadi - Lions Gate
Lost: Season Three - Michael Giacchino - Varese Sarabande
The Nightcomers - Jerry Fielding - Intrada Special Collection
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - Edwin Astley - Network(import)
Speed Racer - Michael Giacchino - Varese Sarabande
Standard Operating Procedure - Danny Elfman - Varese Sarabande
Sudden Impact - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
Under Fire - Jerry Goldsmith - Film Score Monthly
WarGames - Arthur B. Rubinstein - Intrada Special Collection

The Babysitters - Chad Fischer
Before the Rains - Mark Kilian
The Fall - Krishna Levy
Mister Lonely - J. Spaceman, Sun City Girls - Soundtrack CD on Drag City
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies - Ludovic Bource, Kamel Ech-Cheik
A Previous Engagement - Barrington Pheloung
Speed Racer - Michael Giacchino - Score CD on Varese Sarabande
What Happens in Vegas - Christophe Beck

May 13
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - Harry Gregson-Williams - Disney
The Wreck of the Mary Deare/Twilight of Honor - George Duning/John Green - Film Score Monthly
May 20
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - John Williams - Concord
May 27
The Film Music of Constant Lambert and Lord Berners - Constant Lambert, Lord Berners - Chandos
Son of Rambow - Joby Talbot - Bulletproof
Staccato/Paris Swings - Elmer Bernstein - DRG
June 3
The Happening - James Newton Howard - Varese Sarabande
Mongol - Tuomas Kantelinen - Varese Sarabande
June 24
WALL-E - Thomas Newman - Disney
Date Unknown
The Deaths of Ian Stone - Elia Cmiral -Perseverance

May 9 - The Informer is released in theaters (1935)
May 9 - David Benoit born (1953)
May 9 - Michael Kamen records his score for the Amazing Stories episode "Mirror, Mirror" (1985)
May 10 - Max Steiner born (1888)
May 10 - Dimitri Tiomkin born (1899)
May 10 - Jay Ferguson born (1947)
May 12 - Gordon Jenkins born (1910)
May 12 - Burt Bacharach born (1928)
May 12 - Klaus Doldinger born (1936)
May 12 - Humphrey Searle died (1982)
May 13 - David Broekman born (1902)
May 14 - Charles Gross born (1934)
May 14 - Kenneth V. Jones born (1924)
May 14 - Tristam Cary born (1925)
May 14 - Frank Churchill died (1942)
May 14 - David Byrne born (1952)
May 15 - Bert Shefter born (1902)
May 15 - John Lanchbery born (1923)
May 15 - Brian Eno born (1948)
May 15 - Mike Oldfield born (1953)
May 15 - David Munrow died (1976)
May 15 - Billy Goldenberg records his score for the Amazing Stories episode "Secret Cinema" (1985)
May 15 - John Green died (1989)

IRON MAN - Ramin Djawadi

"A movie like this is a sound designer's wet dream: thunk, squish, clank, whir, kaboom. The heavy-metal rock that kicks in when Iron Man appears is an aural pun that works like gangbusters -- although I wish there were a melody in there somewhere."

David Edelstein, New York

"Even though the movie makes an admirable bid for political topicality by retrofitting the struggles of its Marvel Comics hero for our current wars, and even though the fantastic Robert Downey Jr. plays our slutty, metallic superhero, there's a sameness to it that makes the entire enterprise seem obligatory. Close your eyes, and it's 'Superman Begins: Rise of the Silver Daredevil 3.' Even the hard rock of the film's score sounds like heavy Muzak."

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

SON OF RAMBOW - Joby Talbot

"Joby Talbot's terrific, drum-heavy score cheekily echoes the music of great '80s action-adventure films."

New York Daily News

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE - Danny Elfman

"There is not a voice raised in 'S.O.P.' The tone is set by a sad, elegiac, sometimes relentless score by Danny Elfman."

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Director [Errol] Morris (who paid some of his interviewees) also makes use of artful re-creations, showing us not-always-expected moments, from snarling dogs to eyebrows being shaved. When combined with Danny Elfman's insinuating score, the careful formal beauty of these scenes (Robert Chappell and Robert Richardson are the cinematographers) makes the horrors they depict that much more horrific."

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

"In 'Standard Operating Procedure,' Morris has hold of a monster subject, one in which politics and art bleed together. Using his own standard operating procedure -- the director circles in on two points: that the men and women demoted or convicted for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib were doing as they'd been ordered by higher-ups who remain unpunished; and that the photos obscure larger and more complicated truths. I'm not sure Morris clinches his case, but I'm not sure he wants to: His aim is to throw a monkey wrench into the cogs of our perception. See 'Standard Operating Procedure' for its riveting narrative, for the way it keeps looping back -- to the swirls of Danny Elfman's night music -- to the basement of Abu Ghraib."

David Edelstein, New York

"Fragmentary and voice-over-free, Morris' close-up images re-create only microimpressions of the events: the bouncing of gun casings off a cell-block floor or the string of sticky blood on a bandage as it's lifted off a dead man's face. It's almost as if he's trying to show us not what actually happened but how these events might recur in the guilty parties' dreams. These oneiric and at times beautiful images, set to a Danny Elfman score that suggests a monster movie, may strike some viewers as overly aestheticized and short on narrative information."

Dana Stevens, Slate.com

"All the fancy style applied to the sordid military equivalent of basement videotapes, and further whipped into a lather by Danny Elfman's music, makes the proceedings feel far too melodramatic. A stark, matter-of-fact approach would seem all that's required when dealing with such powerful central images, but Morris detracts from them by placing them within his elaborate modernist frame."

Todd McCarthy, Variety

"The restaging of the events surrounding these humiliations is in questionable taste, though. What purpose does it serve for actors to re-create these incidents when we already have such strong photographic proof? These sequences, often tricked out with elaborate slow motion, a few optical effects and Danny Elfman's overwrought musical score, put a Hollywood gloss on 'SOP' that ill benefits its subject."

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

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