KING KONG – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Tom Kiefner
The remake of the 1933 classic film “King Kong” made money for the Paramount studio. It made a lot of money. In fact, it brought in 80 million dollars, which is over 3 times the amount of money it cost to make, which was a staggering 24 million dollars! Opening in the theatres for Christmas in 1976 it brought fame to Dino De Laurentiis the producer, and performers Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. Compare that to the $670,000 it cost for the original film, which grossed nearly 2 million dollars again – incredible considering it came out in the height of the depression when 10 cents was a lot of money! And from what I understand at this writing in early 2006, Universal is going to recover the 230 million dollars they spent on the latest remake and more. People just enjoy watching King Kong! Read more…
THE OMEN – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Marco Beltrami was asked to score director John Moore’s remake of The Omen, it’s difficult to know whether he jumped for joy, or groaned in dismay. Jerry Goldsmith won his one and only Academy Award for his score for the original Omen in 1976, and in doing so added a new dimension to the way horror movies are scored: the ‘Latin Chant’ has become so-over used these days that it’s almost a cliché, but back in the day when Goldsmith first used them, they were groundbreaking. Beltrami is, of course, a former student of Goldsmith’s at USC, and so stepping into his great teacher shoes must have been a daunting prospect indeed. The wonderful news is that, ultimately, Beltrami has produced a wonderful modern horror score which is original to Beltrami’s musical sensibility, but can also stand as a loving homage to his mentor. Read more…
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The third, and possibly most eagerly-awaited X-Men movie yet, The Last Stand ushers in the 2006 summer season as one of the first genuine blockbusters of the year. Directed by Brett Ratner, it sees the returning cast of the previous instalments (Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn, Anna Paquin) joining up with some new faces (Kelsey Grammer, Vinnie Jones, Olivia Williams, Shohreh Aghdashloo) in a complicated plot involving a cure for mutantism, a resurrected mutant whose powers are out of control, and a powerful war between the good and evil mutants for the fate of humanity. It’s all lofty, exciting-sounding stuff, and deserving of a score to match its epic aspirations. Read more…
THE DA VINCI CODE – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s not often that a work of fiction generates such a frenzy of attention that the Vatican itself is compelled to comment on its contents, but that’s what happened in the aftermath of the release of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code in 2003. The book, which offers controversial theories about subjects as wide ranging as the life of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Holy Grail, corruption within the Catholic church, the roles of several Masonic orders, and the legacy of artists and scholars such as Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci himself, has sold more than 40 millions copies world-wide, making it one of the most successful books of the 21st century. Critics have denounced it as a work of poorly-written fiction whose subject matter is tantamount to blasphemy; admirers of Brown’s work have lauded it as an enjoyable work in its own right, which as well as being a thrilling page-turner, highlights a number of important questions which scholars of world history have been asking for many years. I personally enjoyed it immensely. Read more…
POSEIDON – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest addition to the ever-growing list of unnecessary Hollywood remakes (following hot on the heels of the likes of The Pink Panther and When a Stranger Calls), Poseidon is a big-budget action-adventure disaster movie directed by Wolfgang Peterson – who is himself no stranger to watery problems, having previously directed Das Boot and A Perfect Storm. When a luxury cruise liner is capsized by a massive tidal wave on New Year’s Eve, the surviving revellers – Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum – find themselves desperately climbing through the wrecked ship, trying to escape before the whole thing sinks and drowns them all… and that’s basically it. It’s a very simple plot, which sticks close to director Ronald Neame’s 1972 original (which starred Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Roddy McDowall among others), but will be totally redundant for anyone who remembers it, or its classic John Williams score. Read more…
THE PROMISE – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
So, here’s a statement you won’t see me make very often: The Promise is the best score of Klaus Badelt’s career, and one of the best scores to be released in the first half of 2006. As I have written on many, many occasions, one of my favourite styles of film music is the combination of a western orchestra with solo performances by Chinese instruments, and Badelt’s score for director Chen Kaige’s visually sumptuous film is the latest to join a long and distinguished list, along with the likes of Rachel Portman’s The Joy Luck Club, Conrad Pope’s Pavilion of Women, Basil Poledouris’s The Touch, and Tan Dun’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Read more…
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III – Michael Giacchino
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s not so long ago that JJ Abrams was just another budding writer/director in Hollywood, and Michael Giacchino was a promising young composer writing music for video games. However, following the huge success of Abrams’ TV shows Alias and Lost, and Giacchino’s work on the box-office blockbuster The Incredibles, the pair of them are now cinematic hot properties, working together on one of summer 2006’s most-eagerly awaited and high-profile action movies: Mission Impossible III. The third film based on the classic 1960s spy thriller show, Mission: Impossible III once again stars Tom Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt, trotting around the globe to all manner of exotic locations, on a secret mission to thwart the nefarious plans of the film’s arch-villain, Owen Davian, played by recent Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. Along for the ride is a big name supporting cast which includes Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and by all accounts the film is a spectacular, gadget-filled, explosion-laden thrill ride which pushes all the right blockbuster buttons. Read more…
AN AMERICAN HAUNTING – Caine Davidson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Cashing in on the currently in-vogue “demonic possession” sub genre of films, initiated by last year’s surprise hit The Exorcism of Emily Rose, An American Haunting stars Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek and young Rachel Hurd-Wood, and tells the allegedly true story of the Bell family, settlers in rural Tennessee in the early 1800s, who became the first family in American history to have a family member be killed by a malevolent spirit, and to have the death officially recorded as such. The film is directed by Courtney Solomon, whose debut feature was the poorly-received fantasy Dungeons & Dragons in 2000. American Haunting has fared much better, bringing in over $15 million at the US Box Office to date. Read more…
UNITED 93 – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There can scarcely be a person who doesn’t remember where they were and what they were doing on September 11th 2001, when four passenger aircraft were hijacked by terrorists from the extremist Al Qaeda group and flown into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre in New York, destroying the latter completely. Many people of my generation refer to it as our ‘Pearl Harbor’, or our equivalent of the day JFK was shot. A cultural touchstone which, for some, has becoming a defining moment of the 21st century. I vividly remember sitting in my old office in Regent Court at the University in Sheffield, working on some project, and a colleague sticking their head round my door. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon. “Have you heard what’s going on in America?” they asked. I shook my head no, flicked on to Yahoo news, and read about the unfolding horror. Sky News went on the TV as soon as I got home, and stayed on almost for the next 24 hours as I watched the rest of the footage with increasing disbelief. Read more…
ABOMINABLE – Lalo Schifrin
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Abominable may have the unique honour of being the first ever film where an established Hollywood composer scored the feature directorial debut of their offspring. Certainly no other filmmaking-children-of-composers spring to mind. The director in question is Ryan Schifrin, the 33 year-old son of Lalo Schifrin, and the film in question is Abominable, a horror-thriller set in the Pacific North-West, where action man Preston Rogers (Matt McCoy) is recovering in an isolated cabin after a climbing accident. His recuperation is put on hold, however, when he sees the legendary Bigfoot – and realises that the supposedly-friendly Sasquatch is in reality a vicious man-eating beast! The only problem is that, after years of hoax sightings, no-one believes Preston’s tale, and it falls on his shoulders to warn everyone before the beast goes on a bloody rampage. The film also stars Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace Stone (from ET), the late Paul Gleason, and newcomer Haley Joel, and will be released straight-to-DVD in October 2006. Read more…
V FOR VENDETTA – Dario Marianelli
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot; I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
In the UK, every November the 5th is celebrated as “bonfire night”, a rather odd but very popular tradition which commemorates the events of 5 November 1605, when a group of Catholic conspirators led by a fellow named Guy Fawkes tried to assassinate the Protestant King James I by blowing up the Houses of Parliament with barrels of gunpowder (their ultimate aim was to return a Catholic monarch to the throne). Fawkes was chosen as the one who would physically light the barrels and set off the explosions, but the plot was apparently foiled when he fell asleep in one of the chambers under Parliament and was discovered by guards. He was arrested, confessed under torture, and identified his co-conspirators. Fawkes was subsequently convicted of treason and executed by being hung, drawn and quartered, and as a final ignominy, had his remains burnt in public, a sort of “taste of his own medicine”, to do to him what he would have done to the King. Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2005
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 78th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2005.
In the Best Original Score category, Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla won the Academy Award for his score for director Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, a tender love story about two gay cowboys in rural Montana struggling to reconcile their sexuality. In his acceptance speech Santaolalla said:
Thank you so much, members of the Academy. I’m so proud to have work in this movie, “Brokeback Mountain,” a movie that once again shows us that love is what makes us all very similar in spite that we can be so different, too. I want to thank a few people. I want to thank Ang Lee for his vision, his support, his guidance. I want to thank Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry and Annie Proulx for their inspiration; James Schamus and David Linde, everybody at Focus; Kathy Nelson; Robert Messinger at First Artists; my co-producer and brother Anibal Kerpel; my orchestrator David Campbell; Bob Bernstein; Ron Goldstein. I want to thank my family: my wife Alejandra, my kids Anna, Luna and Don Juan. And last but not least, I want to dedicate this to my mother, a mi madre; to my country, Argentina; and to all the Latinos, para todos Latinos. Muchas gracias. Thank you.
The other nominees for Best Original Score were Alberto Iglesias for The Constant Gardener, John Williams for Memoirs of a Geisha, John Williams for Munich, and Dario Marianelli for Pride & Prejudice.
In the Best Original Song category, Jordan Houston (Juicy J), Cedric Coleman (Frayser Boy) and Paul Beauregard (DJ Paul) won the Academy Award for the hip-hop rap song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow.
The other nominees for Best Original Song were Kathleen “Bird” York and Michael Becker for “In the Deep” from Crash, with lyrics by York; and Dolly Parton for “Travelin’ Thru” from Transamerica.
Remembering Toru Takemitsu, 1930-1996
Composer Toru Takemitsu died ten years ago today, on February 20, 1996, in Tokyo, Japan, of pneumonia while undergoing treatment for bladder cancer. He was 65.
Takemitsu was born in Tokyo in October 1930 and spent part of his childhood in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. During the final years of World War II he encountered Western classical music, and after the war immersed himself in composers including Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg. Although he studied briefly with Yasuji Kiyose, he was largely self-taught.
Film soon became central to his career. His association with composer Fumio Hayasaka helped introduce him to the Japanese film industry, and in 1956 he co-wrote the music for Ko Nakahira’s Crazed Fruit, an early landmark of the Japanese New Wave. The score’s jazz influences already revealed Takemitsu’s willingness to combine popular styles, avant-garde techniques, electronics and unconventional instrumental sounds.
During the 1960s he became one of the defining musical voices of Japanese cinema, collaborating repeatedly with directors Hiroshi Teshigahara, Masaki Kobayashi, Masahiro Shinoda and Nagisa Oshima. Takemitsu treated the entire soundtrack as a compositional object, often giving music, ambient noise, electronically manipulated sound and silence equal dramatic importance. Read more…
FIREWALL – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s funny how, all of a sudden, a composer comes out of nowhere and becomes one of your favourites. French composer Alexandre Desplat first appeared on the international scene in 2000 with his elegant score for the chess-themed romantic drama The Luzhin Defence; since then, through scores such as Girl With a Pearl Earring, Birth, Hostage, The Upside of Anger and Syriana, he has risen to become arguably the most exciting Gallic composer since Georges Delerue, with the capacity to write both thrilling action music and sensitive orchestral material with equal skill. Two Golden Globe nominations and a recent César Award for ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ would seem to reinforce his place in the bigger scheme of things. His score for Firewall will hopefully be just as well received, and cement his position as one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. Read more…
Akira Ifukube, 1914-2006
Composer Akira Ifukube died in Tokyo, Japan, on February 8, 2006, at the age of 91, from multiple organ failure.
One of the most important Japanese composers of the twentieth century, Ifukube wrote nearly 300 film scores during a career spanning half a century, but remains internationally famous for his association with Toho’s monster films and especially for creating the thunderous musical identity of Godzilla.
Ifukube was born in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on May 31, 1914. Growing up in northern Japan, he was exposed to the music of the indigenous Ainu people, whose rhythms and melodic patterns would profoundly influence his musical language. Largely self-taught as a composer, he originally studied forestry at Hokkaido Imperial University and worked in the timber industry before turning professionally to music. After World War II he began teaching composition in Tokyo and entered the Japanese film industry.
His first feature score was Senkichi Taniguchi’s Snow Trail in 1947, beginning an extraordinarily prolific period in which he worked with many prominent Japanese directors. Early assignments included Akira Kurosawa’s The Quiet Duel (1949), Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima (1952), Josef von Sternberg’s Anatahan (1953), and Hideo Sekigawa’s Hiroshima (1953). His music already displayed the characteristics that would define his career: heavy rhythmic writing, powerful brass, modal melodies and a distinctive fusion of Western symphonic technique with Japanese musical traditions. Read more…
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