Grindhouse Death Proof
© N/A
Nose to the Grindhouse
By: Randall LarsonDate: Thursday, April 19, 2007
THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONS
Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez pastiche of 1970s era exploitation flix, features a soundtrack that similarly draws on the many influences that have driven the film’s conceptualization and style. The double feature has distinctly different musical approaches, albeit both derived from ‘70s rock and roll. Director Robert Rodriguez, who has composed the score for several of his previous films either by himself or aided by composers like Graeme Revell (who does contribute a lick or two to Grindhouse), has written an original instrumental score for Planet Terror, the first of Grindhouse’s two deliciously exploitative action fests. Varese Sarabande has issues the Planet Terror score on CD with a full-blown fistful of ballsy styled rock and roll. Opening with Rodriguez’s “Main Titles,” to which the leggy Rose McGowan’s go-go dancer Cherry Darling gyrates in the exotic dance hall, the film’s riff is straight-ahead garage rock and sets the aural tone for the rest of the film; Planet Terror’s beat is steady, forceful, and forward moving. Introducing the score in the soundtrack notes, Rodriguez indicated that he wrote the Main Title riff before he even began the script for Planet Terror, and that riff set the vibe for the story as well as the film’s style and sound design from the get-go, and even inspired McGowan’s character to be a go-go dancer so that she could grind along with the music’s infernal groove. Rodriguez brought in Graeme Revell and a few other musicians to realize the full-blooded score, and the result is as fun to listen to as Planet Terror is to watch, a pure adrenalin rush of pulse-pounding and over-the-top action and unbelievable stunts that have no place in any art house theater but serves to provide an intensity of powerhouse amusement for the indiscriminating viewer.
“The Sickos” carries a relentless industrial rhythm for the onslaught of the chemically-induced zombies that rage, Romero-esquely, across the landscape and force our gaggle of heroes (conveniently all brought together through the miracle of Rodriguez’s “missed reel” gag) to join together in mutual defense.
“His Prescription… Pain” embodies a clear John Carpenter/Halloween synth riff and becomes an ostinato for Josh Brolin’s vengeful Dr. Block. “Cherry Darling” adopts a similar 70’s synth tone – beautifully mimicking the early synth-and-piano scores that became so ubiquitous during the decade, and serving to provide a soft counterpoint to McGowan’s character’s tough exterior as she reacts to the loss of her leg (eaten by zombies, of course). The motif is reprised tenderly for piano in “The Ring in the Jacket” and becomes kind of a love motif between McGowan and Rodriguez’s characters. “El Wray” serves up a hyper dramatic synth and electric band heraldic track associated with Freddie Rodriguez’ character, which then morphs into an unremitting percussive forward-rhythm that also has its roots in Carpenter. “Fury Road” reprises the main theme and provides a severe tempo that measure’s out the heroes’ pursuit against the flesh-eating ghouls. “Grindhouse Blues” is terrific electric blues, really nicely played. And of course there is a track from Rodriguez’s Latino-styled band, Chingon [PS: check out their CD Mexican Spaghetti Western for more outstanding Latino rock grooves at www.chingonmusic.com], performing “Cherry’s Dance of Death” (a version of the Main Theme given a cool Hispanic musical propulsion) as it accompanies the film’s explosive and flying climax.
The CD includes Nouvelle Vague’s pop ode to promiscuity and overabundance, “Too Drunk to ****,” heard in the background during the film. Rose McGowan is tapped to provide the vocals on several tracks, such as her sultry cover of the 1952 torch song, “You Belong To Me” and the compellingly sexy wordless vocal sonorities on a couple of Rodriguez’s score tracks (“Useless Talent #32” and the album and film’s closer, “Two Against the World”) both of which are kind of amped-up and thoroughly wonderful and intoxicating assimilations of retro/lounge garage rock/synth pop. The Planet Terror score is full of these kinds of musical anomalies, but the focus is always upon thrusting ahead – the music giving the film’s incredulous action, mindless storyline, and even its intentionally damaged celluloid and broken edits a tremendous pulse. The soundtrack album captures the same energy and sense of extremetainment. The CD is housed in a standard jewel case with the film’s poster image (suitably worn on the front and back to visually resemble a worn out old LP) showing McGowan in her best machine-gun-legged Raquel Welch/One Million Years BC stance.
As for Tarantino’s second feature, Death Proof, which is less complicated plot-wise (if you can say that about Planet Terror) and is pretty much a straightforward high-speed ride from start to finish, punctuated by amazing moments of dialog and extraordinary moments of visual action), the director typically has chosen to provide not a score but a mix of rock and roll elements as diversified as the cinematic and cultural influences that populate and infest the Death Proof world. The soundtrack has been issued by Warner Bros in four different packagings – a normal jewel case edition, a special edition CD package with a padded leatherette cover and 12-page booklet, a 12” vinyl LP (“every record has a unique blood splatter pattern”), and a vinyl box set containing 7” picture sleeve singles in a collector’s carrying case. It’s also available as a digital download (for all of the above, see: www.deathproof.net). In each case, though, the musical content is identical. For his Main Title music, Tarantino has chosen “The Last Race,” one of the coolest tangy driving tune ever written, originally composed by Jack Nietzsche and first heard in Bert I. Gordon’s 1965 sudden-growth thriller, Village of the Giants. The track’s inexorable driving cadence from electric bass and Duane Eddy-ish guitars mixes with a languid, overarching melody from strings to capture a perfect tonality of movement, purpose, and power. From here we go into a diversified mix of film musical moments (Ennio Morricone’s ”Paranoia Prima,” from Argento’s Cat O Nine Tails [A Gatto A Nove Code] becomes a recurring ostinato for Kurt Russell’s car; Pino Donaggio’s ”Sally and Jack” [from De Palma’s Blow Out] becomes a tender theme for Vanessa Ferlito’s moment on the barfront) and a gathering of cool rock and roll from all manner of sources from 60’s pop (Smith’s strong cover of the Bacharach-Williams/David classic “Baby, It’s You” [originally by The Shirelles but also covered by The Beatles]); glam-rock (the 1971 T. Rex classic ”Jeepster”); pop-country (Joe Tex’s “The Love You Save (May be Your Own), 1990’s glam-punk rock (Mink DeVille’s “It’s So Easy,” from 1994’s Miracle CD); instrumental rock (Eddie Beram’s drum-laden “Riot in Thunder Alley”), and British Invasion 60’s pop (“Hold Tight” by not-quite-forgotten Beatles rivals Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich [who become part of the girls’ dialog in the second half of the film]) all become vivid tracks either supporting environment (in the long bar scene than occupies the film’s first half) or, more importantly, enhancing the octane-heavy pulse of the film’s second half, where it ostensibly is coming out of the Challenger’s dashboard radio but really takes on the duty of score – heightening the long chase scenes’ excitement and energy. Concluding both album and film, April March’s cover of “Chick Habit” (an Anglicized version of a tune by French popsmith Serge Gainsbourg called “Laisse Tomber Les Filles” – literally, “Drop The Girls”) with its cymbal-drenched rhythm and the liquidity of April’s vocals and the echoing synth chorus, is a perfectly cheerful and satisfying musical denouement for both Grindhouse films – a 60’s-styled dance tune played with a 1970’s sensibility via a 2007 perspective. Extraordinarily entertaining. Don’t be without one version or the other. Tarantino (and Rodriguez, in his own way) has a knack for doing what other directors (Friedkin, even Kubrick, imho) have been less successful at – grinding out a perfectly appropriate and dynamically resonant film score using icons of musical culture (what we used to call “the Tower Records score” – at least until the chain went out of business [and somehow “an amazon-dot-com score” doesn’t have the same ring to it]). In others’ hands such pastiches have not served to support the film’s visual and pacing elements as well as a specifically composed-score; in Tarantino’s case, with the myriad of cultural references that are ingrained in every fiber of the film and its conceptualization and execution, this kind of a eclectic, syncretistic musical design fits perfectly; the director also has a superb knack for choosing the right kind of music to deliver the right kind of tonality for his films’ rapidly shifting gears. On CD, both Planet Terror and Death Proof are fun, ferocious, and enormously enjoyable romps into pop music’s back pages while also recalling the tremendous energy and heavy-handed excitement of both films.
For more background on Death Proof’s use of music, see: www.nervepop.com/nerveblog
Dead Silence © 
FILM MUSIC NEWS
John Williams is officially set to score the fourth Indiana Jones film, as well as Steven Speilberg’s biopic Lincoln, starring Liam Neeson. The Indiana Jones film, as yet unnamed, is slated to premiere May 2008, while Lincoln will open sometime in 2009. – via filmmusicweekly
David Arnold (Casino Royale) has scored Hot Fuzz, the forthcoming Brit police comedy from Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg. A soundtrack CD has been released by Interscope Records (Universal/Island in the UK), containing 13 pop/rock songs but also a healthy 23-minute score suite.
Horror expert Joseph LoDuca has been signed to score the sequel to Boogeyman, the picture he scored in 2005. Boogeyman 2 is directed by Jeff Betancourt, who has worked as an editor on several horror films, including When a Stranger Calls, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the two Grudge films. LoDuca, who is best known for his Evil Dead and Xena scores, also has an independent drama about racism, Ocean of Pearls, coming up. He has also done the score for TV movie The Staircase Murders for Lions Gate/Lifetime. – via filmmusicweekly
This week, Varese Sarabande has released Klaus Badelt’s score for Premonition, the mysterious fantasy with Sandra Bullock as a depressed housewife who is seemingly having premonitions about the death of her husband, unsure if the death or the premonition is actually the real thing. And, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary composer Miklós Rózsa on April 18th, Varese has released a 3-CD set, Miklós Rózsa, A Centenary Celebration, compiling recordings that have been unavailable, in some cases, for decades. “Rózsa’s film music is simply some of the greatest and most memorable ever composed,” notes the label. “Grand, sweeping melodies and breathtakingly complex orchestrations helped create a genuine sense of awe in his music that, in the annals of film, may be second to none. So many of his classics are here: Ben-Hur, Spellbound, Jungle Book, Julius Caesar, The Lost Weekend, The Thief of Baghdad, and much more. Next week the label releases Jonathan Elias’ stirring score for the Viking epic, Pathfinder.
The original songs and score from the 1986 feature, The Transformers®: The Movie, will return in a 20th Anniversary Edition from Volcano/Legacy this May 29th. Featuring all of the music from the original soundtrack album plus bonus material provided by composer and producer of the film’s score, Vince DiCola. The extra material provides three additional score cues not included on the original CD (which contained mostly songs, with four score tracks), plus an alternate version of the Transformers Theme.
The soundtrack is a mix of 1980s power rock (Stan Bush’s “The Touch” and “Dare” are central icons on the soundtrack, as are two tracks by Kick Axe – inexplicably renamed Spectre General on the cd) and atmospheric/heroic rock-styled synth and keyboard scoring. www.legacyrecordings.com
British composer John Murphy is doing the music for 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the apocalyptic 2002 zombie movie hit 28 Days Later, which Murphy also scored. The new film is directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and continues the story from the first film, a half year later when Americans come to an emptied Britain to ”re-boot” the country. Of course, something goes terribly wrong. Film premieres on May 11, distributed by Fox. John Murphy, who is best known for his scores for the hip gangster movies Snatch and Two Smoking Barrels, also recently scored 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle’s science fiction film Sunshine. – via filmmusicweekly
Percepto Records will re-release their world premiere soundtrack release of the score from The Changeling in a deluxe, expanded 2-CD edition. This newly-remastered reissue showcases the haunting efforts of the film’s three notable composers – Rick Wilkins, Ken Wannberg and Howard Blake, who teamed up to deliver one of the genre's most elegant and effective scores. The Changeling is the chilling horror masterpiece from 1980 starring George C. Scott as a tormented widower who encounters the vengeful spirit of a murdered boy after he moves into a secluded Gothic mansion following the death of his wife and daughter. www.percepto.com
Red Dawn © 
One of Dave Grusin’s most acclaimed score, The Goonies from 1985, has never been released properly on CD. There is now a petition online for such a release, according to the people behind the petition Varèse Sarabande is the preferred label. The petition is available here: http://gooniesnvrsaydie. googlepages.com/index.html – via filmmusicweekly
FILM MUSIC BOOKS
From Beat to Beat: Memoirs of the Man of the Harmonica is a unique and remarkable book/cd set celebrating 40 years of Italian film music. Written by Franco DeGemini (Italy’s leading harmonica player – you’ve heard his mouth organ expertise in Sergio Leone’s Western films and many others – and the founder of Beat Records), the book is written in both English and Italian (on facing pages) and is illustrated with hundred of color photos of posters, LP and CD covers, plus a gallery of all the albums issued by Beat Records. The book is a wonderful autobiographical retrospective about working on such iconic Italian film scores as The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Once Upon A Time in The West, and dozens more.
DeGemini’s memoirs about performing on the latter are especially interesting, since his harmonica playing became a central character of the film, as interpreted by Charles Bronson as the harmonica-playing gunslinger. Describing his musical performance during the revelatory flashback that illustrates the Bronson character’s past, DeGemini recalls: “Morricone, during the first recording session, told me to place three notes in a sequence that could evoke the horrible anguish of those scenes. He gave me a scrap of paper onto which he had scribbled some musical instructions; impressions of the kind of emotions he wanted the filmgoers to derive from my playing. There were only three strange notes because in the movie the two tortured souls, one good, one evil, who were going to be breathing into a harmonica, could not move the instrument with their hands. So when I made my recording I could not use my instrument in any sort of complicated or familiar way.”
The book comes with a CD, I Sogni Della Musica, which includes original soundtrack cues by Ennio Morricone, Francesco De Masi, Franco Micalizzi, Armando Trovajoli, Riz Ortolani, and others, including a few of DeGemini’s own compositions. This is a remarkable memoir and a fascinating look behind the scenes into some of Italy’s most memorable and characteristic film music.
Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.arksquare.com/index_main
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviemusic.com
The correct url is :
http://gooniesnvrsaydie.googlepages.com/index.html
Thank you, best regards.