Intrada has announced two new releases this week -- a remastered version of Jerry Goldsmith's gorgeous score for the 1982 animated feature THE SECRET OF NIMH, including one previously unreleased cue (the remaining unreleased cues are reportedly lost); and the soundtrack for the 2013 sci-fi mystery I'LL FOLLOW YOU DOWN, with Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell and Haley Joel Osment, and a score by Andrew Lockington (San Andreas, Journey to the Center of the Earth, City of Ember).
The latest release in Varese Sarabande's LP to CD subscription soundtrack series is the 1986 action-adventure LET'S GET HARRY, starring Robert Duvall and Mark Harmon, scored by Brad Fiedel (The Terminator, Fright Night) and directed (under the pseudonym "Alan Smithee") by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke, The Amitivylle Horror).
CDS AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange/Spasmo - Ennio Morricone - GDM
I'll Follow You Down - Andrew Lockington - Intrada Special Collection
Learning to Drive - Dhani Harrison, Paul Hicks - Milan
Let's Get Harry - Brad Fiedel - Varese Sarabande
The Secret of NIMH - Jerry Goldsmith - Intrada Special Collection
IN THEATERS TODAY
After Words - Andrew Gross
American Ultra - Marcelo Zarvos
Being Evel - John Jennings Boyd
Digging for Fire - Dan Romer
Grandma - Joel P. West - Score CD due Aug. 28 on Lakeshore
Hitman: Agent 47 - Marco Beltrami - Score CD due Aug. 28 on La-La Land
Learning to Drive - Dhani Harrison, Paul Hicks - Score CD on Milan
She’s Funny That Way - Edward Shearmur
Sinister 2 - tomandandy
Some Kind of Beautiful - Stephen Endelman
Top Spin - JJ Lee, Chris Lord
We Come as Friends - Slim Twig
COMING SOON
August 28
The Aristocats - George Bruns - Disney
The End of the Tour - Danny Elfman - Lakeshore
Grandma - Joel P. West - Lakeshore
Hitman: Agent 47 - Marco Beltrami - La-La Land
The Last Boy Scout - Michael Kamen - La-La Land
Mr. Holmes - Carter Burwell - Lakeshore
September 4
Z for Zachariah - Heather McIntosh - Varese Sarabande
September 11
Wolf Totem (U.S. release) - James Horner - Milan
September 18
Barely Lethal - Mateo Messina - Phineas Atwood
Cartel Land - H. Scott Salinas, Jackson Greenberg - Phineas Atwood
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials - John Paesano - Sony
Sicario - Johann Johannsson - Varese Sarabande
October 2
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Bear McCreary - Hollywood
Date Unknown
Alfredo Alfredo - Carlo Rustichelli - Digitmovies
La Morte Viene Da Manila - Francesco De Masi - Beat
Maria Di Nazaret/L'Uomo Che Sognava Con L'aquile - Guy Farley - Caldera
Mark Donen Agente Zeta 7 - Aldo Piga - Beat
Rapsodica Satanica/The Leopard - Pietro Mascagni/Nino Rota - Capriccio
Uccidete Johnny Ringo - Pippo Caruso - Digitmovies
THIS WEEK IN FILM MUSIC HISTORY
August 21 - Constant Lambert died (1945)
August 21 - Basil Poledouris born (1945)
August 21 - Recording sessions begin for Hugo Friedhofer’s score for Two Flags West (1950)
August 21 - Joe Strummer born (1952)
August 21 - Walter Schumann died (1958)
August 21 - Angelo Francesco Lavagnino died (1987)
August 22 - Stanislas Syrewicz born (1946)
August 22 - Bronislau Kaper begins recording his score for Ride, Vaquero! (1952)
August 22 - James Dooley born (1976)
August 22 - Bruce Broughton begins recording his score for This Girl for Hire (1983)
August 22 - John Williams begins recording his score for the Amazing Stories episode "The Mission" (1985)
August 23 - Constant Lambert born (1905)
August 23 - Martial Solal born (1927)
August 23 - Willy Russell born (1947)
August 23 - Julian Nott born (1960)
August 23 - Alexandre Desplat born (1961)
August 23 - Howard Blake begins recording his score for S.O.S. Titanic (1979)
August 23 - Marvin Hatley died (1986)
August 23 - David Rose died (1990)
August 23 - Jurriaan Andriessen died (1996)
August 24 - Jean-Michel Jarre born (1948)
August 24 - Peter Kyed born (1963)
August 24 - Mark Lawrence died (1991)
August 25 - Ray Heindorf born (1908)
August 25 - Leonard Bernstein born (1918)
August 25 - John Williams begins recording his score for Bachelor Flat (1961)
August 25 - Harry Manfredini born (1943)
August 25 - Zoe Poledouris born (1973)
August 25 - Elvis Costello born (1954)
August 25 - Jack Nitzsche died (2000)
August 26 - Humphrey Searle born (1915)
August 26 - Alan Parker born (1944)
August 26 - Mark Snow born (1946)
August 26 - Ralph Vaughan Williams died (1958)
August 26 - Branford Marsalis born (1960)
August 26 - Fred Steiner's score for the Star Trek episode "Spock's Brain" is recorded (1968)
August 27 - Eric Coates born (1886)
August 27 - Sonny Sharrock born (1940)
August 27 - Miles Goodman born (1949)
August 27 - Bernard Herrmann records his score for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale" (1963)
August 27 - Dimitri Tiomkin begins recording his score to 36 Hours (1964)
August 27 - John Williams begins recording his score for 1941 (1979)
August 27 - Johnny Mandel records his score for the Amazing Stories episode "One for the Road" (1985)
DID THEY MENTION THE MUSIC?
ALEX OF VENICE - David Wingo
"Apart from the strong performances -- that do keep the movie afloat despite from the narrative breaks in your emotional suspension of disbelief -- other cinematic elements help support the movie. The film is well shot with naturalistic lighting, and composer David Wingo’s wistful score is also quite excellent and effective. However, the melancholy, plaintive score arguably does too much of the emotional heavy-lifting and that’s because, again, these moments don’t always add up genuinely. 'Alex Of Venice”' isn't a strong sum of its good individual parts and many moments feel unearned. We believe and empathize with Mary Elizabeth Winstead when she’s upset often as she’s a good actress that can sell a scene, but we don’t always believe the situation or the sequence that got her from emotional point A to B. And this obviously hurts the movie and the viewer’s engagement in it, and that's not all."
Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist
DIOR AND I - Ha-Yang Kim
"Partially based on Christian Dior's eponymous memoir in which he speaks of himself and his company as 'Siamese twins' who are sometimes at odds, the doc offers attractive interludes where a narrator reads excerpts while we see nighttime images of the company's offices and vintage fashion clips. Ha-Yang Kim's modern chamber-music score gives these scenes the feel of an old-fashioned Euro art film."
John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter
THE GUNMAN - Jose Luis Rodriguez, Marco Beltrami
"The past few years has seen a resurgence of action films revolving around a past-his-prime yet-still-bad-ass dude setting things right. This was probably first set in motion by Sylvester Stallone and his grizzled action star filled 'The Expendables' films, and has been handily retrofitted to varying degrees of success for actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger ('The Last Stand,' 'Sabotage'), Liam Neeson ('Taken,' 'Unknown,' 'Run All Night,' 'Non-Stop') and Kevin Costner ('3 Days to Kill'). One of the more unlikely participants in this prune juice-fueled movement is Sean Penn via the 'The Gunman.' It shares a lot with those other films -- a graying, righteous loner making the hard decisions no one else can or will, an improbably high body count, a soundtrack that bleeps along like the inner workings of a computer, a beautiful woman caught in the middle -- but is also saddled by Penn's self-conscious altruism. The result is a dumb, loud action movie that aspires to forcibly entertain and provoke thought but fails miserably."
Drew Taylor, The Playlist
"From this setup, the action skips through a predictable succession of standoffs and shootouts across Spain and Gibraltar -- directed with anonymous efficiency by Morel, albeit rather more distinctively scored by a typically zealous Marco Beltrami. While glossily shot on location in Spain, South Africa and England by Flavio Labiano, the film’s larger setpieces don’t always exploit their scenic backdrops as creatively as they might -- though a climactic chase through Barcelona’s iconic La Monumental bullfighting ring does take the beast by the horns, so to speak. (A closing-credits caveat acknowledging the city’s 2012 ban on the sport further shows up the dated material.)"
Guy Lodge, Variety
HOME - Lorne Balfe, Stargate
"The soundtrack and score -- including no small amount of numbers old and new from Rihanna -- fit perfectly with some of the jaded older kids at my screening (seen-it-all types of say, 11 or 12 years of age), who praised those elements the most loudly afterwards even as the younger kids squinched up their eyes and puffed out their tummies to best approximate Oh’s squat, gecko-meets-Grimace face. The jokes work. And the peril is scary but never, ever terrifying."
James Rocchi, The Wrap
"This kind of otherworldly friendship dynamic is something that has been successfully attempted in the past, most notably with 'E.T.' and is uniquely suited to animated features ('The Iron Giant' and 'Lilo & Stitch' immediately come to mind). But these movies require a delicate touch, and for a number of specific elements to be in place, and 'Home' just doesn't get the formula right. It's all over the place, tonally, with a number of DreamWorks Animation hallmarks,including crude bathroom humor, reinforcement of tired gender tropes, and pop culture ephemera (this time, a fixation on EDM-influenced pop music), colliding into one another loudly, instead of synthesizing smoothly. At one point it was announced that Rihanna, whose vocal performance is nearly robotic, would have an entire album's worth of material based on the film. That ambitious plan didn't pan out and instead we're left with three songs that barely pass as B-side curiosities, augmented by other, lesser pop songs and a dubstep-inspired score by Lorne Balfe and Norwegian producing team Stargate. That should make it pretty clear how much of a staggering miscalculation 'Home' is."
Drew Taylor, The Playlist
THE SISTERHOOD OF NIGHT - The Crystal Method, Tobias Enhus
"The writing and performances in 'The Sisterhood Of Night' are overblown in a way that’s just short of laughable: Emily and Mary have so many snarky, accusatory face-offs that this might almost be called 'Catfight: The Movie.' The Crystal Method’s ambient score brings in a sullen intensity that matches all the heavily mascara’d glowers the girls aim at each other. At its worst, the film feels like an episode of 'Glee,' with characters acting out preposterously oversized feelings as broad metaphors, trying to communicate the intensity of teenage emotional crises by blowing them up to parade-float size. When Emily, fresh off a montage showing her growing blog audience, marches through the school in triumphant slow motion, the school’s lesser life forms gaping in awe and falling away from her path, the film feels incapable of making a serious point about anything.
Tasha Robinson, The Dissolve
"Waechter compensates somewhat by working in a fleet, fragmented but accessibly linear style, which benefits considerably from Zak Mulligan’s handheld lensing, Aaron Yanes’ sharp editing, and moody musical accompaniment courtesy of composer Tobias Enhus and the electronic music duo the Crystal Method."
Justin Chang, Variety
WOMAN IN GOLD - Martin Phipps, Hans Zimmer
"But 'Woman In Gold'’s primary issue is the way it oversells its own story by slathering on a gut-wrenching emotional score (by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer) and leaning on the idea that Maria and Randol are the Little Leaguers going up to bat against malevolent titans who should be able to crush them with a single pitch."
Tasha Robinson, The Dissolve
"You can pretty much see every story beat coming, from Maria briefly giving up on her seemingly impossible quest, to Randy’s wife (Katie Holmes, badly underused) lamenting that he’s going to lose his job when they’ve got another baby on the way. Even the flashbacks to the Nazis (featuring 'Orphan Black' star Tatiana Maslany as young Maria) feel like an amalgam of moments we’ve seen in decades’ worth of other, better films about the Third Reich.
(And lest we’re ever unclear about how we should feel about any plot twist, the score by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer hammers it home with very little subtlety.)"
Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
"When finally in the Supreme Court (Jonathan Pryce is a daffy judge, following Elizabeth McGovern's brief moment as a no-nonsense lower court justice), Randy addresses the issue of precedent by wittily comparing it to the proverbial can of worms, and then saying they should just take this one worm out and close the can real quick after. Which Judge Jonathan Pryce finds mighty amusing, and everyone laughs and the music swells and… hang on, what? The score by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer is very culpable throughout, insisting, through use of bludgeoning repeated motifs, that moments that are in fact problematic are actually super triumphant or heartbreakingly sad, and we should all have a good wallow, rather than a good think."
Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
"In other words, 'My Week With Marilyn' director Curtis and screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell (a theater talent making his bigscreen debut) have taken the position that there’s no room for debate where rectifying the wrongs of Austria’s past is concerned, which makes for a reasonably dull ride, as both director and scribe take a fairly predictable paint-by-numbers approach to the subject of fine art -- a category for which the film itself could scarcely be mistaken. This is manufactured sentiment, less interested in provoking thought than in manipulating emotion, constructed of human obstacles overcome, stirring speeches delivered and heart-rending flashbacks unveiled, all suspended like so much Spam in the jelly of its own score -- so much heavy-handed strings-and-pianos business from Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer, plastered on more liberally than the gold leaf applied by Klimt himself. Working family connections to find a lawyer, Altmann enlists nervous 'schoolboy' Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds, shockingly miscast), the grandson of Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose music was deemed 'degenerate' by the Nazi culture police (but, if sparingly applied, might have made a more fitting score than the one slathered thickly over every scene)."
Peter Debruge, Variety
"Failing to layer suspense into the drama by more subtle means, Curtis instead attempts to stuff tension and emotional weight into every scene via an omnipresent score by Martin Phipps and Hans Zimmer that leans hard on every button."
David Rooney, 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, Crest, LACMA, New Beverly, Nuart, Silent Movie Theater and UCLA.
August 21
GOD TOLD ME TO (Frank Cordell) [Silent Movie Theater]
GRINDHOUSE: DEATH PROOF [New Beverly]
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (Joe Hisaishi), THE CAT RETURNS (Yuji Nomi) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
THE ROAD WARRIOR (Brian May), MAD MAX (Brian May) [New Beverly]
STORMY WEATHER (Emil Newman) [Cinematheque: Aero]
WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (Theodore Shapiro, Craig Wedren) [Nuart]
WILL, PERSONAL PROBLEMS (Carman Moore) [UCLA]
August 22
ANATOMY OF A MURDER (Duke Ellington), ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (John Lewis) [Cinematheque: Aero]
BMX BANDITS (Colin Stead, Frank Strangio) [New Beverly]
NANA (Alfred Newman) [UCLA]
OVER THE EDGE (Sol Kaplan) [Silent Movie Theater]
ROAD GAMES (Brian May) [New Beverly]
THE ROAD WARRIOR (Brian May), MAD MAX (Brian May) [New Beverly]
THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA (Joe Hisaishi), PRINCESS MONONOKE (Joe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
August 23
BMX BANDITS (Colin Stead, Frank Strangio) [New Beverly]
CACHAO…COMO SU RITMO NO HAY DOS, CALLE 54 (Graeme Revell) [Cinematheque: Aero]
MODERN TIMES (Charles Chaplin), THE CIRCUS (Charles Chaplin) [New Beverly]
NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (Joe Hisaishi), TALES FROM EARTHSEA (Tamiya Terashima) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
SINISTER (Christopher Young) [Silent Movie Theater]
WEIRD SCIENCE (Ira Newborn) [Crest]
August 24
DR. STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Laurie Johnson) [Arclight Culver City]
MODERN TIMES (Charles Chaplin), THE CIRCUS (Charles Chaplin) [New Beverly]
August 25
FREAKY FRIDAY (Johnny Mandel) [LACMA]
STONE (Billy Green), DARK AGE (Danny Beckerman) [New Beverly]
August 26
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (Howard Shore) [Arclight Hollywood]
POM POKO, MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS (Akiko Yano) [Cinematheque: Egyptian]
SWEPT AWAY (Piero Piccioni), LOVE & ANARCHY (Nino Rota) [New Beverly]
August 27
BEN-HUR (Miklos Rozsa) [Arclight Sherman Oaks]
SWEPT AWAY (Piero Piccioni), LOVE & ANARCHY (Nino Rota) [New Beverly]
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (Takatsugu Muramatsu), ONLY YESTERDAY (Katsu Hoshi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
August 28
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (John Williams) [Nuart]
SPIRITED AWAY (Joe Hisiashi), PONYO (JUoe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
SUSPICION (Franz Waxman), NOTORIOUS (Roy Webb) [New Beverly]
TRUE ROMANCE (Hans Zimmer) [New Beverly]
August 29
ARABIAN ADVENTURE (Ken Thorne) [New Beverly]
BLAST OF SILENCE (Meyer Kupferman) [Silent Movie Theater]
FISH TANK [Silent Movie Theater]
HANDS ON A HARDBODY (Neil Kassanoff) [New Beverly]
HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (Joe Hisaishi), CASTLE IN THE SKY (Joe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Joe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? (Arthur Kay), NO GREATER GLORY (Louis Silvers) [UCLA]
SUSPICION (Franz Waxman), NOTORIOUS (Roy Webb) [New Beverly]
August 30
ARABIAN ADVENTURE (Ken Thorne) [New Beverly]
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (Ennio Morricone), MINNESOTA CLAY (Piero Piccioni) [New Beverly]
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (Joe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
PORCO ROSSO, THE WIND RISES (Joe Hisaishi) [Cinematheque: Aero]
THE RED KIMONA, OLD IRONSIDES [UCLA]
3 WOMEN (Gerald Busby) [Silent Movie Theater]
UNCLE BUCK (Ira Newborn) [Crest]
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