Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 3/19/10

The latest release from Film Score Monthly is WHITE DOG, Ennio Morricone's powerful and moving score for the controversial Samuel Fuller-directed drama about the attempts to rehabilitate a dog that has been trained to attack blacks. The FSM CD features the complete 46-minute score from the Paramount Pictures release as well as 20 minutes of alternate and source cues, and is limited to 3000 units.

Intrada has announced two new limited edition releases. CERVANTES is the first-ever release of Les Baxter's score for the 1967 romantic biopic of the Don Quixote author, starring Horst Bucholz, Gina Lollibrigida, Jose Ferrer, Louis Jourdan and Fernando Rey. This Signature Edition release is limited to 1000 units and is selling out quickly.

The latest Intrada Special Collection release pairs the LP tracks for two Dominic Frontiere scores originally released by United Artists Records: BILLIE, a comedy with Patty Duke as a high school athlete, and POPI, an Arthur Hiller film with Alan Arkin as a Puerto Rican widower raising two little boys in Spanish Harlem. This release is limited to 1200 units.

Kritzerland is releasing a remastered edition of the LP sequencing of Maurice Jarre’s score for John Huston’s critically acclaimed 1975 adventure THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, which paired Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The Kritzerland disc is limited to 1000 units and may already be sold out.

La-La Land will release two new limited edition CDs next week -- Alan Silvestri's energetic score for the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller ERASER, expanded as part of the label's "Archival Collection" series, and a remastered, complete edition of Alex North's Oscar-nominated score for DRAGONSLAYER.

Film composer Paul Dunlap died in Palm Springs on March 11 at the age of 90. Dunlap scored several films for director Samuel Fuller, including Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, and many of the Three Stooges' feature comedies as well as such familiar science-fiction and horror projects as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Frankenstein 1970, and The Angry Red Planet. Several sources quote him as having remarked "I can only hope that I will be remembered for my piano concerto, or my choral piece, 'Celebration', and not the inferior movies I was forced to be associated with."

The truly insane Japanese horror/comedy/fantasy HOUSE (a 1977 film, no relation to the Steve Miner-directed 1986 film of the same name) just ended a six-day run at the New Beverly Theater in Los Angeles, and I only mention this because it has a couple lines of dialogue which have probably never been spoken in any other movie, and which film music fans should especially appreciate. The father of the film's schoolgirl protagonist is a film composer, and one of her girlfriends tells her "You're dad's the best! He's a film composer, and he's rich!" Earlier in the film, the composer dad returns from a business trip to Italy and exclaims "Leone said my music's better than Morricone's!", in case we weren't already aware that the film is a fantasy.

The Bounty Hunter - George Fenton - Score CD-R on Sony/Amazon
City Island - Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Theodore Shapiro
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Jacob Groth
Greenberg - James Murphy - Song and Score CD due Mar. 23 on Virgin
Hubble 3D - Maribeth Solomon, Mickey Erbe
The Killing Jar - Elia Cmiral
Prodigal Sons - T. Griffin
The Red Baron - Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt
Repo Men - Marco Beltrami - Song CD with 1 score cue due Mar. 23 on Relativity
The Runaways - Lillian Berlin - Song CD due Mar. 23 on Atlantic
Stolen - Trevor Morris

COMING SOON

March 23
Brooklyn's Finest - Marcelo Zarvos - Varese Sarabande
Chloe - Mychael Danna - Silva (import)
Dragonslayer – Alex North – La-La Land
Eraser – Alan Silvestri – La-La Land
Fringe - Michael Giacchino, Chris Tilton, Chad Seiter - Varese Sarabande
Greenberg – James Murphy - Virgin
Hierro - Zacharias M de la Riva - MovieScore Media
How to Train Your Dragon - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
March 30
Big City - Erwann Kermrovant - MovieScore Media
A Ticket to Space - Erwann Kermorvant - Movie Score Media
Date Unknown
The Man Who Would Be King – Maurice Jarre - Kritzerland
Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang – James Newton Howard – Varese Sarabande
The Runestone - David Newman - Perseverance
Speechless - Marc Shaiman - La-La Land

March 19 - Jean Weiner born (1896)
March 19 - Dimitri Tiomkin wins Oscars for High Noon score and song (1953)
March 19 - Jeff Alexander begins recording his score to Escape from Fort Bravo (1953)
March 19 - George Garvarentz died (1993)
March 20 - Michel Magne born (1930)
March 20 - John Cameron born (1944)
March 20 - Miklos Rozsa wins his second Oscar, for A Double Life score (1948)
March 20 - Franz Waxman wins his second consecutive Best Score Oscar, for A Place in the Sun (1952)
March 20 - Ray Cook died (1989)
March 20 - Georges Delerue died (1992)
March 21 - Antony Hopkins born (1921)
March 21 - Mort Lindsey born (1923)
March 21 - Alfred Newman wins his seventh Oscar, his second for Score, for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1956)
March 21 - Miklos Rozsa begins recording his score to The Green Berets (1968)
March 21 - John Williams wins his fifth Oscar, for his Schindler's List score (1994)
March 21 - Nicola Piovani wins his first Oscar, for Life is Beautiful; Stephen Warbeck wins the final Comedy or Musical Score Oscar for Shakespeare in Love (1999)
March 22 - Stephen Sondheim born (1930)
March 22 - Angelo Badalamenti born (1937)
March 22 - Andrew Lloyd Webber born (1948)
March 22 - Goran Bregovic born (1950)
March 22 - Wally Badarou born (1955)
March 22 - Miklos Rozsa begins recording his score for Time After Time (1979)
March 23 - Michael Nyman born (1944)
March 23 - David Grisman born (1945)
March 23 - Trevor Jones born (1949)
March 23 - Aaron Copland wins his only Oscar, for The Heiress score (1950)
March 23 - Philip Judd born (1953)
March 23 - Hal Mooney died (1995)
March 23 - Michael Linn died (1995)
March 23 - James Horner wins his first two Oscars, for Titanic's score and song; Anne Dudley wins the third Comedy or Musical Score Oscar, for The Full Monty (1998)
March 23 - Elliot Goldenthal wins his first Oscar, for the Frida score (2003)
March 24 - Brian Easdale wins only Oscar, for The Red Shoes score (1949)
March 24 - Fred Steiner's score for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" is recorded (1967)
March 24 – Arthur B. Rubnstein begins recording his score for WarGames (1983)
March 24 - Alex North wins an Honorary Oscar, “in recognition of his brilliant artistry in the creation of memorable music for a host of distinguished motion pictures;” John Barry wins his fourth Oscar, for the Out of Africa score (1986)
March 24 - Gabriel Yared wins Dramatic Score Oscar for The English Patient; Rachel Portman wins the second Comedy or Musical Score Oscar, for Emma (1997)
March 25 - Bronislau Kaper wins his only Oscar, for the Lili score (1954)
March 25 - Maurice Jarre wins his third Oscar, for the A Passage to India score (1985)
March 25 - John Barry wins his fifth Oscar, for the Dances With Wolves score; Stephen Sondheim wins his first Oscar, for the song "Sooner or Later" from Dick Tracy (1991)
March 25 – Ken Thorne begins recording his score for Superman II (1980)
March 25 - Luis Bacalov wins his first Oscar, for Il Postino; James Horner, nominated for both Apollo 13 and Best Picture winner Braveheart, is unavailable for comment, but ultimately decides that his heart will go on; Alan Menken wins the first Comedy or Musical Score Oscar, as well as Best Song, for Pocahonatas (1996)
March 25 - Tan Dun wins his first score Oscar, for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)

"Thump thump thump! Boom boom! Bang bang! - and that's just composer John Powell's score. In 'Green Zone' -- Paul Greengrass' frenetic Iraq war movie, inspired in part by former Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 'Imperial Life in the Emerald City' -- urgent convoys roll through the city, helicopters whip the hot Baghdad skies, important Pentagon dudes deplane at Saddam International Airport, and the good soldier portrayed by Matt Damon realizes that he, his men, and his country are being played for fools."

"Oh, we get it. But "Green Zone" is not a documentary. And even the best of those — Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's yet-to-be-released "Restrepo" — offer us room to get our bearings. Damon's the anchor, a fine one at that, but even he can't seem to hold the filmmakers' attention for long. (But just in case we're still confused about what we should feel, John Powell provides a thriller-esque score)."

"As in 'Memories of Murder,' Bong economically steeps the viewer in the mindset of the rural community while retaining a slightly ironic distance and occasionally throwing curveballs. When the mother-with-a-mission strides through the landscape, a crazy brass-band march accompanies her on the soundtrack; physical violence has a habit of erupting unexpectedly; and when the story develops a sudden dramatic impetus, composer Lee Byeong-woo ('The Host') cranks up the gently simmering atmosphere with genre-like music."

"A sense of dread -- hinted at by the movie's title and intoned by Marcelo Zarvos' score -- is carried though the film, which is set in the summer of 2001."

"Gotham locations are evocatively but unostentatiously used, Marcelo Zarvos' fine score stirs added emotional turbulence, and tech contributions are more than solid."