Archive
UNTIL SEPTEMBER – John Barry
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Until September is a romantic drama directed by Richard Marquand – his first film after completing Return of the Jedi – written by Janice Lee Graham, and starring Karen Allen and Thierry Lhermitte. Allen plays Mo Alexander, an American tourist traveling through Europe, who misses a plane connection and gets stuck in Paris. While her new visa gets approved she goes to stay at the apartment of a friend who is away for the summer; there she meets her friend’s neighbor, Xavier, a wealthy French banker who is married but estranged from his wife and family. As Mo and Xavier spend time together in that most romantic of cities, their mutual attraction is overwhelming, and they eventually fall in love. Despite being a simple, uncomplicated story of passion and romance, Until September was not a major box office success in 1984, and today is known mainly for its sumptuous score by John Barry. Read more…
THE BLACK HOLE – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Craig Lysy
The Black Hole was to be Disney’s effort to take the successful disaster movie genre into outer space. Conceived in 1975 as a “Poseidon Adventure in Space”, the film was never able to germinate until the Star Wars phenomenon served to catalyze a resurgence of the space epic genre. Gary Nelson was hired to direct with Jeb Rosebrook given the task of adapting the earlier disaster in space script to a more epic adventure tale involving a monstrous black hole. The movie had a stellar cast that included Ernest Borgnine, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins and Maximillian Schell, as well as Roddy McDowall who provided the voice of the robot VINCENT. Set in the year 2130 C.E. aboard the USS Palomino, the story details the discovery of the lost USS Cygnus, which is seen apparently derelict, orbiting a massive black hole just beyond its event horizon. An investigation into the mystery that was the Cygnus leads to a grim discovery that threatens to end the lives of all involved. Although Disney conceived the film as an epic much in the mold of 2001: A Space Odyssey and provided a story replete with symbolic references to Dante’s Inferno, uninspired directing and a truly poor script resulted in critical failure. The film was nevertheless a commercial success due to its amazing special effects and myriad of robots that won the hearts of the audience. Read more…
John Barry, 1933-2011
Composer John Barry died on January 30, 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York, after suffering a heart attack. He was 77.
John Barry Prendergast was born in York, England in November 1933, where his father owned a chain of cinemas. He played the organ at York Minster and, after spending some time as a classical pianist, formed a jazz band, The John Barry Seven in 1957. The Seven had a number of popular instrumental hits in the UK, including a cover of “Walk Don’t Run” and the theme from the TV show Juke Box Jury, “Hit and Miss”, before moving into cinema.
Barry made his film music composing debut in 1960 writing music for the Adam Faith film Beat Girl at the age of 27, before establishing himself as a major force in the British film industry when he was brought in to arrange the theme for Dr. No, the first Bond film, in 1962. Though the “James Bond Theme” is credited to Monty Norman, Barry’s unmistakable arrangement—brassy, rhythmic, and insouciantly cool—established the sound of the series. He wrote the entire score for the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love, in 1963, and went on to score ten more, including Thunderball, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy, and The Living Daylights. Read more…
DANCES WITH WOLVES – John Barry
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
By the mid-1980s the cinematic western was almost dead, a relic of an older, less sophisticated Hollywood, which had long since left behind icons such as John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Thankfully, nobody told Kevin Costner. In 1989 Costner was one of Hollywood’s upcoming leading men, having starred in successful and popular movies such as Silverado, Bull Durham, No Way Out and Field of Dreams. When it was announced that he would direct, produce and star in a big screen version of Michael Blake’s novel Dances With Wolves, at first the news was treated with incredulity; later, with stories of spiraling costs and unconventional on-set activities, the film was expected to be a vanity project at best, a laughing stock at worst. No-one expected the film to be one of the best westerns ever made, but that is ultimately what happened. Read more…
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…
ENIGMA – John Barry
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A new John Barry score is a rare thing indeed in this day and age. As one of the all-time greats of film music, with a career that stretches back to the 1950s, the quality of Barry’s work and his influence on the genre as a whole cannot be understated. However, in recent years, Barry’s musical oeuvre has become so familiar and – dare I say it – predictable, that every score sounds like the last. Playing By Heart, his last score, broke the mould somewhat by embracing a distinctive type of moody jazz, but everything else has been much of the same. Enigma is no different. Read more…
RAISE THE TITANIC – John Barry
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Sometimes, a film score can reach almost mythic proportions, mainly due to the fact of its unavailability. In recent years, this has not happened – the advent of promos, DVDs with isolated score tracks and those horrible “bootlegs” mean that only a very small number of scores go without any kind of release – legitimate or otherwise. During the 1980s, however, a film score going unreleased was a much more common occurrence, especially if the film was a commercial flop, regardless of the quality of the music. This fate befell John Barry’s score for Raise The Titanic, arguably one of the most requested and sought-after scores in the history of modern film music. Read more…
THE BEYONDNESS OF THINGS – John Barry
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
If one was to take everything that is good about John Barry’s music and compress it into one, all-encompassing album, you would end up with The Beyondness of Things. Strictly, The Beyondness of Things is not a soundtrack: it is a unique, individual classical piece written by Barry for his own pleasure and released by London Records for us all to enjoy. But, more than that, it is a celebration of the work of a true film music legend – a testament to nearly forty years of dedicated service to the industry, in which time he has composed some of the most well loved and beautiful music the cinema has ever known. It is also a personal odyssey on Barry’s part, in which he has tried to musically sum up his life to date, capturing the innocence and wonder of his childhood in the Yorkshire countryside, the heady heights of fame in America, with all its trappings and temptations, and finally the satisfied, relaxed semi-retirement he enjoys today (I say semi-retirement – he has just released Mercury Rising and has two other scores currently on the back burner, so it is not as though he is not working!) Read more…
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