by
Paul Tonks
soundtrack -- n. / Pron. "sound ( trak"
1. The narrow strip at one side of cinema film carrying the sound recording.
2. The music that accompanies a movie.
3. A commercial recording of such music.
4. A bastardised phrase record labels use to sell you crappy songs that have nothing to do with the movie they're apparently associated with.
Anyone wishing to go right to my REVIEWS of THE TWO TOWERS and STAR TREK: NEMESIS, go here. Do come back!
WEBS, WARS AND RINGS
Every media publication and website on the planet has made something out of the 3-way DVD release battle between SPIDER-MAN, ATTACK OF THE CLONES and the EXTENDED version of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. So I thought I would get some mileage out of the topic too, but from our own unique perspective here at Knowing The Score – how are the scores represented?
I’ve been keeping a close eye on which composers have offered their services to the world of DVD Extras. As of writing, it’s only a shortlist of names. My definition here means commentary tracks and music documentary interviews, as opposed to the endless one-line press junket contributions some composers seem forced to do. I may well return to this topic in the New Year and do an entire feature on the best DVDs for film music content. Currently, the guy with the most coverage (including isolated score tracks) is Danny Elfman, who can be found talking over or alongside: PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, THE FAMILY MAN, and PLANET OF THE APES. While we all wait for someone (Warners) to realize the need for a spanking-new version of BATMAN, perhaps for its impending 15th Anniversary, let’s turn instead to Elfman’s BATMAN-lite…
SPIDER-MAN
SCORE CONTENT RATING: **
Director Sam Raimi has a history with Elfman that you might think would equate to a lot of mutual backslapping on a 2-disc set. But no, there’s not much to talk about. “There’s not much to talk about” also seems to be an inexplicable problem all the commentary contributors suffer. This is a mystery since they recorded it mere months after theatrical release. Producer Laura Ziskin and Kisten Dunst huddle together in one bunker while Raimi and Co-Producer Grant Curtis sit in another. Neither pair actually converses with or engages each other. Instead you’ll lose count (if you’re daft enough to start) of the number of times you hear so-and-so “did a great job.” It’s 21 minutes before Elfman gets a mention and even then it’s not about him doing a great job. Raimi offhandedly mentions that the composer visited the Osborne Manor set and said he’d like to live there. A quarter of an hour later the score gets its first mention from Ziskin, after which there are but three more momentary pointers (e.g. “There’s the Goblin Theme”).
I never expect that a director (or whoever’s providing a commentary track) to go on for ages about a score, but there is always time to acknowledge it properly. When there are as many gaps in the talking as there are here, there’s even more time! Much more interesting therefore is the 7-minute Profile of Elfman. Here Raimi says a few nice words about the emotionally and thematically resolving finale cue. A pleasant surprise is Toby Maguire complimenting the score too. Elfman himself talks about inspiration for the themes, and is also seen at the scoring stage. Short and only vaguely revealing, but better than nothing.
STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
SCORE CONTENT RATING: **
“Nothing” is what I’d have rather had on this disc, because I’m crushed to report that my original enthusiasm for this movie has been lessened by the DVD content…
Williams appears for maybe a minute of screentime during the weakest of three very weak Featurettes. In “Love” he talks about Lucas wanting an old-fashioned love theme for Anakin and Padme. He also confirms what I put in my very first review of the score, that he saw the couple as Romeo and Juliet, and that “Across the Stars” is indeed wordplay on “Star-crossed Lovers”.
During the documentaries, Sound Designer Ben Burtt lets slip several things that will answer many fans frustrations with the use of Williams’ score. We learn that the Droid Factory sequence was conceived of very late into the editing process. Portman and Christensen jumped and pratfell in a completely bluescreen environment, largely making it up as they went. Burtt cut the scene with several musical noises in mind for the machinery and to his own rhythms. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate the scenario shortly after when Williams delivered his cue and it didn’t gel with Burtt’s notions.
A fuller explanation comes in the truly yawn-inducing commentary. When there isn’t someone saying “This is CG”, there’s Lucas sounding bored as hell and endlessly stating the obvious. Then comes Burtt with: “When I started the sound design for the Speeder Chase sequence, the original idea I had was that instead of giving the speeders a jet-like sound or a combustion sound, I would make all the sounds of the speeders out of musical instruments, and then for music score I would use just percussion. Although it worked very well in the temp, it wasn’t so successful when it was put up against the music that Johnny Williams wrote for this scene. He tended to be a bit more orchestral and less percussive, and I really had to change some of the sounds a bit. Zam’s speeder is the most musical of them. The sounds for that speeder were made out of an old 1950’s electric guitar, and running one’s finger up and down the strings of the guitar and recording them through an old amplifier.”
Some months back I read this comment from him elsewhere: “Although the monster fight in the Arena was originally scored, music was dropped at the final (mix). Music had been end-to-end in the reel, but we thought it would have wore the audience out too quickly. So we dropped a couple of cues, which in the end was better dramatically, although I had to come up with a whole different approach to the cutting.”
The aspect that lessens my opinion of the movie is the number of commentary revelations of how many scenes were conceived after principal photography. The Death Star / Watto / Dooku telling Obi Wan about Sidious – these (and many more) weren’t originally scripted! As much as that has me wanting to scream “LIAR!” every time I hear that the saga was one long preconceived story, so many late additions naturally complicated the scoring process. So add this to all the info above about the clash between sound design, editing and scoring – and there you have your answer as to why things went horribly wrong with the use of music in both CLONES and PHANTOM MENACE.
To really hammer home just how inconsequential the music is deemed to be in the Lucasfilm scheme of things, a 7-minute featurette isn’t on the set, but on the Web. From your pain-in-the-ass to install / extra software conflicts guaranteed DVD-ROM link, you can access http://dvd.starwars.com. There, some currently bare-bones content includes a Quicktime look at the “Love Theme” being recorded. Lucas reels out his old “they’re silent movies” cliché. During the recording of “Zam The Assassin And The Chase Through Coruscant” Williams mentions how he used the electric guitar is. “Usable of losable?” quips Lucas…
LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING – SPECIAL EXTENDED EDITION DVD
SCORE CONTENT RATING: ****
You need about a week to completely get through this thing. As of this writing, I’ve only got two of the four commentaries left, but I may leave them for a while. I enjoyed the two tracks that were of most interest to me; the Director / Writers and also the Cast. I’d love to be able to include what Shore himself has to say, but have garnered from reviews elsewhere that he mostly repeats information about where themes begin and re-appear. He’s included in the third track alongside a huge number of other crewmembers, and as such I really didn’t feel I’d get much more about the music than is known already.
Of the two commentary tracks I played, I’m pleased to report several respectful nods are made. Director Jackson is mostly caught up in filming anecdotes, but joins in the discussion of how the Prologue was being edited together from a London hotel room, while Shore was recording in every major studio space. The two ladies, Fran Walsh and particularly Philippa Boyens are more musically-minded it seems, having contributed lyrics and ideas for the score. Moments commented upon include: the Ringwraiths entering The Inn of the Prancing Pony, Arwen summoning the Ford’s spirit of the water, entering Moria, the Balrog’s appearance, Elizabeth Fraser’s contribution and Boromir’s death. The one musical anecdote Jackson does contribute coincides with the last on the list, when he explains the scene was conceived of with the HEAVENLY CREATURES murder scene humming chorus in mind! Then, of all people to make a surprise compliment to Shore on the Cast Commentary, it’s Orlando Bloom.
There are two discs of supplementary material, and although the “Music For Middle-earth” segment isn’t the shortest, at 12-½ minutes, it feels like it. A lot of ground is covered, with the piece broken down into: “The Song of Beren and Lúthien”, “A Choir For Moria”, “In Dreams”, “Aníron (Theme For Aragorn and Arwen)”, “Lothlórien”, “The Revelation of the Ringwraiths”, “Isengard”, “The Voice of the Ring”, “The Fellowship Theme”, and “A New Score”. It does go by very fast, but compared to the documentaries on the other 2 movies’ DVDs it’s well worth your time.
The big soundtrack fan allure of this EXTENDED EDITION is the fact Shore has gone back and re-scored many sequences to accommodate new footage. Of this, the most eagerly anticipated has been the gift-giving scene. This track appears at the end of the limited edition of THE TWO TOWERS album (see separate review), but to my mind isn’t the most interesting part of the re-score. Technically, the mind boggles at the nips, tucks and what-nots that he must have had to get his head around. The fact that it all works seamlessly is the real achievement. It would have been so easy, as other less interested directors have shown, to just play around with what music there already was. None of the alternate sequences feel cheated by what’s underscoring them however. In fact, there are several improvements.
The best new piece of music to my ear comes at the beginning of Disc Two when Aragorn visits his mother’s grave, and then the Fellowship sets off “Left”. There’s also some terrific new material interwoven into the extra fighting for Boromir’s final battle. What’s also been greatly anticipated is what Shore would do with the 15 minute additional End Credits sequence which alphabetically lists The Charter Members of The Official Lord of the Rings Fan Club. There’s actually nothing remarkably new here. From the album you’d sequence the following cues together and spot little difference: “Concerning Hobbits”, “The Black Rider”, “A Journey In The Dark”, “The Great River” and “The Breaking Of The Fellowship”. The last features the most of the subtle changes, and will interest score fans to some degree. Apparently this is an entirely new recording of the material, incorporating earlier or alternate versions of cues. To be honest, since it presents nothing drastically new, he might as well have saved himself the bother and tracked it with existing recordings for all that anyone will notice – or indeed have the patience to sit through this enormous sequence.
So there you have it, RINGS wins in my perspective on the battle of the blockbuster DVD releases. Hope I don’t have something like this to wade through every year to combat RINGS 2 and 3!
NEWS NUGGETS:
Recommended recent score CD releases to check out:
SWEET SIXTEEN – George Fenton, Debonair Records CDDEB1013 ****
I don’t ever recall hearing Fenton play with samples and beats. I may just not have come across it in his work. The “Opening Titles” were therefore a pleasant surprise from this album. Seven cues follow suit and are then followed by six glorious jazz pieces from THE NAVIGATORS and then eight more from BREAD AND ROSES. This is a more familiar side of Fenton, being an intimate score with occasional romantically comical flourishes (such as accordion and saxophone in “Trolley Trouble”). Getting 3-for-1 scores on an album makes this exceptional value, but the fact that 3 disparate styles gel so well together makes it even better value.
WHITE OLEANDER – Thomas Newman, Varèse Sarabande VSD-6417 ***
Talk about your “Mood Music” album. For 35 minutes I felt like there ought to be a nice shiatsu massage going on while it played in the background! Piano lines are like dripping water. Sustained synth notes wash up and down. Let’s not ignore some very interesting credited effects from “granulated cello”, “struck bowls” and “low end theory”. This is definitely a product of the Thomas Newman who did THE PLAYER / AMERICAN BEAUTY etc, as opposed to the other Thomas Newman who did LITTLE WOMEN / SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION etc. To my knowledge, there aren’t actually 2 being confused for one another (unlike David Arnold!), but it’s a cute Twilight Zone tale I love to spin!
THE FALL OF BERLIN – Dmitry Shostakovich, Marco Polo 8.223897 ****
Golden Age film music releases exhilarate me far more regularly than contemporary ones. It’s a constant battle to find the time to research and ‘catch-up’ with the history of the craft while staying on top of current releases too. So when the boys at Marco Polo put together one of these exquisite recordings I’m always delighted. This is grand war movie music on a scale unimaginable today. Piling the plus points ever higher, the disc also features a 30-minute suite from THE UNFORGETTABLE YEAR 1919, which is a superb bit of partnering. As always there’s a chunky and informative booklet too.
|
Hey you. Yes YOU! Have you ever wondered if your personality traits accord with those of today’s film composers? What do you mean “no?” Well, opportunities like the one offered here come along but once in a lifetime. To find out if you’re more Williams than Goldsmith, or more Horner than Shore, go here to take the “Which Film Composer Are You?” Challenge!
We celebrate the following Birthdays:
Randy Newman (THE NATURAL / TOY STORYs)
- born 28 November 1943, Los Angeles, California.
Cliff Eidelman (STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY / UNTAMED HEART)
- born 5 December 1964, Los Angeles, California.
And we commiserate the anniversaries of the deaths of:
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD / THE SEA WOLF)
- Born 29 May 1897, Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic).
- Died 29 November 1957, Los Angeles, California.
Aaron Copland (OF MICE AND MEN / OUR TOWN)
- Born 14 November 1900, New York, New York.
- Died 2 December 1990, North Tarrytown, New York.
John Addison (A BRIDGE TOO FAR / SLEUTH)
- Born 16 March 1920, West Chobham, Surrey, England.
- Died 7 December 1998, Bennington, Vermont.
Roy Webb (CAT PEOPLE / NOTORIOUS)
- Born 3 October 1888, New York, New York.
- Died 10 December 1982, Santa Monica, California.
Now go here for the special REVIEWS page on STAR TREK: NEMESIS and THE TWO TOWERS.
SHOOT-BACK HERE! |
ARCHIVES
