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James NEWTON HOWARD Snow Falling On Cedars OST    Decca 466 818-2 [67:16]
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We must be vewy vewy qwiet. Repeatedly I pictured Elmer Fudd tip-toeing along as this album begins. It takes until "Seven Acres" (quarter of an hour in) for all that much to register through your speakers at all. There's lots of subtly at work, but it's almost a strain on the ear to listen. Stylistically, it puts me very much in mind of the elongated underscore for Hans Zimmer's The Thin Red Line.

I have to confess to a general feeling of being non-plussed about the composer's overall work. Wyatt Earp and Waterworld were momentary bright spots that promised much, but subsequently I've found his music failing to make much of an impact on me. My first and foremost criteria is what it does for a picture, and I just didn't come away from The Devil's Advocate, Meet Joe Black, or The Sixth Sense with any lingering musical memories. Somewhere in that is a compliment toward not dominating the visuals, but a good score ideally at least imprints something upon the listener.

Despite my opening reserve, there are moments on this disc that intrigue. Through a leaning toward Mychael Danna's skill with ethnic instrumentation, a voice is just about bubbling through. But all in all - this is a bit of a non-event in a continuing series of suchlike.

Reviewer

Paul Tonks

 

Rachel PORTMAN The Closer You Get OST    RCA VICTOR 09026 63601 2 [32:34]
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Another dose of Irish whimsy! This time its about a group of lovelorn lads who plan to bring women and love to their shrinking Irish village on the Donegal Coast. They therefore scheme to entice American beauties to their annual village dance. [I really wonder what the Irish themselves think about the current rash of quaint stories such as this? Ireland is prospering and re-populating!]

Rachel Portman's score is fittingly full of Gaelic charm. The opening Title music is quirky, comic and very Irish; sunny and bouncy even if the melody is slight. The best of hers music is in the nostalgic glow and engaging lilt of 'A New Look' and in the stand-out track of the album, 'There's A Suit' a lovely dreamily romantic number for guitar that gently rocks its way along like a lullaby, later adding fiddle and clarinet. What a pity that the atmosphere is broken by the intrusion of up-beat folk material.

Most of Portman's tracks are engaged in the statement and development of more comic material associated with the youths. This is awkward, bumbling, galumphing, stuff is given to accordion, harmonica low woods and guitar. As the score proceeds, this theme looses its rough edges more and more as the boys' bid for romance proceeds.

The score is stiffened by a number of favourite pieces of source music including: Louis Armstrong singing 'A Kiss to Build a Dream Upon'; Ricky Valence performing 'Tell Laura that I Love Her'; and Jackie Wilson singing 'I Get the Sweetest Feeling'. 'At the Dance' and 'Black is the Colour (of his hair)' add local Irish colour.

Mildly entertaining

Reviewer

Ian Lace

Christopher YOUNG The Hurricane OST    PROMOTIONAL (No reference No.) [56:21]
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In the wake of Twister, my immediate reaction was that this must be a second remake of John Ford's pioneering disaster movie, Hurricane. Fortunately it proves to be something altogether more interesting, a drama adapted from the autobiographical novel, The Sixteenth Round, by Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter. Denzel Washington plays an innocent man in prison, except that this time the Hollywood cliché is true. Rubin Carter is the boxer in the wrong place at the wrong time, found guilty for a murder he really did not commit, and though there are scenes in the ring, this is the story of a man's wrongful incarceration and his, and his friends, fight to clear his name.

The very highly acclaimed film is directed by Norman Jewison, probably still best known for his early work helming such films as The Thomas Crown Affair, Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar and Rollerball. Justice, or the lack of it, has been on Jewison's agenda before, specifically in the comedy And Justice for All. However, take a look through his filmography and note an Oscar-nominated but commercially unsuccessful 1984 film, A Soldier's Story. An African American army officer is placed in charge of a racially tense murder investigation… and more interestingly still, billed ninth in the credits in a fine young actor by the name of Denzel Washington.

Judging by Christopher Young's score, this is a subtle and atmospheric film. There is no action or violent music at all. There are two songs, 'So Amazing' by Clarke Anderson and Summer Anderson, which starts like a Methodist hymn and quickly becomes a standard soul ballad with all the usual clichés, and the rather more effectively crafted and performed 'I Will Rise Again'. Unfortunately the promo copy provides no details about this track, which really is a shame because I can imagine that as the credits roll this will be a bit of slow-burning spine-tingler, with barely a dry eye in the house. Christopher Young's music is understated throughout, with much of the classical autumnal elegance John Williams brings to his 'serious' films, such as Nixon and Angela's Ashes. His title theme recalls Hans Zimmer's The Assassin, those sections with a wordless female soul voice over an atmospheric backing, while elsewhere there is a touch of orchestral jazz, a trumpet solo in the Miles Davis lineage. Most of the score though, is elegant, restrained and purely symphonic, and builds to a fine emotional peak in 'Hate Put Me in Prison, Love's Gonna Bust Me Out' wherein the female voice returns with quite beauty. This is a rich, dignified, valedictory score for what promises to be one of the year's best films. As long as you are not looking for the explosive action music the title initially led me to expect, you will probably find The Hurricane offers a refreshingly sophisticated respite from multiplex sound and fury.

Reviewer

Gary S. Dalkin

 

Anne DUDLEY The 10th Kingdom OST    VARÈSE SARABANDE VSD 6115 [54:12]
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The 10^th Kingdom is a five-part TV mini-series. It "draws a discontented New York waitress and her crabby caretaker into the Kingdoms of Fantasy. They experience numerous adventures trying to find the magic mirror that can get them home and resolve their emotional problems along the way" so saith the handout. 'Sounds like The Wizard of Oz seasone d with feminist tracts!

Anyway Anne Dudley fashions a broad romantic score putting some new spin on all the treasured clichés the genre demands: romantic yearnings, magical little bells/stardust awe and wonder material, brooding, eerie atmospherics, comic rumbustious stuff and of course the nasty menacing monsters music - seasoned with the odd synth updatings.

The opening cue, 'The 4 Who Saved Nine Kingdoms' captures all the score's essence, a broad romantic bit of a theme (I'll elaborate on this remark later) frog-croaking-like electronic antics and swirling eerie evil troll-like menaces. I will not go into detail about the rather repetitive score but just select one or two of the more interesting cues on which to comment. 'Six Glorious Wishes' is great galumphing fun with xylophone and woodwinds and percussion enjoying a merry, swaggering ride. 'Addicted to Magic' is sheer sparkling enchantment with a hint of a modern beat and agitated tremolandos and glissandi all adding to a rich, magical cue. 'A Stepmother's Curse' is a vivid devil's kitchen of a concoction with what sound like pots and pans being bashed about amongst swirling mists and witches howlings; scary, scary (not for little one's ears!).

Generally speaking Anne Dudley's score is big on atmosphere and characterisation. However, unlike George Fenton in slightly similar Ever After mode, she cannot spin out a memorable melody; all we get is some meanderings around material that could comprise a melody. If Dudley can hone this facility for writing a truly memorable melody she would have a great future.

Reviewer

Ian Lace

Marco BELTRAMI Scream 3 OST    VARÈSE SARABANDE VSD-6116 [32:45]
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This is the kind of film soundtrack that it not really much fun to review. And the reason can be summed up in one simple word. Brief. So why does that one word say so much about this work? Well, because there are so many tracks under a minute in length that it's incredibly difficult to get any sense of a full, rounded score.

"Here We Go Again" gives a good indication of what to expect with its forty-four second running time and is merely a reminder of previous Scream music. "Cotton Gets Picked" is at least longer at two minutes plus, but this is really no more than standard histrionics. Although it is suitably tense, we've all been here before. This segues into "DoppleGailer" which is even more predictable, before we get our first taste of something a little more interesting with "On the Set", featuring a nice rhythmic line aided by electric guitar. Disappointingly though, it ends before it really gets a chance to shine.

"Home Sweet Home" is easily the most impressive aspect of this work, a very welcome surprise after what has gone before. This winning piano and voice theme at least indicates that Marco Beltrami has a good ear for melody, if he's given the opportunity.

"Comparing Photos" is so introspective as to almost pass by without even noticing and this is followed by "Mother's Watching", providing us with more typically 'scary' music, all very professionally done but just as uninspiring. "Dewey Mobile" is intriguing with its off-key notes and bursts of rhythm, but again is over all too soon.

Two of the longer tracks at just over three minutes are "At the Station", a suspense cue with quiet, tinkling piano backed by understated strings and "Ghost Attacks" with big flashes of strings and brass serving up the kind of music we've heard in this genre many times before. Nevertheless, despite the over-familiarity, they are unquestionably accomplished.

The stuttering trumpet work on "The Fall Guy" allows it to vaguely stick in the mind, which is more than can be said for tracks like "Roman Around", "All in the Family" "Gail Force" and "Stone Cold". All of these are extremely short and entirely routine. To be honest, this is the type of thing you might expect to hear on a library record of standard horror/suspense cues.

I suppose this does open up the old debate about whether good film music needs only to work when coupled with the on-screen images and not necessarily as a stand alone piece. But my own view is that the very best scores are capable of achieving both.

A quick reprise of "Home Sweet Home" opens up "Pièd a Terror" before it tapers off and becomes quietly foreboding and "Sunset Pictures" incorporates material from Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand 2", although there seems to be little benefit as its appeal is only marginal. And while I can acknowledge that the work on "Last Call" will be nicely effective in the film, it's difficult to imagine many would be drawn back to listen to it purely as a musical experience.

The one true thematic element of the score, first heard in "Home Sweet Home", is recalled fleetingly in "Sid Wears a Dress" and this is another likable piece, as it moves from guitar and flute into voice and strings with some drums thrown in for good measure. Finally "Sid's Theme" is a rather disquieting reprise once again of "Home Sweet Home", that leaves one with the impression that this work could have been so much better if Beltrami had been allotted more time to develop his musical ideas. I can't help feeling that there is a far better score trying to escape these imposed limitations, although I have just as strong a sense that this music will make a far greater impression when I actually see the movie itself.

Reviewer

Mark Hockley

 

Mike FIGGIS Miss Julie OST    MILAN 73138-35903 [37:29]
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It is depressing! It goes so far as to lack the plain decency of being touchingly dismal (like the sort that can offer a good cry -- "Schindler's List," or possibly "Silence of the Lambs.") It is oppressive. Woeful! Yet why am I so much as vaguely recommending it...

Mike Figgis set out to create a claustrophobic and furiously erotic score for his film, and the man succeeds very well. "Miss Julie" is a fair soundtrack of classical dimensions. It is purely chamber music, and is in fact based on a string quartet Figgis composed for a play at the National Theater some time ago. From the start, the title theme sets a queasy tone with a short variation on the traditional Dies Irae that is everything the 'Day of wrath' darkly suggests. The composer seems particularly keen on intense, close-knit cello solos (including one, the obvious 'Solo Cello,' with a gorgeous performance by Caroline

Dale) and lengthy portamenti punctuated by fierce, jerky passages. The only relatively lighthearted cues are two faux folk pieces featuring an additional fiddle and percussionist. The performances by the National Quartet (tracks 1-11 & 20) and Medici Quartet (tracks 12-19) are well up to the score's challenges, of course. Figgis' underscore is considerably more than a willful mixture of minor chords into an uncomfortable potpourri, but the music certainly is cheerless to the extent where I would not recommend it to anyone with destructive tendencies. It is tough going.

Whatever impossibility there is in terms of courteous listening, the redeeming feature of the score stands on the shoulders of creative professionalism. It is possible to enjoy the embodiment, if not the spirit, of a musical selection. Along those lines, I prefer Mychael

Danna's similarly disturbing "Felicia's Journey" slightly more; Figgis produces some of the same repeating trickery, and is not quite as individualized about his handling of it. Workmanship prevails in both, however. The "Miss Julie" soundtrack is intelligent, pointed, assertive, serious, and dreary.

Reviewer

Jeffrey Wheeler

 

Carter BURWELL Being John Malkovich OST    Virgin / Source 724384876401 [43:01]
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For one of the most surreal and original movies in the history of cinema, its musical accompaniment had to go one of two ways. Either equally abstract, or work to keep the audience in check with an emotional familiarity. Burwell has performed both tricks - sometimes simultaneously - in the Coen brother's movies, but is here to do the latter. His lackadasical melancholy can be looked at on all manner of levels in terms of painting the inner self of the characters. The film is all about what's on the inside, so regardless of the fact the score is hardly a stretch in his compositional skills, it's fascinating to see him apply his skills in so multi-layered a manner.

None of the characters in the film deserve a shred of sympathy. Each is foolishly motivated by greed or lust. Granted, the circumstances creating these motivations are rather unusual. But Burwell avoids depicting anyone by his or her shortcomings. Instead the cues imply an inevitable tragedy - we don't know for who or how until the end. Being rather short, many cues are sequenced to flow right into one another, so there's a nice effect of listening to an elongated suite. The only error made is inserting Bartok's "Allegro" about two thirds of the way through. This piece is used for John Cusack's puppet shows and is the first piece we hear in the film (cleverly framing the story ahead - a forgotten stage show tradition). A snip of Burwell speaking at the recording podium ought to have been bumped to the end of the disc too, as should the 2 pieces that open it. "Amphibian" by Bjork is the closing titles. A name that sells essentially. Followed by "Malkovich Masterpiece Remix", it's a beginning that may well have you re-programming order to better enjoy on subsequent listens.

These inclusions and the packaging all follow the movie's own skewed thinking outside the Hollywood norm. It's not Burwell's finest hour musically speaking (although "Monkey Memories" is quite exciting), but to picture it again proves him to be a subtle manipulator of the audience's reactions.

Reviewer

Paul Tonks

************************************************************** EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATION April 2000 **************************************************************

Collection: Ennio MORRICONE Cinema Concerto Orchestra and Chorus of the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia directed by the composer   SONY SK 61672 [62:19]
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This is a recording of a live concert in Rome in November 1998. It has all the polish of a studied studio project but with the added excitement and spontaneity. Mercifully it is free of audience participation. The programme includes many favourites as well as more unfamiliar items as the following list of films covered shows:-

Cinema Paradiso
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
A Pure Formality
Bugsy
H2S
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Once upon a Time in the West
Fistful of Dynamite
Love Circle
Pereira Declares
Casualties of War
Burn
The Mission

Morricone gives us delightful arrangements of his well-loved themes that actually add to their enjoyment and never leave one feeling the slightest bit disappointed that cherished music has been mutilated.

The concert opens with the Theme and Love theme from Cinema Paradiso lovingly wrapped in a dreamy haze of nostalgia. The less well-known music for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is quirky fun with squeaky comic bumblings over a pounding piano ostinato. Angelo Brandouri sings his sad, vulnerable 'Ricordare' from A Pure Formality while the music for Bugsy has its sentimentality tempered by despairing discords. The music for H2S is a delicious scherzo that scintillates with its cheerful triangle and woodwind figures yet it also has classical refinement.

For the Titles music of The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Morricone piles engaging quirkiness onto already existing oddities. From Once Upon a Time in the West and Fistful of Dynamite we have more tender moments expressed by vocalist Gemma Bertagnolli with the latter film music also has more tense orchestral undertows. For 'The Ecstasy of Gold' from The Good Bad and the Ugly, Bertagnolli, with choir, stretches her voice powerfully skywards to revel majestically in the allure of gold. 'Love Circle' is something of a bleak romantic passacaglia.

'A Brisa Do Coração', from the film Pereira Declares is another intriguing number with darting piccolo figures amidst the other quirky but vibrant orchestrations, and the Latin rhythms and vibrant singing from the husky-voiced and very expressive Dulce Pontes. I would buy this CD for this track alone. Yet another arresting track is The Working Class Goes to Paradise. It opens with pounding percussion and light rapid drumming effects that suggest airplane propeller blades or machine gun shots and proceeds to comic, almost burlesque material threatened by cold impersonal and brutal mechanistic material. A solo violin adds poignancy. I could well imagine this music fitting in the score for Cradle Will Rock also reviewed on this site this month. Casualties of War has a haunting poignancy that yields to a hymn-like supplications from the choir. An organ solo introduces music that one associates with the North American Indians in another imposing choral and orchestral selection, 'Abolição' from Burn that ends in more conventional ecclesiastical mode despite the persistent ethnic drums.

The concert concludes with the deeply affecting 'Gabriel's Oboe' and 'On Earth as it is in Heaven' from The Mission. Here as in all the other tracks, the celebrated Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionalle di Santa Cecilia play and sing their hearts out for Morricone. A treat not to be missed

Reviewer

Ian Lace

Jerry GOLDSMITH The Flim-Flam Man [33.15]; A Girl Named Sooner [31.13] FILM SCORE MONTHLY Vol. No. 9 [64.28]
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Here is a return to the good old double-feature which some people will tell you just isn't economically viable. Well it happened with Jerry Goldsmith's Capricorn One / Outland, both of which had previously been issued as single LPs, but this disc goes one further by combining two previously never-fully-released-before soundtracks from the composer's back catalogue. As with all Film Score Monthly releases, great care and attention has been lavished in the production, with detailed notes putting everything in context, a decent selection of stills, and most importantly of all, very good sound quality.

The first half of the disc (tracks 1-17) comprises the score to a 1967 comedy staring George C. Scott and Michael Sarrazin. The Film-Flam Man (released in the UK as One Born Every Minute) was a comedy drama about the relationship between an ageing con man and his young protégé. The setting was small-town America, and the film, which was a box-office failure, appears to have been one of several late 60's, early 70's films, from The Skin Game to The Sting, to explore similar territory. It was directed by Irvin Kershner, who apart from The Empire Strikes Back, was one of Hollywood's most consistently disappointing film makers. He would later work with Jerry Goldsmith again on 1974's S*P*Y*S.

The music is in a very folksy, country-blues idiom, with much use made of harmonica and banjo, with often a lightweight, playful feel, set against tracks of more pastoral, whimsical beauty. This is rather more carefree and more lavishly orchestrated, but essentially in a similar vein to Goldsmith's classic A Patch of Blue (1965). The country-fair, slapstick burlesque writing is very evocative of American comedies of the period (It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World by Ernst Gold comes to mind), and while less attractive on disc than the more romantic writing, is inventively scored and arranged, and full of witty touches.

A lot of work has gone into bringing this music to disc. Fortunately all the master elements survived, allowing a new stereo mix to be created. Originally the orchestra tracks and the 'tack piano' - actually a conventional piano with the tape speeded-up - were recorded separately and edited together for the film. Additionally the scoring calls for harp, guitars, marimba, assorted wooden percussion and triangle. Synchronising the orchestra, banjo and harmonica with the tape of the honky-tonk sounding piano had actually proved too difficult for The Tribute to Jerry Goldsmith CD released in 1993, so that certain parts of the score were omitted from that issue. Here, for the first time, all the music has been assembled, and a fine job producer, mixer and editor Douglass Fake has made of it too. This is a production to be celebrated, with a very clear and well defined sound-stage offering a refined musical canvas.

The second half of the album (tracks 18-33) presents the music from A Girl Named Sooner, a well loved TV Movie from 1975. The music has been mastered from the only source available, first generation mono tapes. There is some harshness, particularly to louder flute passages, but generally the sound is very good, again with lots of detail. Making this a particularly rewarding disc, this second score is another in a similar vein to A Patch of Blue. Here the comedy is absent, leaving a gossamer filigree of Southern wistfulness. Written the year after Papillon, there is something of the character of the more poetic music from that score, while the instrumentation is much the same as on The Flim-Flam Man, the 'tack piano' excepted. Small hints of what was to come in Logan's Run (1976), can also be spotted, though one caveat is that many of the tracks are very short, and even within tracks, the scoring is often quite fragmented.

Melodically accomplished, and above all subtle, with a real sense of musical texture and dynamics, this is an album all Goldsmith fans will want to acquire, but which should particularly be music to the ears of those who feel that today the composer's writing suffers from a surfeit of bombast. I'm not one of them, but I can see the point; the scores here offering film music from the days before composers were forced to compete with every sound-effect being presented in deafening DTS.

Reviewer

Gary S. Dalkin

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