Cleopatra Friday!

It's true! Varese Sarabande is releasing on March 20th a 2CD set of Alex North's legendary score to Cleopatra (1963), newly remixed and restored in brilliant stereo from the original multitracks at Fox. Here is the official announcement:

CLEOPATRA
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Elaborately Packaged 2-CD Deluxe Edition!

Music Composed and Conducted by Alex North

Twentieth Century Fox and Varese Sarabande Records present one of the most colossal film score restorations of all time!

Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison star in one of the most breathtaking epics in motion picture history -- the story of the Queen of the Nile's tumultuous love affairs with Marc Antony and Julius Caesar. Directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve), CLEOPATRA's astounding recreation of the eighteen years leading up to the formation of the Roman Empire makes for one of the most lavish productions in Hollywood history.

Coming on April 3 from Twentieth Century Fox is a deluxe three DVD set presenting a painstaking restoration of this enormous production. Newly produced for this set is a lavish two-hour documentary telling the turbulent story of the production of one of Hollywood's most infamous and expensive (nearly $400 million when adjusted for inflation) motion pictures. This documentary will also air repeatedly on AMC as part of a tremendous promotional push by the studio. CLEOPATRA is one of the studio's grandest productions and this DVD will be the ultimate presentation of the spectacular epic.

Equally historic is this first ever presentation of over 150 minutes of Alex North's glorious and Academy Award-nominated film score. The composer's own score for Spartacus and Miklos Rozsa's magnificent Ben Hur are perhaps this score's only peers. Recorded with an orchestra of unprecedented size, it is truly one of the most extraordinary scores ever composed for a film. CLEOPATRA has never before been available on CD. An LP of recorded highlights of North's music spent some six months on the charts and was the country's number 2 album for three weeks. Now, for the first time ever, the complete original soundtrack from the film, digitally re-mastered and sounding better than ever, is presented on this elaborately packaged double CD.

CLEOPATRA opened June 12, 1963. The film was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Also receiving Oscar nominations for their work on the film were Rex Harrison (Best Actor) and Alex North (Best Score). CLEOPATRA was additionally nominated for Best Film Editing and Best Sound and took home Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction - Set Decoration, Costume Design and Special Effects.

Catalog #: 302 066 224 2
Release Date: 3/20/01

By the way -- Fox Video's 3-DVD release of the film, due April 3rd, will feature a new anamorphic widescreen transfers, an audio commentary, a new documentary, "Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood," an original featurette, "The Fourth Star of Cleopatra," trailers, premieres footage and more -- but no isolated score. You'll need to get the 2CD set from Varese for the music.

Woohoo!

Varese will also be releasing on March 6th a re-recording by Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Philharmonic of Bernard Herrmann's The Three Worlds of Gulliver.

Also, being released on March 27th, a week after Cleopatra, is a special 2CD set of Robert Townson's re-recordings to commemorate his 500th soundtrack CD as a producer:

IN SESSION:
A FILM MUSIC CELEBRATION

60 Years and Over 140 Minutes of the Best Film Music EVER Written!

Producer Robert Townson's 500th CD is celebrated with this compilation of Varese Sarabande's Award-winning and best-selling "Varese Film Classics" series of recordings featuring performances conducted by the legendary likes of Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein along with Joel McNeely, John Debney, Cliff Eidelman and Frederic Talgorn.¬? Representing such famed film composers of the past as Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Henry Mancini and Georges Delerue as well as such masters of today as Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Elmer Bernstein and John Barry ÇĶ IN SESSION invites you into the studio for some truly historic recording.

Just a few of the scores revisited here are Citizen Kane, A Streetcar Named Desire, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Vertigo, Peyton Place, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Psycho, The Twilight Zone, Breakfast At Tiffany's, Fahrenheit 451, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Sand Pebbles, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Taras Bulba, The Trouble With Harry, Born Free, Patton, Jaws, Superman: The Movie, Midway, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Somewhere In Time, Out of Africa, Body Heat and Platoon, among many others!

Two CDs are packed to the brim and sold for the price of a single disc! All music is presented in 20-bit digital sound and features performances by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. Featuring extensive liner notes the likes of which we have never before published, IN SESSION: A FILM MUSIC CELEBRATION is the one film music compilation everyone needs in their collection. Classic movies, favorite themes, memories from a lifetime of film, all brought together.

Catalog #: 302 066 225 2
Release Date: 3/27/00

Gladiator: More Music from the Motion Picture will be out February 27th from Decca. In addition to previously unreleased Hans Zimmer/Lisa Gerrard score cues (not featured on the initial soundtrack CD), fans can look forward to... wow! Movie dialogue; the dance hit "Now We Are Free" (Maximus Mix), featuring Lisa Gerrard on vocals; and a Gladiator screen saver.

Decca will have the Zimmer soundtrack album to Hannibal out on February 6th; the movie is out three days later, February 9th.

GNP/Crescendo is releasing a CD of Graeme Revell's score to Dune, the new miniseries version from the Sci-Fi Channel.

Intrada is releasing a promotional CD of Charles Bernstein's score to Enslavement, a Showtime movie taking place in the pre-Civil War South, starring Jane Seymour. The CD will be available in limited quantities to collectors in February.

The German branch of Universal Classics is releasing a 2nd volume of The Mad Mad World of Soundtracks in March -- more classy cover versions of great film and TV themes. Here's the track list:

Pat Williams: The Streets of San Francisco
Sam Spence: Wie Ein Blitz
Peter Thomas: Angels Who Burn Their Wings
The Bachelors: Diamonds Are Forever
Rolf KuHn: Das Gelbe Haus Am Pinnasberg
Jochen Brauer Group & Tender Agression: Die Kette
John Gregory: The Six Million Dollar Man
Jimmy Smith: The Night Visitor
Kai Winding: Harper
The Heinz-Ehme-Sound: Bond Street
The Gunter-Kallmann-Choir: The Windmills of Your Mind
Nicole Croisille & Pierre Barouh: Mein Herz SchlaGt Daba-Daba-Dab
Claudine Longet: Nothing to Lose
Astrud Gilberto: A Time for Us
Ella Fitzgerald: A Place for Lovers
Chet Baker: Come Saturday Morning
Button Down Brass: French Connection
Neal Hefti: The Odd Couple (Vocal Version)
Scott Walker: That Night
Berry Lipman: Star Maidens
Klaus Doldinger: Tatort
Ingfried Hoffmann: Robbi, Tobbi & Das FliewatuT

The label is also working on artist compilations based on Burt Bacharach, Francis Lai, John Barry and more, but these are in the early development stages so don't expect them any time soon.

The classic instrumental cover versions team of Ferrante & Teicher lives on! Great 1970s Motion Picture Themes will be released by Capitol Records on March 13 and features the grand piano duo with orchestra and choir performing 16 pieces from movies of the decade. The CD is culled from Ferrante & Teicher's United Artists Records albums:

1. Lady Sings the Blues
2. Shaft
3. Summer of '42
4. Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex...But Were Afraid to Ask
5. Superman
6. Heaven Can Wait
7. A Clockwork Orange
8. Diamonds Are Forever
9. Oh, God!
10. Mahogany
11. Last Tango in Paris
12. Pieces of Dreams
13. Fiddler on the Roof
14. The Paper Chase
15. Let It Be
16. The Late Show

Silva Screen has the following lined up for spring and summer in their series of Prague re-recordings:

** A 4CD set of John Barry's music, plus three new CD recordings of the complete Lion in Winter, Robin and Marian and The Last Valley scores.

** A 2CD set of Alfred Newman music, features themes and suites from Street Scene, Captain from Castile, Airport, Wuthering Heights, How the West Was Won, The Keys of the Kingdom, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Razor's Edge, and the 34-minute Man of Galilee Cantata based on themes from The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

** A Godfather Trilogy CD.

** A 2CD set of Max Steiner music.

** Cinema Choral Classics III

** Shakespeare at the Movies, with music from Twelfth Night (Davey), Hamlet (Shostakovich, Morricone and Doyle versions), Henry V (Walton and Doyle versions), Richard III (Walton), Julius Caesar (Rozsa and Michael J. Lewis Versions), Love's Labours Lost (Doyle), Romeo And Juliet (Rota and Armstromg versions) and more.

Silva Screen is currently giving away copies of its Jerome Moross 2CD set at its website in a competition: see www.silvascreen.co.uk or www.soundtracksdirect.co.uk.

One of Anthony Hopkins's own compositions will be heard in Hannibal for a scene when his character plays the piano. Reportedly Hopkins is pleased with the inclusion but is declining credit. The actor is an accomplished pianist and used the instrument to help get into character to play Hannibal Lecter.

Bill Conti is returning to be music director for the 73rd Academy Awards, to be held March 25th at Los Angeles's Shrine Auditorium, broadcast on ABC. FSM reader Howard Liverance recently attended a Conti concert and has posted a review on our message board: see http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/Forum1/HTML/000818.html

The Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section for Feburary 11th is scheduled to have an article on TV composers including Alf Clausen and The Simpsons.

Paleontologists have named a new type of dinosaur discovered on the island of Madagascar a Masiakasaurus knopfleri (pronounced mah-SHEE-kah-sawr-us nawp-FLAIR-ee), after rock musician and occasional film composer Mark Knopfler. (The scientists had been listening to a lot of Dire Straits music during their dig.) The dinosaur is speculated to have been between 5 and 6 feet long, mostly neck and tail, weighing 80 pounds, and was a vicious, meat-eating predator with strange, hooked teeth.

Two of the reviews in Vol. 5, No. 9-10 -- the new issue of FSM which will start to reach people in the next two weeks -- had their ratings chopped off and/or were forgotten. They did not actually receive zero stars: The Jaws rerecording got *** 1/2 and Urban Legends: Final Cut got ***. We'll also print this addendum in the subsequent issue of FSM.

It's a busy spring for composers appearing live, especially in England. Check out this line up:

Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein will appear at the live tribute to Fred Astaire being planned for February 18th at London's Palladium. The two became friendly when Bernstein's score for A Walk on the Wild Side (1962) was recorded on Astaire's label, Ava Records. Bernstein conducted the orchestra at Astaire's last public appearance, at the Academy Awards in 1968, footage of which will be shown at the tribute.

Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith will conduct the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall on June 28th. Call 0207 5898212 for tickets.

Howard Shore
Howard Shore is conducting his entire score to Dead Ringers live to picture with the London Philharmonic on March 24th, at the Barbican Centre. Two days later saxophonist Ornette Coleman and trio will perform Shore's Naked Lunch score live to picture. See http://www.barbican.org.uk.

Ennio Morricone
Also at the Barbican, Ennio Morricone is doing concerts on March 10th (evening) and March 11th (afternoon), consisting of both chamber and film music. There will be a screening of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time of the West on the big screen following the 3/10 concert. Morricone will not be using the LSO but will be bringing the Rome Orchestra and Chorus will him. He will be premiering two new concert pieces.

Book by credit card now at the Barbican box office by dialing 020 7638 8891 (from USA, dial 011 44 207 638 8891; from the rest of the Europe, dial 00 44 207 638 8891).

Michael Kamen
Michael Kamen and Leonard Slatkin will be featured conductors on February 10th of London's Royal Academy of Music's "Symphony Orchestra Showcase" in the Duke's Hall at 7:30pm. Kamen will conduct Robin Hood, Edge of Darkness and "An American Symphony" from Mr. Holland's Opus. Slatkin will conduct Kamen's first symphony, "The New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms." Free tickets are available in advance, call 020 7873 7300. Website is http://www.ram.ac.uk.

On the rest of the European continent:

Two sets of Barcelona concerts with the OBC (Orquesta Sinfonica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya): Elmer Bernstein on March 23rd and 24th; and Jerry Goldsmith on May 4th and 5th; see www.auditori.com.

A general film music concert in Antwerp, Germany, on February 1st and 2nd, Koningin Elisabethzaal Antwerpen, Michel Tilkin conducting the orchestra Undici Archi. Selections from Jurassic Park, The Untouchables, Driving Miss Daisy, Onedin Line, Superman, Gone with the Wind, Moonstruck, Lawrence of Arabia, Anna and the King, Ben-Hur, True Romance, Apocalypse Now, Last Action Hero and My Dinner with Andre. Call 0900-00311 of EKU - Ticketshop Kammenstraat 70 tel. 03/213 86 60; http://www.soundtracksinconcert.com.

From: Bond1965@aol.com

From: thomas <thomasc@nowtranslations.com>

Can someone help me out here. I could swear I heard a feminine product commercial using a brassy cut from one of John Barry's EMI albums. A short time later, a friend swore he heard the same thing (but also couldn't quite remember the commercial). Anyone?

Lukas Kendall responded: I don't know what this is. John Barry has scored some commercials with original music in the past, the most famous being the "Girl with the Sun in  Her Hair" British shampoo ad which has been recorded several times. This one of course sounds tracked with something but I don't know what it is.

The Tampax commercial that is in question is using John Barry's "Bee's Knees" track. It is the "live" version found on John Barry: The EMI Years. (Track 19). This was originally released in the 60's on album "Drumbeat."

It's a swinging ad.

Go to CNN for an article on Russ Landau's music to Survivor and the imminent Survivor II: http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/24/survivor/index.html

SoundtrackCollector is a new website featuring a gigantic database of soundtrack CDs -- a terrific search engine to see what exists. Fans can use it to store information on their own collections. See www.soundtrackcollector.com.

How about this for a Film Score Friday! Have a great weekend.