Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 7/3/09

The latest release from Film Score Monthly, limited to 1500 units, presents Quincy Jones' score for the 1968 caper thriller THE SPLIT. The film was based on the seventh of Donald E. Westlake's novels (fittingly enough, the book was titled The Seventh) about the master thief Parker, and was produced by the team of Chartoff and Winkler, who had turned the first Parker novel, The Hunter, into the classic Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. The Split featured Jim Brown as "McClain," the Parker character, with an impressive cast including Diahann Carroll as McClain's ex; Julie Harris as the mastermind; Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates and Donald Sutherland as Brown's gang of thieves, who plot to rob the L.A. Coliseum during a football game; and Gene Hackman and James Whitmore as the flies in the ointment. Jones' score is delightfully catchy and funky, featuring a handful of new songs including a memorable title tune, and our CD represents the first release of The Split's music, also including thorough notes on the score by Alexander Kaplan, and a lengthy history of the Parker novels and films by yours truly.

The Varese Sarabande CD Club has announced an especially impressive set of four new limited edition releases, which will begin shipping the week of July 13.

The most notable release of the set is arguably LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (limited to 3000 units), the modern day Western from 1962 which starred Kirk Douglas as a cowboy on the run, with a Dalton Trumbo screenplay based on Edward Abbey's novel The Brave Cowboy (the premise received an unofficial reworking in 1979's The Electric Horseman). The film was a breakthrough studio project for Jerry Goldsmith -- no less than Bernard Herrmann visited the recording session and told Goldsmith his music was too good for the movie. None of Goldsmith's Lonely Are the Brave music has ever received a commercial release, and the fact that Varese was able to license the score from Universal makes one hope that even more treasures from the Universal vault may be someday available.

Another momentous new CD from Varese is the first-ever release of the original score tracks to Bill Conti's Oscar winning THE RIGHT STUFF. A soundtrack album was announced at the time of the film's release but was ultimately canceled; the Varese disc, limited to 3000 units, presents the album sequencing originally intended by Conti.

Moviegoers who remember Martin Ritt's fact-based 1979 drama NORMA RAE, which won Sally Field her first Best Actress Oscar (it was her second one, for Places in the Heart, that taught her that we like her, we really like her), may be surprised to see Varese releasing a score album from the film, which seemed, like many of Ritt's classic films, to have very little music in it. It turns out that composer David Shire, who won the Oscar for the film's memorable song "It Goes Like It Goes," wrote much more music for the film than was ultimately used, and the Varese CD, limited to 1500 units, features his mostly unused score as well as the song.

The fourth release from the label, limited to 1000 units, presents the first-ever release of Alex North's melancholy score for the 1968 romantic thriller HARD CONTRACT, starring James Coburn as a hit man and Lee Remick as his love interest.

La-La Land Records will be taking a vacation for a couple weeks, but after they re-open on July 13, they will begin shipping their next release, Trevor Jones' score for the 1985 action drama RUNAWAY TRAIN. The film, directed by Andrei Konchalavsky and adapted from a previously unfilmed screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, was an unusually prestigious release from Cannon Pictures, earning Oscar nominations for its Editing as well as for lead Actor Jon Voight and Supporting Actor Eric Roberts. The score was originally released on LP as well as on a Milan CD which went quickly out of print; the La-La Land disc features the LP tracks as well as the complete score, and will be limited to 3000 units.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made several major announcements in the last couple weeks. The one that got the most attention was that for the 82nd Academy Awards, there will actually be ten Best Picture nominees rather than the usual five, the first time there have been ten nominees in the category since the awards for 1943.

The Academy also announced new rules for the Original Song category. According to the Academy's press release, "The governors approved the Music Branch Executive Committee recommendation that if no song achieves a minimum average score of 8.25 in the nominations voting, there be no original song nominees and thus no Oscar presented for the category. If only one song achieves the required minimum, it and the song with the next highest score will be deemed the nominees. If two or more songs achieve the minimum score, they will be the nominees though no more than five nominees can be selected. Previously, the rules dictated that there be no more than five but no fewer than three nominees in the category."

The Academy has also announced the list of 134 filmmakers they have invited to join as new members, including five new invitees for the Music Branch -- Oscar winner A.R. Rahman, nominee Peter Gabriel, composers Jeff Danna and Clint Mansell, and music editor Andrew Dorfman.

While the Academy only invited seven actors to join last year, this year they invited a whopping 20 new members to the branch, including new nominees (Viola Davis, Anne Hathaway, Taraji P. Henson, Melissa Leo, Michael Shannon), past nominees (Casey Affleck, Amy Ryan, Michelle Williams), people one would have assumed were members already (Hugh Jackman), people who clearly deserve to be invited (Brendan Gleeson, Jeffrey Wright), and many others who some might have assumed were too funny, too hip, or simply too young to be invited (Emily Blunt, Michael Cera, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Jane Lynch, James McAvoy, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd).

I Hate Valentine's Day - Keith Power
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - John Powell - Score CD on Varese Sarabande
Public Enemies - Elliot Goldenthal - Soundtrack CD on Decca with 16 min. of Goldenthal, plus songs

COMING SOON

July 14
The Devil's Tomb - Bill Brown - MovieScore Media
Drag Me to Hell - Christopher Young - Lakeshore
Hard Contract - Alex North - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Nicholas Hooper - New Line
Lonely Are the Brave - Jerry Goldsmith - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Norma Rae - David Shire - Varese Sarabande CD Club
The Right Stuff - Bill Conti - Varese Sarabande CD Club
Runaway Train - Trevor Jones - La-La Land
July 21
Battlestar Galactica: Season Four - Bear McCreary - La-La Land
Orphan - John Ottman - Varese Sarabande
July 28
Sky Riders - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
August 4
G.I. Joe - Alan Silvestri - Varese Sarabande
I Sell the Dead - Jeff Grace - MovieScore Media
September 7
Exodus (complete re-recording, plus additional themes) - Ernest Gold - Tadlow
September 15
Coco Before Chanel - Alexandre Desplat - Varese Sarabande (U.S. release)
Date Unknown
Cops and Robbers - Michel Legrand - Kritzerland
Imago Mortis - Zacarias M. de la Riva - MovieScore Media

July 4 - Larry Herbstritt born (1950)
July 5 - Jerry Fielding's score for the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun" is recorded (1968)
July 6 - Hanns Eisler born (1898)
July 6 - John Ottman born (1964)
July 6 - Ron Goodwin begins recording his score to Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
July 6 - John Williams begins recording his score for Superman (1978)
July 6 - Frank Cordell died (1980)
July 7 - Johnny Mandel begins recording his score for Point Blank (1967)
July 7 - Gerald Fried's score for the Star Trek episode "Friday's Child" is recorded (1967)
July 8 - Bob Alcivar born (1938)
July 8 - Jay Chattaway born (1946)
July 8 - John Addison records his score for the Amazing Stories episode "The Pumpkin Competition" (1986)
July 9 - Richard Hageman born (1882)
July 9 - Earle Hagen born (1919)
July 9 - Paul Chihara born (1938)
July 9 - Harald Kloser born (1956)
July 9 - Conrad Salinger died (1961)
July 9 - Jerry Fielding begins recording his score for The Outfit (1973)
July 9 - James Horner records his score for the Amazing Stories episode "Alamo Jobe" (1985)

"It's the first of innumerable auditory assaults, continuing with Alexandre Desplat's frantic score and the clash of English and American accents (especially puzzling in the scenes with Brit [Rupert] Friend and Kathy Bates as his retired-prostie mother)."

"Darius Khondji's mood-catching cinematography, Consolata Boyle's eye-catching costumes and Alan MacDonald's gorgeous sets are entertainment in themselves. But the greatest contribution comes from composer Alexandre Desplat, whose nostalgic, romantic, melancholy score evokes the period perfectly."

"It's that calculated sense of dramatic evasion that makes 'My Sister's Keeper' feel all too convenient as it short-circuits its own philosophical/scientific provocation and instead goes for the viewer's jugular. To that end, [director Nick] Cassavetes falls back on a reliable combo of heart-tugging music (either mood-setting pop tunes or Aaron Zigman's tastefully downbeat score) and repeated shots of a bald, feeble Kate beaming angelically through her tears. In the face of such an impeccably mounted emotional onslaught, what argument can there be?"

"Visually as well as narratively, the movie embraces extremes. The village is arid, the countryside around it paradisically lush. In one scene birds flying out of the bushes are compared to angels as John Debney's mystically overawed music pours on the syrup."

"The film looks great, with cinematographer Peter Wunstorf using different stock and inventive angles to good effect, while Todd Bryanton's score helps maintain a constant undercurrent of dread."

"With its fascist sensibility, assortment of smutty asides, illiterate gold-tooth-wearing homie robots and the hero's brainless mother, much of 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' is simply despicable. So complaining about one's physical discomfort seems petty. But given the relentless din, the Leni Riefenstahl-inspired music and the headache-inducing visuals, OSHA should probably be investigating the conditions under which human beings made this thing. Or the conditions under which they watch it."

"The noise level -- not helped by Steve Jablonsky's relentless score -- is super-intense, and everyone yells lines at high speed."