Masaru Sato, 1928-1999
Composer Masaru Sato died in Tokyo on December 5, 1999, at the age of 71, after collapsing at a celebration held in his honor.
One of the most prolific composers in Japanese cinema, Sato wrote more than 300 film scores during a career spanning almost five decades. He is best remembered internationally for his ten-year collaboration with Akira Kurosawa, including Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low and Red Beard, as well as for several entries in the Godzilla series.
Sato was born in Rumoi, Hokkaido, on May 29, 1928, the youngest of six brothers in a music-loving family. He studied at the National Music Academy in Tokyo and became particularly inspired by fellow Hokkaido composers Akira Ifukube and Fumio Hayasaka. After seeing Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Sato sought out Hayasaka personally and became his pupil and assistant, eventually helping orchestrate Hayasaka’s monumental score for Seven Samurai (1954).
Sato’s first major independent assignment was Godzilla Raids Again (1955), the sequel to Toho’s original Godzilla. That same year Hayasaka died suddenly while working on Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear, and Sato was asked to complete the score. Kurosawa was sufficiently impressed that Sato became his regular composer for the following decade. Read more…
JESUS – Patrick Williams
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve come to the conclusion that Patrick Williams doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. Williams is an Emmy Award-winning, Oscar nominated composer who, like many others, writes consistently excellent music for movies which get no attention whatsoever. Over the last five years or so, Williams has been involved with several highly respected TV movies and small-scale features, including Geronimo, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, the Bette Midler vehicle That Old Feeling and the period drama The Grass Harp, but his music hardly ever sees the light of day on disc. That is why it is so gratifying to see his efforts on Jesus, the self-proclaimed “epic mini-series” based on the bible stories, rewarded in this way. Read more…
THE END OF THE AFFAIR – Michael Nyman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Michael Nyman was nominated for a Golden Globe for Gattaca in 1997, he wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper in England chronicling his experience at the ceremony. The long and the short of was that he hated every moment of it, and in doing so questioned why he was writing film music in the first place, as it gave him far less pleasure than writing pure classical music. I have often wondered about Nyman’s work ethic since then, especially as his film music output has increased considerably, both in volume and quality, during the last couple of years. Has he changed his mind about liking film scores? Does he still consider its creation nothing more than a chore he undergoes in order to pay the bills? Or has he undergone a catharsis, awakening a new found love for the music of the silver screen? Read more…
RIDE WITH THE DEVIL – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Under normal circumstances, Taiwanese director Ang Lee and Canadian composer Mychael Danna would not be the first names to spring to mind when thinking of the appropriate people to collaborate on an epic civil war western, But, with Ride With The Devil, both men have undoubtedly done the best work of their careers to date. Adapted from the acclaimed novel Woe To Live On by Daniel Woodrell, Ride With The Devil gives a seldom-seen perspective on the American conflict by following the lives of two Missouri boys, Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), who join up with a ragtag army of Confederate bushwhackers after their parents are killed by Yankee troops. Although loyal to the South, the bushwhackers are ungoverned by the “proper” army, and primarily patrol their own territories, killing Yankees when they can, sacking Northern-allied towns when they can’t. As time progresses and the bloodshed increases, it soon becomes apparent that Jake and Jack Bull are slowly becoming more and more disenchanted with the “cause” they once so passionately believed in, and are questioning their own morality – especially after crossing paths with Sue Lee Shelley (Jewel), a young war widow, and Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), a former slave who still remains with his former owner George Clyde (Simon Baker) and fights for the South. Read more…
END OF DAYS – John Debney
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having suffered professional ridicule for his performance in the laughably bad Batman & Robin, and having subsequently undergone open heart surgery, Arnold Schwarzenegger had been away from the world’s cinema screens for almost three years. He needed a vehicle to re-assert his star power, to confirm that his status as the world’s favorite action hero had not been diminished by health scares, and to reaffirm his status as the biggest box office draw in town. What better, then, than to have him do battle with Old Nick, the devil himself? In End of Days, Schwarzenegger does just that. Read more…
LIBERTY HEIGHTS – Andrea Morricone
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I would imagine it’s very difficult being the son of a famous father, especially in the world of the soundtrack. It’s rather unusual that film music talent is often passed on through generations and between siblings. Of course, the Newman scoring clan (Alfred, Lionel, Emil, David, Thomas and Randy) have achieved almost legendary status, and the pairings of Jerry and Joel Goldsmith, Maurice and Jean-Michel Jarre, Harry and Rupert Gregson-Williams, and more recently Howard and Ryan Shore have all borne rich musical fruit. Unknown to most score fans, Ennio Morricone’s son Andrea has been supporting his father’s musical endeavors for many years, on scores such as Cinema Paradiso and Il Quarto Re. Now, with Liberty Heights, Andrea is finally stepping out of his father’s shadow and introducing the world to his own musical voice. Read more…
TOY STORY 2 – Randy Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Toy Story first appeared in the scene four years ago, it revolutionized the world of animation. The first computer-generated feature film in motion picture history, and featuring a voice cast line-up that any live action movie would drool over, the film made stars of its fictional lead characters Woody and Buzz Lightyear, launched “to infinity and beyond” as an international catchphrase, and gave the Pixar animation studios carte blanche to develop their production as they saw fit. Now, after the record breaking success of A Bug’s Life two years ago comes the inevitable sequel – Toy Story 2. Read more…
SLEEPY HOLLOW – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Good news, folks! Danny Elfman is back with a vengeance, delivering a score for Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow which will have fans nostalgic for the Batman days and those in love with his new, more mature works shaking with delight in equal measure. Tim Burton has, of course, always been the greatest musical inspiration for Danny Elfman, who wrote four of the finest scores of his career for his films: Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Sleepy Hollow not only joins that illustrious list of credits, but in many ways surpasses it, because despite not being as thematically memorable, the new score is certainly the most satisfying in terms of orchestration, cue construction and intelligence. Read more…
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH – David Arnold
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The nineteenth James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it marks the only the third occasion in history that the same actor – Pierce Brosnan – has returned to play Bond for a third time. It also heralds the “official” handing over of the Bond reins from John Barry to David Arnold who, after receiving critical acclaim for his last Bond score Tomorrow Never Dies, becomes the first ever composer to score more than one Bond movie – with the exception of Barry himself, of course. Read more…
WARRIORS – Debbie Wiseman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Throughout the 1990s, the numerous crises in the Balkan nations of the former Yugoslavia – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia – have never been far from our television screens and our newspapers. Most recently, the coverage of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s ruthless “cleansing” of the ethnic Albanian population in the republic of Kosovo brought to light a series of terrible human tragedies seldom seen in Europe since the end of World War II. When the United Nations intervened, it was up to the combined peacekeeping forces – men and women from different countries around the world committed to ending the bloodshed – to step into the firing line and try to bring comparative peace to that troubled part of the globe. Peter Kosminsky’s film Warriors, made by the BBC for British TV, is an attempt to capture a dramatised version of their work on film. Read more…
POKÉMON: THE FIRST MOVIE – Ralph Schuckett, John Lissauer, John Loeffler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
There are a few things that decent, upstanding members of society don’t admit to having in polite company. Chronic flatulence is one. An illegitimate love child living in Mexico might be another. The third, and possibly worst of all, might be a liking for anything to do with Pokémon, those horrendous little Japanese things that children the world over have taken to collecting. It fills me with pride to say that, to date, I have never seen an episode of the Pokémon cartoon series, except for perhaps a couple of stupefied minutes when channel-hopping. I am also fortunate enough not to have any eight-year-old relatives, and therefore was not dragged to see Pokémon: The Movie 2000 (AKA Pokémon: The First Movie) when it opened in cinemas in the UK back in April. Read more…
FELICIA’S JOURNEY – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The mainstream musical development of Mychael Danna continues with his excellent, unusual score for Atom Egoyan’s drama Felicia’s Journey, starring Bob Hoskins and Elaine Cassidy. Based on the novel by William Trevor, Cassidy plays a young Irish woman – the Felicia of the title – who travels to Birmingham, England in the 1960s and encounters friendly catering manager Bob Hoskins, who offers her a room in his home. However, Hoskins is not all he appears to be, and soon Felicia finds herself at the mercy of an innocuous-looking monster, with no obvious means of escape. Read more…
THE MESSENGER: THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC – Éric Serra
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Beyond The Three Musketeers and Les Misérables, Joan of Arc’s tale is one of the few genuinely French legends to become common knowledge outside its homeland. The story of Joan of Arc has been often told in the cinema, notably by Ingrid Bergman, but never with as much passion or gusto as in Luc Besson’s new adaptation. With young starlet Milla Jovovich in the lead role and able support from a bevy of international stars including Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway and John Malkovich, The Messenger is every bit an epic. Going down an unlikely route for his music, Besson again turned to his friend and long-time collaborator Éric Serra. This was his one bad move. Serra, whose musical roots are in the pop and rock fields, does not have the symphonic knowledge to be able to properly put together a score like this, and his lack of experience has sadly left him floundering out of his depth. Read more…
DOGMA – Howard Shore
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Kevin Smith’s Dogma stirred up a lot of ill feeling in the religious community upon its release. As the director of the irreverent Clerks and Chasing Amy, Smith is never one to shy away from courting controversy, but I doubt even he could have anticipated the severe backlash aimed at him by the Catholic church. Basically, they didn’t like the idea of their beliefs being mocked but the problem (as is often the case in these situations) was that they didn’t actually bother to sit down and watch the movie before condemning it. If anything, Dogma positively encourages the notion of having some sort of faith – in God, or Buddha, or Allah, or whatever – while taking pot shots at the many hypocrites who hold a bible in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. Read more…
THE CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE – Stanislas Syrewicz
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A renaissance-era comedy brought deftly to life by director Christopher Miles and screenwriter Trevor Bentham, The Clandestine Marriage stars Nigel Hawthorne, Timothy Spall, familiar TV faces Natasha Little, Paul Nicholls and Emma Chambers, and, marking her return to the silver screen after a lengthy absence, that last bastion of shoulder pads and big hair, Joan Collins. It is a comedy of errors about two families – the Stirlings, who have buckets of money but no “class”, and the Oglebys, who have breeding in spades but no cash to match. In desperation, the two families strike up a deal to solve both their monetary and social problems – but have to gain agreement from an unlikely source. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, The Clandestine Marriage has still not been released in the UK, so I cannot effectively comment on the film itself. What I can comment on, however, it the surprisingly attractive and enjoyable score by Stanislas Syrewicz. Read more…
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