FILM SCORE FRIDAY 12/27/02

Airship One is about to release a 65 minute CD of Stanley Myers' score to THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. The mini-series, adapted for TV from Ray Bradbury's classic story collection by Richard Matheson, featured Rock Hudson, Darren McGavin and Bernie Casey. The disc will include a 24-page color booklet including interviews with many of the series' participants, as well as a tribute to Myers by his protégé, Hans Zimmer.

Varese Sarabande will release Rachel Portman's score to the new movie version of Charles Dickens' NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. No date has been announced.

The Package - James Newton Howard - Prometheus CD Club
Sonny - Cliff Martinez - Citadel
The Swarm - Jerry Goldsmith - Prometheus CD Club

January 7
Narc - Cliff Martinez - TVT
January 14
25th Hour - Terence Blanchard - Hollywood
January 28
The Recruit - Klaus Badelt - Varese Sarabande
Two Weeks Notice - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
February 4
Gods and Generals - John Frizzell, Randy Edelman - Sony Classical
February 11
Diamonds Are Forever - John Barry - EMI/Capitol
Live and Let Die - George Martin - EMI/Capitol
On Her Majesty's Secret Service - John Barry - EMI/Capitol
February 18
The Guys - Mychael Danna - Sony Classical
February 25
Goldfinger - John Barry - EMI/Capitol
Thunderball - John Barry - EMI/Captol
You Only Live Twice - John Barry - EMI/Capitol
Date Unknown
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
The Big Sky - Dimitri Tiomkin - Screen Archives/BYU
The Busy Body/The Spirit is Willing - Vic Mizzy - Percepto
Gods and Generals - Randy Edelman, John Frizzell - Sony Classical
The Martian Chronicles - Stanley Myers - Airship One
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
Nicholas Nickleby - Rachel Portman - Varese Sarabande
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music

Catch Me If You Can - John Williams - Score CD on Dreamworks
Chicago - Songs by John Kander, Score by Danny Elfman - Song CD due Jan 14 from Sony
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - Alex Wurman
The Hours - Philip Glass - Score CD on Nonesuch
Intacto - Lucio Godoy
Love Liza - Jim O'Rourke
Max - Dan Jones
Nicholas Nickleby - Rachel Portman - Score CD due from Varese Sarabande
The Pianist - Wojciech Kilar - Classical CD on Sony, featuring 1 Kilar cue
Sonny - Clint Mansell - Score CD on Citadel
Pinocchio - Nicola Piovani - Score CD on Virgin

GANGS OF NEW YORK - Howard Shore, et al

"Michael Ballhaus 's camerawork dives into the teeming pit, while Thelma Schoonmaker 's editing rockets us from scene to scene, and the background music serves as the immigrant experience in a sonic nutshell."

Ty Burr, Boston Globe

"And the score's quasi-Celtic kitsch (a genre long since tapped out by Titanic) only exacerbates all Broadway-goes-blockbuster absurdity."

Dennis Harvey, San Francisco Bay Guardian

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS - Howard Shore

"And once again, Howard Shore's vigorous score, seemingly altered and darkened, and sans the Enya contribution, provides valuable support."

Todd McCarthy, Variety

"The movie works: its script, direction, cinematography, costumes, music, makeup and computer effects -- all Oscar-worthy and slavishly true to J.R.R. Tolkien's vision -- come together to be exhilarating, state-of-the-art filmmaking."

William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"This time around, Howard Shore's Wagnerian score comes on a little strong."

Steven Rosen, Denver Post

"Primary musical themes by composer Howard Shore are made less special by their nearly note-for-note similarity to his work in Gangs of New York."

Gregory Weinkauf, S.F. Weekly

NARC - Cliff Martinez

"Cliff Martinez's moody electronic score adds subtly to the brooding atmosphere."

David Rooney, Variety

SPIDER - Howard Shore

"In addition to Andrew Sanders' dingy, stripped-back production design and Howard Shore's subtle, brooding minor-key score, a crucial contribution comes from lenser Peter Suschitzky, whose odd low angles and washed-out tones effectively mirror Spider's off-kilter state of mind."

David Rooney, Variety

25TH HOUR - Terence Blanchard

"As '25th Hour' drags on, accompanied by the dirge-like wailing of Terence Blanchard's score, the film's two halves grow further apart."

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times

"At the end of this interminable back and forth, the camera zooms ominously into the wound [of the World Trade Center collapse] as Terence Blanchard's score becomes more and more histrionic."

Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly

"As always in Lee's collaborations with composer Terence Blanchard, music is used under almost every scene, sometimes to rather bombastic effect. Laced with haunting Tamil vocals by British-based musician Manickam Yogeswaran, the full-bodied, brooding scores contributes to an at times overly portentous, operatic feel, but is key to establishing and sustaining the drama's uneasy, troubling mood and shaping its emotional crescendo."

David Rooney, Variety

"At its best, 25th Hour is a melancholy tone poem, deeply affecting in its mute apprehension of loss, with a lush, imposing orchestral score by Terence Blanchard that could be titled "Elegy for 9/11," along with Bruce Springsteen's "The Fuse" (with a Blanchard string arrangement) over the closing credits."

David Edelstein, Slate.com

"Spike Lee's "25th Hour" begins with an aerial tour of Manhattan at night, set to the gilded sob of Terence Blanchard's lush, urbane orchestral jazz. It may not be the most original way to start a movie, but this visual and sonic overture, created by Mr. Lee with the help of Mr. Blanchard and the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, has an unexpected emotional impact. Mr. Lee's direction has a relaxed, assured intensity perfectly complemented by the somber swing of Mr. Blanchard's score."

A.O. Scott, New York Times

TWO WEEKS NOTICE - John Powell

"Production designer Peter Larkin and composer John Powell have furthermore enabled [writer-director Marc] Lawrence and [cinematographer Lazslo] Kovacs to turn "Two Weeks Notice" into a Valentine to New York."

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Bah humbug! For those who found Pauline Kael's views on movie music too uncontroversial, I present samples of the film music criticism of John Simon, possibly the meanest of all critics (one of his trademarks is cruel remarks regarding actresses' physical appearances), from his book Reverse Angle, published by Crown:

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

As it did in Jaws, John Williams's score heaves heroically to convey momentousness, and sometimes actually succeeds at the price of redundancy -- repeating what is already visually explicit for the benefit, one presumes, of blind children, to whom neither the film's images nor the Kodaly hand signals would be of any use.

Even the score by the distinguished English composer Richard Rodney Bennett is a sellout -- typical movie mush by a man who can write solid concert music.

--but the gifted Ennio Morricone's music sounds rather like the outtakes from the sound effects for the plague of locusts that frequently descends in the film, whereas it should descend on it.

Worse yet is [Bernard] Herrmann's score, which can't consist of more than eight bars of music, as schmaltzy as the worst of Max Steiner or Victor Young, and becoming louder and nastier with every one of its thousand repetitions, until its obsessiveness surpasses the protagonist's. I don't know what Herrmann died of, but I wouldn't rule out shame as a possibility.

Most annoying, however, is the music of that pretentious hack Jerry Goldsmith, who has cannibalized Stravinsky without crediting him.

Even John Barry's score is schizoid: inoffensive when just marking time, it becomes odiously sticky at the drop of a coif, maniacally bombastic at the toss of a javelin.