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Posted: |
Aug 27, 2010 - 12:14 PM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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OK, so after a small hiatus, I'm back exploring Jack Nicholson's early films. This 1965 western, directed my Monte Hellman, but written and produced by Nicholson himself, was....how shall I put it, interesting. 
It's a simple enough story - three cowboys get mixed up with a gang of thugs and are then being chased like criminals by local vigilantes. Jack plays one of the cowboys. What immediately struck me, however, was the lingo that was used....much of it was practically unintelligable due to various cowboys terms and phrases that I've never heard before. Seems to me that Jack had been studying the lingo at the time when he wrote the story.
However, the delivery of the dialogue is often a bit stale, even by Nicholson and Cameron Mitchell, who plays one of the other cowboys on the run. Fun cameo by Harry Dean-Stanton, though, as leader of the thugs with a patch over his eye like a pirate!
Drasnin's score is mostly in the rather modernistic Jerry Fielding mode. Except the opening, which is more standard Western fare, albeit slightly "off". I took particularly notice of the scene when Jack & Cameron is being chased by the vigilantes on horse towards the end. There's no upbeat, heroic western music here. Only a steady timpani beat with some somber, low strings on top - as if to signal that things MAY not turn out a-OK for everyone (I'm not giving away more).
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Love it!
Far superior to the more critically lauded, overrated THE SHOOTING.
do not remember the score
check it out!
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Love it!
Far superior to the more critically lauded, overrated THE SHOOTING.
do not remember the score
check it out!
But yes, it's pretty clear WHIRLWIND had ambitions - it has some definite European art film elements here and there.
very existential
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Posted: |
Aug 28, 2010 - 3:49 PM
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By: |
RR Aitken
(Member)
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I felt honored to have had the pleasure of exchanging a few e-mails with Mr. Drasnin earlier this past year. I am a big fan of his work on The Man From UNCLE. I would love it if Lukas/FSM or perhaps another label could put out any previously unreleased Robert Drasnin score or a collection devoted to his compositions. I finally got around to buying a dvd of Murder Once Removed which he scored and I'm looking forward to watching and hearing it.
When I can find a dvd of THE SHOOTING I’ll buy it as well.
So I say to anyone who cares to hear it, when ever it is possible to do so - please release some Robert Drasnin, he deserves more appreciation and attention beyond his Voodoo releases (which I own)- I really love his work.
One of my all time favorite cues that I found myself playing inside my head as a child when I was out playing UNCLE was the "Just a Thrush Net" part of the Dippy Blonde Affair from the first of the FSM Man From UNCLE collections. When the show originally aired, I didn't know the names of the cues, I just knew that I loved the show, the concept, Solo and Kuryakin, the beautiful girls, the wild plots and the absolutely incredible music. The four volumes of UNCLE music to me are musical gold. I'm biased but the show was a BIG part of my life.
In the last ten years of so, my holy grail of "favorite scores that need to be released" list became lighter after Donaggio's Blow Out and the FSM Man From UNCLE collections were released. If I live to see the cd releases of the original scores to Mannix, Hawaii Five-0, Mission Impossible and The Wild Wild West, I will reach a pop culture musical nirvana, a natural high that I will never forget. I will die a happy man - but like the film title that starred the fabulous, beautiful brunette Susan Hayward, let me say this:
I WANT TO LIVE!
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
TV Omnibus arrived today and I know I will be fun.
Okay - back to Earth. Thanks for listening.
(By the way, is it okay to love films, film music and comedy this much? I hope so!
It's legal and oh so good for you.)
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