Archive
JOHN WILLIAMS REVIEWS – 1960-1969
In this latest installment of the new irregular series looking at the early career of some iconic composers, we switch to Hollywood to look at the work of John Williams.
Williams attended the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied privately with the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, before being drafted into the U.S. Air Force, where he conducted and arranged music for Air Force bands as part of his assignments. After his service, Williams moved back to New York, and studied both at the Juilliard School, and at the Eastman School of Music, while moonlighting as a jazz pianist.
After completing his studies, Williams worked in Hollywood, orchestrating and performing piano on film scores for composers such as Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein and Jerry Goldsmith. Williams made his film music composing debut in 1959 on the film Daddy-O at the age of 27 – credited as Johnny Williams – and these first reviews look at sixteen subsequent film scores Williams that wrote between 1960 and 1969.
Not included here are the multitude of episodic TV scores he wrote during the period for shows and anthology series like Alcoa Premier, Playhouse 90, M-Squad, Wagon Train, Impact, The Virginian, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants, and others. Nor am I including the two scores where Williams adapted music by other people: Valley of the Dolls (1967), where Williams worked with music by André Previn and Dory Previn and for which he received his first Oscar nomination for Best Adaptation Score of a Musical Picture, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), where Williams adapted music by Leslie Bricusse, and for which he earned his second nomination in the same category. Read more…
PENELOPE – Joby Talbot
Original Review by Clark Douglas
“Penelope” stars Christina Ricci as a girl who is cursed with the nose of a pig. Everyone makes fun of her, but handsome young James McAvoy is able to see past Penelope’s outer flaws and see her inner beauty. Hmmm. I wonder what the film’s message could possibly be? The movie also stars such funny people as Catherine O’Hara, Richard E. Grant, Reese Witherspoon, and Peter Dinklage. The film has gotten generally positive notices, and sounds like a perfectly likable effort (despite the fact that it sat on a shelf for two years awaiting a release).
The film’s score is provided by Joby Talbot, a composer who is probably best known to film score fans for his entertaining work on the 2005 feature film version of “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Read more…
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