I have only just returned from vacation, so if I missed any important news from the last week or so in this column, I will rely on that as my excuse.
CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Gotti - Pitbull, Jorge Gomez - Sony (import)
Hotel Transylvania: Score for the Motion Pictures - Mark Mothersbaugh - Sony (import)
Humans: Seasons 2 & 3 - Susan Warner - Silva
IN THEATERS TODAY
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Christophe Beck
Bleeding Steel - Fei Peng
Fireworks - Satoru Kosaki
The First Purge - Kevin Lax
Moss - Ian Hatton
Sorry to Bother You - Tune Yards, The Coup
Whitney - Adam Wiltzie
COMING SOON
July 13
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot - Danny Elfman - Sony
Shock and Awe - Jeff Beal - Varese Sarabande
July 20
1922 - Mike Patton - Ipecac (import)
Teacup Travels - Rasmus Borowski, Alexius Tschallener - Tadlow
July 27
Mosaic - David Holmes - Touch Sensitive (import)
August 3
Skyscraper - Steve Jablonsky - Milan
Date Unknown
Advise and Consent - Jerry Fielding - Kritzerland
Edie - Debbie Wiseman - Silva
Les B.O. Introuvables - Jacques Dutronc, Christian Dorisse, Alain Goraguer, Lino Leonardi, Raymond Lefevre, Francois Rauber - Music Box
Mission: Impossible - Fallout - Lorne Balfe - La-La Land
The Prisoner of Zenda - Henry Mancini - La-La Land
Two North(s) & A Little Part of Anywhere - Pascal Gaigne - Quartet
THIS WEEK IN FILM MUSIC HISTORY
July 6 - Hanns Eisler born (1898)
July 6 - Bernardo Bonezzi born (1964)
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 6 - Bruce Broughton begins recording his score for Stay Tuned (1992)
July 7 - Anton Karas born (1906)
July 7 - Ron Jones born (1954)
July 7 - Recording sessions begin for Frederick Hollander’s score for We’re No Angels (1954)
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 7 - Atli Orvarsson born (1970)
July 7 - Richard Hazard records his final Mission: Impossible score, for the episode “The Bride” (1971)
July 7 - Recording sessions begin on James Newton Howard's score for The Fugitive (1993)
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 - Elisabeth Lutyens born (1906)
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 - Dickon Hinchliffe born (1967)
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)
July 9 - Ken Thorne died (2014)
July 9 - Michael Masser died (2015)
July 10 - Jimmy McHugh born (1893)
July 10 - Don Costa born (1925)
July 10 - Bruce Fowler born (1947)
July 10 - Recording sessions begin for Richard Rodney Bennett’s score for L’Imprecateur (1977)
July 10 - Robert Mellin died (1994)
July 11 - George Gershwin died (1937)
July 11 - David Baerwald born (1960)
July 11 - Alexei Aigui born (1971)
July 11 - Georges Delerue begins recording his score for Maxie (1985)
July 12 - Yasushi Akutagawa born (1925)
July 12 - Fred Steiner's score for the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns For Adonais?" is recorded (1967)
July 12 - Fred Steiner's score for the Star Trek episode "Elaan of Troyius" is recorded (1968)
July 12 - Michael Small begins recording his score for Marathon Man (1976)
July 12 - James Bernard died (2001)
July 12 - Benny Carter died (2003)
DID THEY MENTION THE MUSIC?
"The visuals are formulaic, though at least that means they don’t sensationalize the unfathomable cruelty of the right-wing dictatorship, when as many as 200,000 civilians were killed. However, Paul Pilot and John Stirratt’s music, with its driving electric guitar, is a dreadful accompaniment to the testimony of survivors speaking of their murdered loved ones."
Jay Weissberg, Variety
MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA - Rani Sharone
"A shout-out must be made to Rani Sharone‘s manic soundtrack which plays an integral plot to the film’s loony mix of humor and seriousness. Its carnival-like sounds compliment the many crazy different styles that the director plays around with as well with his art."
Jordan Ruimy, The Playlist
"The movie varies its look, occasionally aspiring to the dark contours of a graphic novel while at other times evoking the wistfulness of a watercolour painting or the kaleidoscopic, hypnotic pleasures of a cartoon acid trip. (These stylistic shifts are sharply accented by Rani Sharone’s propulsive electronic score.) Throughout, the characters’ twitchy, hand-drawn primitivism suggests their feelings of inadequacy and incompleteness, and it’s telling that the way Dash, Assaf, Verti and others physically appear on screen is more resonant than anything that comes out of their mouths."
Tim Grierson, Screen International
"Shaw's crazy-quilt collage style blends naive crayon and pencil drawings with acrylic abstract-expressionist daubs and more articulated gouache paintings, hard-edged comic book sketches, silhouettes, psychedelics and snatches of photorealism. That expressive visual mix is well suited to the emotional turbulence of high school, as is Rani Sharone's manic carnival music. If the film, even at a fleet 82 minutes, loses some steam once the initial novelty wears off, its witty comedy, funny characterizations and adherence to the classic disaster-movie template keep it engaging."
David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
SPARK: A SPACE TAIL - Robert Duncan
"As far as animated films go, the script for 'Spark: A Space Tail' is clunky but inoffensive, falling far short of your average Pixar production creatively but largely sidestepping attempts at tongue-in-cheek 'adult' humor in favor of groan-worthy puns à la the title. The whole thing seems designed to play to as wide of an international audience as possible, taking elements of the Western ('Star Wars') and Eastern ('Journey To The West') cultural canons and blending them together into a varied yet oddly flavorless storytelling smoothie. Even the soundtrack hedges its bets, alternating between a marginally stirring orchestral score and cheerfully generic, practically wordless dance pop. A lot is happening at any given moment, but none of it really stands out, for the right reasons or the wrong ones. If you were the writer of this movie, you might say it lacks a certain… spark of inspiration."
Katie Rife, The Onion AV Club
"Will Spark succeed in preventing Zhong from releasing the Kraken and taking over the entire universe, and, in the process, see his royal lineage rightfully restored? Cue composer Robert Duncan’s faux 'Circle of Life' symphonics."
Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
YOUR NAME - Radwimps
"There’s a depth and texture to every (hand-drawn!) image, which stands out in this era when many American animated films aim for Pixar and wind up at 'plasticine.' And Shinkai is at the center of it all: He’s listed as 'Your Name''s cinematographer, editor, and art director, in addition to directing the film and writing its script. (One thing he didn’t do: write the film’s lovely, elegiac score, which is courtesy of Japanese rock band Radwimps.)"
Todd VanDerWerff, Vox
"But as the film progresses, it starts to mix its genre ingredients intriguingly, adding a time-travelling supernatural element and the tense challenge of a natural disaster. The meteor strike that threatens Mitsuha’s sleepy lakeside town Itomori in the film’s second half is obviously a metaphor for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It’s incorporated skilfully into the supernatural side of the narrative, which itself grows from the film’s strong themes of Shinto spirituality (Mitsuha is a 'miko', a Shinto priestess). However, the film does experience a kind of plot indigestion late on, as the romantic strand which seeks to reunite Taki and Mitsuha threatens to derail the urgent quest to save Itomori. Overuse of teen-fave Radwimps’ power ballad 'Sparkle' similarly endangers the story’s emotional peaks."
Kate Stables, Sight and Sound
"What’s most apparent throughout the film is not just Mitsuha and Taki’s nascent romantic chemistry, but Shinkai’s signature hand at editing sequences. With emphasis of time and distance being his chief inspiration, it should be no wonder then that Shinkai would have a knack for compressing time and space through the medium of film to both comedic and emotionally resonant effect. Whether it’s an unbroken conversation spoken across a time lapse of Mitsuha walking home from school with her friends or the snap cut transition of Taki’s before-and-after snapshot of a dessert, Shinkai is an old hand at devising cuts that flow in line with the rhythm of a scene while also revealing qualities about the characters that inhabit them. The film’s score, composed by Japanese rock band Radwimps, is equal parts whimsical, charming and evocative, though the band’s lyrics in the English dub of the movie can at times come across as gratingly saccharine, perhaps an unavoidable causality of cross-lingual adaptation. On that note the film’s English dub is top-notch, with Michael Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh delivering wonderful vocal performances that perfectly complement their Japanese counterparts in Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi. Though of course, as is often the case with translations, some of the more culturally rooted jokes and parlances are incontrovertible between the two versions. Still, one could happily recommend either as a satisfying means of enjoying the film."
Toussaint Egan, Paste Magazine
"'Your Name''s young director, Makoto Shinkai, brings a frisky pop vibe (the soundtrack is by the Japanese rock band Radwimps) to the lively interplay between the rural idylls and metropolitan Tokyo, with its rush of trains and looming, angled skyscrapers and entitled young hipsters bellowing orders in the restaurant where Mitsuha, uncomfortably lodged in Taki's body, must learn to cope with urban folkways."
Ella Taylor, NPR
"Imagine all the fun (and confusion) you could have if suddenly thrust into the same situation, and to his credit, Shinkai manages to playfully compress many of those ideas (some of them a little saucier than a teen-targeted live-action movie might permit) into a series of energetic early montages, each set to songs by Japanese rock band Radwimps. Taki has never been good with girls, for example, but makes progress relating to a sexy co-worker while Mitsuha is 'visiting' -- which complicates the long-distance crush Mitsuha seems to be developing on her host."
Peter Debruge, Variety
"Teaming with Shinkai is animation director Masashi Ando, who worked on many Studio Ghibli classics. Shinkai’s familiar ultra-realistic backgrounds of buildings and cityscapes could almost pass for photography, were they not always moving around in peculiar ways. Giving the story a contemporary, at times annoyingly conventional beat is the music of Yojiro Noda and his popular J-rock bank Radwimps."
Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter
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.
July 6
INCEPTION (Hans Zimmer) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (Leonard Rosenman), THE OUTSIDERS (Carmine Coppola) [Cinematheque: Aero]
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (Nigel Godrich) [Nuart]
SO THIS IS PARIS [UCLA]
July 7
BACK TO THE FUTURE (Alan Silvestri), BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (Alan Silvestri), BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (Alan Silvestri) [Cinematheque: Aero]
DARK CITY (Trevor Jones), CUBE (Mark Korven) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
NINOTCHKA (Werner R. Heymann), THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (Werner R. Heymann) [UCLA]
July 8
AMERICAN GRAFFITI, PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (John Barry) [Cinematheque: Aero]
LABYRINTH (Trevor Jones), PAN'S LABYRINTH (Javier Navarrete) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
July 10
AN AMERICAN TAIL (James Horner) [LACMA]
BULL DURHAM (Michael Convertino) [Laemmle Ahyra Fine Arts]
July 11
BADLANDS (Geoge Aliceson Tipton), BLOOD SIMPLE (Carter Burwell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE DARK SIDE OF TOMORROW (Jerry Wright) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
July 12
MALCOLM X (Terence Blanchard) [Laemmle NoHo]
July 13
DONNIE DARKO (Michael Andrews), THE EVIL DEAD (Joseph LoDuca) [Cinematheque: Aero]
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES (Harry Manfredini) [Nuart]
July 14
CITIZEN KANE (Bernard Herrmann), HARD EIGHT (Michael Penn, Jon Brion) [Cinemathque: Aero]
July 15
ERASERHEAD (Peter Ivers), BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Carter Burwell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
OLIVER! (Lionel Bart, John Green) [Laemmle Ahyra Fine Arts]
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