Hello folks, took way too long to be back, but here I am again. Spent the most of past spring and summer in Italy and Seoul, Korea, narrowly avoided contracting swine flu (but nonethelss suffering from a whole variety of other ailments), and unfortunately did not quite have enough time to dig into newest film music coming out of Korea, Japan and the rest of Asia. The good film music still remains few and far in between in South Korea, where the flourishing film industry is now undergoing the late '80s Hollywood-style doldrums. Every producer seems to be looking for a tent pole franchise, and the biggest local hit turns out to be HAEUNDAE, a tsunami-overwhelms-the-resort-city-Busan disaster flick modeled after the likes of TOWERING INFERNO. Well, at least it had a semi-decent music score by Lee Byung-woo, who is fast becoming the (post-'70s) John Barry of Korean film music.
This summer, I had a chance to contemplate anew one of my long-gestating pointless questions, "How much Morricone-ism can one cram into a single movie soundtrack?", when I got hold of THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD CD soundtrack (I know it's missing "AND" between BAD and THE WEIRD), for Kim Jee-woon's fun but ultimately insubstantial "Manchurian Western."
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The sly and clever pop-inflected score, composed by Dalparan and Jang Yong-gyu, is like a twice-removed postmodern reworking of an Ennio Morricone parody, a streamlined and iPod-friendly version of the Frankenstein's monster-stiched-together eclecticism of a Tarantino film soundtrack. Surprisingly, the most overt references to '60s spaghetti Western music appear only briefly, such as twanging bass guitar of "Escaping the Pub" (Tracks 10 and 11) and suave lyricism of a self-consciously titled "The Twilight Waltz (Track 18)." One track ("Map of the Desire," Track 19) is a direct rip-off of the donkeys -on-the-movie music from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.
Yet, the score is too mixed-up to be a straightforward copycat rendition of '60s Morricone. Unlike Lalo Schfrin's scoring of Eastwood action in KELLY'S HEROES, for instance, you get the sense that Dalparan and Jang are referencing the IDEA of a Morricone score, rather than an actual one. To be frank, the Maestro's spaghetti Western scores are disproportionately well-known in East Asia, compared to hundreds and hundreds of his OTHER equally or more brilliant compositions, which I have found somewhat exasperating (It's clear that Japanese producers of the NHK miniseries MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, for instance, was clearly thinking of his spaghetti Western scores when they approached him).
In any case, the movie will be remembered not for any of these moderately ingenious original music tracks but for "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" that gets to be sprawled over the climactic horseback action sequence.
On a completely separate subject, Yuna Kim is probably the biggest sports star in South Korea today, and judging from her latest victorious performance, has a great sense of film music, too, as following video attests to. I somehow don't imagine Dorothy Hamil dancing to the tunes of the James Bond theme. (Maybe Lynn Holly Johnson?) Actually, one blogger and film critic friend of mine's response to her performance was, "Where is ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE?!" Well said!
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