CD Reviews 4/4/00

Edited by Jonathan Z. Kaplan

JON BRION

Reprise 9 47696-2

9 tracks - 48:50

Paul Thomas Anderson's opus about a very coincidental day in LA (that becomes biblical) is one of the best films of the year. Connecting the lives so many different people while keeping all of them interesting is no small feat. One of the ways Magnolia does this is with frenetic camera-work and an even more frenetic score. It's mostly non-stop--but when it does stop, it does so for good reason. For instance, you won't find a better written or directed scene in any movie this year than Julianne Moore's drug store outing.

I was unimpressed with Jon Brion's score when I watched the movie--maybe because it was so repetitious or because it was overshadowed by the Aimee Mann songs. I left the theater thinking the score was loud, overdone and faceless. On CD, however, the music is laid bare to be heard and judged on its own merits. Interestingly, I enjoyed the album because it does exactly what a CD score should do: It reminds you of the movie and all the fun you had while watching it. Brion, who has scored all of Anderson's films, knows which buttons to push with his stylized music. The best example of this skill is the 10-minute set piece, "Showtime," which is crucial to the middle section of the movie. With it's bolero-like build-up, the anticipation of something crucial is always at hand. The equally lengthy "Stanley/Frank/Linda's Breakdown" is less memorable, but it does have a certain energy. It also sounds definitively like scene-specific underscore, as opposed to nice background music.

Having heard the score several times, I feel that it's my duty to watch the movie again to follow where all the musical pieces fall into the grand scheme of things. But, like the movie's enigmatic title, one wonders if there are any connections at all--or if it's all just happenstance? --Cary Wong

DICK HYMAN (arranger), VARIOUS

Sony Classical SK 89031

15 tracks - 50:55

It all began with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" playing against a panorama of the New York City skyline. Ever since that memorable mix of jazz with indelible black-and-white images, Woody Allen has had an itching to combine his favorite source music with his visuals. At times, this touch seems arbitrary (like in the recent Deconstructing Harry and Celebrity, where the music and plot become anachronistically jarring) and in other instances it's experimental (as in the daring but flawed musical, Everyone Says I Love You). But, never has it been so integral to the plot as with Sweet and Lowdown.

Sweet and Lowdown tells the story of Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), a fictional jazz guitarist in the 1930s, whose reckless habits (showing up late to gigs, gambling problems, womanizing and shooting rats) overshadow his legendary talents and wreck the one pure relationship in his life (with the lovable mute, Hattie (Samantha Morton)). Allen devotes significant stretches of film to the music and Penn's deftness at playing (or pretending to play) the guitar. The guitarist of record is Howard Arlen, and he plays with incredible style and virtuosity (especially on display during the fast paced "Shine" and "Limehouse Blues/Mystery Pacific"). The music was arranged and conducted by Allen's long time music collaborator, Dick Hyman, with usual finesse. Hyman also gets a chance at composing at least one original instrumental for the film, the melancholy "Unfaithful Woman."

The movie is as much about the music as it is about the man (perhaps inspired by Allen's performance in 1998 documentary, Wild Man Blues, which showcased his favorite music). This album is the most thematically coherent for an Allen film since he was inspired by the classical music of A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy. Sweet and Lowdown's music is aptly named. --Cary Wong

Joel Goldsmith

Varese Sarabande 302 066 107 2

25 tracks - 39:09

In appearances in more than 80 movies, Kirk Douglas has epitomized the ebulliant masculinity of the American male--for good or evil. As animation director John Kricfalusi once said, "his neck is a pretty good actor in its own right..." Although his career as a leading man was arguably over in the early '70s, Douglas has gone right on working, providing some surprisingly zesty character moments in films like The Man From Snowy River, Tough Guys and Oscar. None of these are great movies, but they were sparked by Douglas's presence. A few years ago Douglas suffered the dual indignities of a helicopter accident and a debilitating stroke. Both events would have been sufficient to kill a lesser man, but Douglas survived and has made remarkable progress recovering his ability to speak. He's never given up on working, and Diamonds marks his return to the silver screen after an absence of five years.

Of course, there aren't a lot of roles out there for 83-year old stroke victims who can box, so Diamonds was tailored to Douglas's specific strengths, using footage from his early movie Champion to portray a younger Douglas and presenting the actor as a man much like himself--except with Dan Aykroyd as his son. It's a mawkish effort, but as in most of his films, the best thing about it is Douglas himself. Scoring a film like this involves certain expectations: since there's a trip to Reno, you should plan on hearing plenty of brassy, struttin' big band interludes as Douglas and his charges paint the town red. And the sentimentality of the movie is treated in a well-crafted but straightforward manner that's a throwback to a time when movie scores actually had themes and instrumental performances. Joel Goldsmith's title music for the movie is less an echo of his father Jerry's work than it is of Elmer Bernstein's To Kill A Mockingbird--it's not a knock-off, but a further exploration of the same emotional territory. Instead of the innocence of two children, the younger Goldsmith's music evokes the loneliness of a proud man in the twilight of his years. The score is strongly orchestrated (by Nicholas Dodd) with vibrant performances and lovely impressionistic moments, particularly during its finale ("Compartment in Box"), as well as a few unexpected moments of suspense ("Mugger"). It shows off Goldsmith as a craftsmen reacting intelligently to the needs of the story, although it has to be said that the song ("Keeps this World Alive" performed by Peter Noone) that wraps up the album is excruciating in its attempt to somehow capture the wacky, madcap but life-affirming character of the film. --Jeff Bond

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