Film Score Daily: Film Score Friday 8/10/18

The latest release from Intrada is a greatly expanded, two-disc edition of Trevor Jones' symphonic score for the 1983 swashbuckler NATE AND HAYES, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Michael O'Keefe.

Varese Sarabande has announced a limited edition CD of Gary Chang's score for FIREWALKER, the light-hearted 1986 action adventure from director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone), teaming Chuck Norris and Lou Gossett Jr.; the CD features the same cues as Varese's original LP.

CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Battle of Okinawa - Masaru Sato - Cinema-Kan (import)
Desperado Outpost/Westward Desperado - Masaru Sato - Cinema-Kan (import)
Into the Badlands: Season 2 - Trevor Yulie - Varese Sarabande
James Horner: The Classics - James Horner - Sony
Nate and Hayes - Trevor Jones - Intrada Special Collection
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies - Jared Faber - WaterTower

IN THEATERS TODAY

BlacKkKlansman - Terence Blanchard
The Captain - Martin Todsharow - Score CD on Milan (import)
Dog Days - Craig Wedren, Matt Novack
The Meg - Harry Gregson-Williams
The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Julian Wass
A Prayer Before Dawn - Nicolas Becker
Slender Man - Ramin Djawadi, Brandon Campbell - Score CD-R due Aug. 17 on Sony

"While King's novel was written before the smart-phone became quite such a ubiquitous modern addiction, screenwriter Adam Alleca (2009's 'The Last House on the Left' remake) has made no attempt to bring the narrative up to date. Cell phones are merely the device which administers the shock; despite the inference of the premise, there's no real exploration, sub-textual or otherwise, of how constant connection to our phones may be turning us into social zombies, or how the internet-enabled, globally connected hive mind can be as destructive as it is empowering. Instead, 'Cell' plays like the most straightforward of horror, complete with endless exposition as dialogue and frequent leaps of logic which demonstrate this may have been better as a mini-series. Aesthetically, too, it's just as dull and predictable, with a now-familiar washed out post-apocalyptic colour palette, over-eager music cues and shaky effects."

"With a relationship, a family and two careers to justify, the documentary seems to cover its massive territory even though it does so by sometimes being discombobulated or flat. 'Harold and Lillian' even starts out with a lack of promise as it establishes that it will more or less be talking heads recalling previous events, but soon gains charisma with who speaks on camera (Mel Brooks, Danny Devito, Francis Ford Coppola, along with legendary storyboard artists) and the many fascinating tales Harold and Lillian offer. The documentary offers a sweet cinematic touch when it visualizes certain passages in their relationship with storyboard animation, and every now and then shows us the crafty, hilarious cards that Harold made for Lillian on various occasions. The spiritual guide for Raim’s collection of their lives proves to be Pixar’s 'Up,' given Lillian’s memory book that bookends the story, and music that echoes Michael Giacchino’s score for that film."

Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com

LIKE CRAZY - Carlo Virzi

"The story’s most complex piece of the puzzle (spoilers ahead) is Donatella’s relationship with her young son, who was put up for adoption. An encounter between Beatrice, acting as an embassy, and the boy’s adoptive parents is beautifully played and extremely touching and there’s an echo of this in a later scene on a sunny beach that similarly finds just the right balance between the wistfulness caused by lost opportunities and gratitude for the moments we do get. But these highlights -- together with a striking sequence on a boardwalk where the two ladies find themselves at dusk -- are strong enough to stand on their own, while Virzi feels the need to prop them up with garishly desaturated flashbacks that fill in every blank, robbing the latter reels of some of the story’s more suggestive poetry moments while risking to turn a heartfelt subplot into something borderline maudlin (the predominance of the flute on the soundtrack doesn’t help in this regard)."

Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter

LOWRIDERS - Bryan Senti

"Director de Montreuil can be a little too eager to whip his handheld cameras fore and aft with Greengrassian urgency, giving otherwise calm scenes a needless jumpiness and filling the foregrounds with too much visual noise, but the performances he elicits are rock-solid across the board, and his location choices couldn’t be better. The care that has been lavished on all the candy-colored Impalas is obvious, and the score from Bryan Senti ties together the film’s soundtrack of hip-hop and golden oldies with unobtrusive ease."

Andrew Barker, Variety

SACRED - Edward Bilous

"While 'Sacred' clearly is designed more to celebrate than to critique, it’s perhaps a shame that the film is not a little more hard-hitting, especially as the more ambivalent segments are often the most memorable. A lengthy section in Angola prison in Louisiana highlights how even those inmates whose conversion seems sincere are also desirous of earthly rewards -- such as early release -- for their newfound piety. Later, an African mango seller talks of having lost her faith when her family died. The only atheist in a film full of believers, she all but rolls her eyes at the mosque and the church behind her before posing a Big Question: 'Why would God let poor people die?' The film lets the query dangle. Then, under the soothing violin arpeggios of Edward Bilous’ fine score, it simply moves on, like a stone skimming prettily over deep and treacherous waters, to observe some new act of devotion half a world away."

Jessica Kiang, Variety

WHISKY GALORE! - Patrick Doyle

"This fresh take on 'Whisky Galore!' makes good use of an ideal location in Portsoy, Aberdeenshire and is crisply shot by Nigel Willoughby, with a jaunty Patrick Doyle score. But the real star is McDougall’s script -- wry and acerbic without ever resorting to crude caricatures. A newly added subplot, alluding to a missing box of official secrets detailing royal connections to Nazism, is skillfully integrated, although providing a satisfying resolution to the multiple plotlines proves to be MacKinnon’s undoing in a rather low-key finale."

Eddie Harrison, The List

"Cue the expected hijinks -- or, more accurately, mediumjinks, since MacKinnon (working in a blander register than in such earlier outings as 'Hideous Kinky' and 'Pure') conducts the farce at a pretty relaxed pace, with proceedings further mollified by the syrupy flute-and-fiddle lilt of Patrick Doyle’s score. (Landing just shy of 100 minutes, the film is far from a chore, but feels palpably less buzzed than the 82-minute original.) Izzard, riffing as much on British sitcom archetypes from the likes of 'Dad’s Army' as on Basil Radford’s original characterization, makes for a gently amusing stooge, though his antic comic repertoire is hardly stretched. Most winning among the villagers is Guthrie, recently a standout in Terence Davies’ 'Sunset Song,' his sweet sad-sack demeanor gaining a little fire once the alcohol is found; if only the rest of 'Whisky Galore!' followed suit."

Guy Lodge, Variety

THE NEXT TEN DAYS IN L.A.

Screenings of older films, at the following L.A. movie theaters: AMPAS, American Cinematheque: Aero, American Cinematheque: Egyptian, Arclight, LACMA, Laemmle, New Beverly, Nuart and UCLA.

August 10
GHOST IN THE SHELL (Kenji Kawai) [Nuart]
HOUSE OF WAX (David Buttolph), THE MAD MAGICIAN (Emil Newman, Arthur Lange) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE ROOM (Mladen Milicevic) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
SWEET CHARITY (Cy Coleman, Joseph Gershenson) [UCLA]
WANDA (Dave Mullaney) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

August 11
BLACK PANTHER (Ludwig Goransson) [Cinematheque: Aero]
HEAVEN CAN WAIT (Alfred Newman), DESIGN FOR LIVING [UCLA]
MAN IN THE DARK (Ross DiMaggio), INFERNO (Paul Sawtell) [Cinemathque: Aero]
WANDA (Dave Mullaney) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

August 12
CABARET (John Kander, Ralph Burns) [UCLA]
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON [Cinematheque: Aero]
DIAL M FOR MURDER (Dimitri Tiomkin) [Cinematheque: Aero]
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Carmen Dragon), THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (Dimitri Tiomkin) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
OLD YELLER (Oliver Wallace) [UCLA]
WANDA (Dave Mullaney) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

August 13
BULLITT (Lalo Schifrin) [Arclight Culver City]
GREASE (Warren Casey, Jim Jacobs, Louis St. Louis) [AMPAS]
TOP GUN (Harold Faltermeyer) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]

August 14
THE CIRCUS OF LIFE [LACMA]
THE IRON GIANT (Michael Kamen) [Arclight Santa Monica]
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andre Previn) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (Howard Shore) [Arclight Hollywood]
MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (Leigh Harline), CHARADE (Henry Mancini) [Laemmle NoHo]
MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (Leigh Harline), CHARADE (Henry Mancini) [Laemmle Royal]

August 16
THE LAST MOVIE [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (Marvin Hamlisch) [Laemmle NoHo]
THE STUNT MAN (Dominic Frontiere) [Cinematheque: Aero]

August 17
APOCALYPSE NOW (Carmine Coppola, Francis Coppola) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
STAR 80 (Ralph Burns), LENNY (Ralph Burns) [UCLA]
SUPER TROOPERS (38 Special) [Nuart]
THX 1138 (Lalo Schifrin), DUEL (Billy Goldenberg) [Cinematheque: Aero]

August 18
BLUE VELVET (Angelo Badalamenti), RIVER'S EDGE (Jurgen Kneiper) [Cinemathque: Egyptian]
THE PAJAMA GAME (Richard Adler, Jerry Ross, Nelson Riddle, Buddy Bregman), DAMN YANKEES (Richard Adler, Jerry Ross, Ray Heindorf) [UCLA]
PLAYTIME (Francis Lemarque) [Cinematheque: Aero]
SHE DONE HIM WRONG [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

August 19
THE DEER HUNTER (Stanley Myers) [Cinematheque: Aero]
NIGHT TIDE (David Raksin), EASY RIDER [Cinematheque: Egyptian]

THINGS I'VE HEARD, READ, SEEN OR WATCHED LATELY

Every year, the Los Angeles Conservancy holds a screening series called "Last Remaining Seats," where they present classic films in 35mm screenings at the surviving picture palaces in the Los Angeles area. My favorite of these theaters is the Los Angeles, which frequently pops up as a filming location (including in such recent films as Hail, Caesar!, Lords of Salem and The Neon Demon). It's not as pristinely restored as the United Artists theater at the Ace Hotel, but it's still a remarkable building, with its massive auditorium, towering Versailles-styled lobby, and assortment of underground rooms that originally included a restaurant, a ballroom and children's playroom.

The last two years, I saw Some Like It Hot and Easter Parade there, and this year's Last Remaining Seats screening was an excellent 35mm print of The Birds (that afternoon they screened Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with Joanna Cassidy and others from the film in person). It was probably the first Hitchcock film I ever saw -- on TV, during my childhood, and one of the reasons it especially caught my attention was its Bodega Bay setting, a few hours up the coast from my Marin County home. As you might expect, I found it pretty scary as a child, and the scene where Jessica Tandy finds the neighboring farmer's corpse, complete with bloody, eyeless sockets, was arguably the most startlingly gruesome moment in mainstream cinema of the time.

Coming after a trio of classics - Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho -- The Birds' flaws make it seem like something a step down for the director, but though it may lack the "masterpiece" status of those other three features, seeing it in the wake of 2001's re-release I feel like it is nearly as experimental and groundbreaking a movie.

The strangeness starts with the opening credits. As with the rest of the film, there is no music over the main title, just the electronic soundscape (synthetically re-creating the cries of birds), created by Remi Gassman and Oskar Sala under the supervision of Bernard Herrmann (I believe the only music heard in the film are brief source pieces -- some music on the radio, Hedren playing the piano, and the children singing in the schoolhouse). When the film begins proper, in San Francisco's Union Square (the central location for Coppola's The Conversation, 11 years later), it seems to be a romantic comedy, with feckless heiress 'Tippi' Hedren in a pet store, playing a prank on a handsome lawyer (the perennially underrated Rod Taylor) which quickly backfires.

After meeting Taylor's friendly neighbor (comedy stalwart Richard Deacon, "Mel Cooley" of The Dick Van Dyke Show), Hedren drives up the coast under the gloomily gorgeous matte-painted skies of Albert Whitlock, and soon we don't seem to be in a comedy at all, as the birds slowly begin to attack -- first just Hedren, then Taylor's family, and finally the entire town.

[A side note on matte painting and Albert Whitlock -- Whitlock is one of the all-time great visual effects artists, and people who (unlike me) actually know a lot about matte painting claim that one of his special talents was his ability to paint in an impressionistic way that would ultimately look more photorealistic on film than a more traditionally detailed painting would. (Similarly, I learned recently that Blade Runner matte painter Matthew Yuricich had a particular instinct for knowing how the different generations of film processing would change the colors of his paintings, and would counteract that effect in his color choice). Torn Curtain is one of Hitchcock's weakest films, but it does feature a remarkable demonstratoin of Whitlock's art -- when Paul Newman is followed through a museum, all the wide shots of the rooms are mostly Whitlock's paintings, with Newman filmed only on partial sets. It was especially nice to see The Birds on film again since, the last time I saw it in the theater, it was from a digital source, and the extra level of visual detail made that amazing Whitlock shot overlooking the town as the gas station burns actually look like a painting for the first time.]

A more traditional thriller from the '50s and '60s would explain why the birds are attacking, would feature scenes of government and/or military plotting their defense strategy, but The Birds has none of that. For the rest of the film, we follow these romantic-comedy characters as they try to survive an inexplicable, living nightmare, to a climactic resolution that is no resolution at all (there are no end credits, not even "The End," just a final fade out).

There's one random moment that's become my favorite in the film [spoiler alert]. After the attack on the children and on the center of town, Taylor and Hedren return to Suzanne Pleshette's house only to find her bird-pecked corpse in the front yard. Taylor's grief-stricken reaction to seeing his old friend's dead body is remarkably real and moving, the kind of genuinely emotional moment one doesn't necessarily associate with Hitchcock's movies.

I couldn't say that The Birds changed cinema the way 2001 did, but it's a remarkable achievement for its time (and, I think, it was actually a major box-office hit -- Wikipedia lists it as the 8th highest grossing film of 1963, between Son of Flubber and Dr. No. Now there's a time capsule for you).