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| CD Reviews: Mary Poppins and The Parole Officer |
| Posted By: Andrew Granade, Cary Wong on March 27, 2005 - 10:00 PM |
CD Reviews: Mary Poppins and The Parole Officer
Mary Poppins (1964) *****
RICHARD AND ROBERT SHERMAN
Walt Disney 61202-7
Disc One: 28 tracks - 79:48 Disc Two: 23 tracks -
74:43
Mary Poppins seems pretty
spry for being 40 years old. Released in 1964, Mary Poppins was a huge hit for
Disney and was nominated for 13 Oscars, winning five including two for
music. Richard and Robert Sherman's songs have become standards, with a
made-up word of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" actually making it
into the dictionary. In 2004, Disney released a special 2-DVD version
of the movie, and for the occasion, they have also released an extended
soundtrack with extended songs, score and on a separate disc,
recordings from story meetings between the Sherman Brothers, P.L.
Travers (the writer of the original books) and screenwriter Don DaGradi.
Does a children's movie really deserve this much scrutiny? If it's as
popular and beloved as Mary Poppins,
the answer is yes. First, there is a plethora of unreleased music and
song which wasn't part of the 2001 CD soundtrack release. From the full
versions of "Pavement Artist," with the first appearance of the
Oscar-winning song "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee" to the six-minute extended
version of the song later in the movie, the expanded album contains a
wealth of treasure. It would have been nice, however, to also get a
sampling of "Chimpanzoo," one of the deleted songs featured on the DVD.
But the real joy of the new release is that the wonderful and whimsical
score by the Sherman Brothers is finally available, especially the
Carousel chase and penguin dance during the imagination sequence in the
pavement painting. Accolades all around to the special edition producer
Randy Thornton.
I haven't seen the 2-Disc DVD with all the bonus materials, but the
second CD includes the audio equivalent of such bells and whistles. The
most substantial portion of the second disc is handed over to a story
meeting with P.L. Travers, who reads part of the script while stopping
every so often to ask questions and making suggestions, like dropping
the fact at the beginning that Mary Poppins may have been Mr. Banks'
childhood nanny. There are also occasional snippets of singing of the
songs, including some that were eventually cut.
The disc continues with a nice interview with the stars and creators
(including orchestrator Irwin Kostal) from a radio program, and finally
a reminiscence by the Sherman Brothers about writing the score. This is
all wonderful and fascinating archival material that may not be worth
listening to more than once, but is great to have preserved.
This only the beginning of this renewed interest in Mary Poppins. With the recent
opening of the London stage production and its inevitable transfer to
Broadway, Mary Poppins will
indeed be treasured by a whole new generation. And that's just
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. -- Cary Wong
The Parole Officer ***
ALEX HEFFES
Harkit HRKCD 8093
20 tracks - 34:43
Alex Heffes' The Parole Officer
is a clever, extraordinarily unified score. The movie itself is a broad
British comedy in the manner of the old Alan Partridge movies. The plot
concerns Simon Garden, the parole officer of the title, who is framed
for a murder he witnesses. The only way to clear his name is to steal a
video of the murder that is currently under lock and key at the local
bank. To accomplish this feat, he recruits some ex-cons of his
acquaintance and hilarity and mayhem ensue.
This is a tongue-in-cheek production, with dashes of The Italian Job and recent
Hollywood heist movies thrown in for good measure, and to score this
brisk comedy, the director turned to relative unknown Alex Heffes.
Heffes has slowly been making a name for himself with his recent work
on the documentary One Day in
September and the exceptional Touching
the Void. The Parole Officer
shows that these later efforts were not a fluke and that he is
definitely a name to watch in the coming years.
The reason I make that bold claim is because of how well Heffes matched
the movie's tone, even though he made unusual scoring choices. Most
composers would have approached this project with either humdrum action
writing or off-kilter slapstick writing that did not hold together
outside the project. Heffes pokes fun at these conventions while
crafting a unified work. The main title, presented in "Theme from the
Parole Office," would not have been out of place in an Elmer Bernstein
western in the 1960s. It is bold and uses brass, strings, and piano to
create the asymmetric swagger familiar from Bernstein or even Copland's
ballets for that matter. Heffes then uses that theme as the basis for
almost every other theme in the score. He pares it down for a beautiful
love theme in "I Like Your Knees," pumps it up by adding electronics
and a strong beat in an imitation of the Bruckheimer sound in "Car
Chase," and even uses it as a lead in to Wagner's "Ride of the
Valkyrie" in one particularly over-the-top moment.
These are all choices that work, even though on first glance you might
hink they wouldn't. And they are given an infectious energy by the
rawness of the sound, something achieved by happenstance when the
entire score had to be recorded in a day. Sometimes, however, Heffes
does go a little too far. In cues like "It's Kirsty!" which would sound
perfectly in place in an Austin
Powers movie, he manages a parody of a parody. By giving a
knowing wink in the score, Heffes wants to be providing ironic
commentary on the state of action scoring, but it's so obvious that it
only serves to distract. -- Andrew Granade
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
April 17 |
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| David Bell born (1954) |
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| Elmer Bernstein begins recording his score for Summer and Smoke (1961) |
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| Ernest Gold wins his only Oscar, for the Exodus score (1961) |
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| Jan Hammer born (1948) |
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| Jerry Goldsmith begins recording his score for Dennis the Menace (1993) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score for Stanley & Iris (1989) |
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| Paul Baillargeon records his score for the Enterprise episode “Vox Sola” (2002) |
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| Philippe Sarde begins recording his score for The Tenant (1976) |
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| Recording sessions begin for Bronislau Kaper's score to The Power and the Prize (1956) |
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