Lost Season 2 Sountrack
© Varese
Marianelli’s Return – Schifrin’s Liquidator – Lambro’s Murph
By: Randall LarsonDate: Thursday, November 30, 2006
THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONS
Dario Marianelli has followed up his notable scores for The Brothers Grimm and, especially, V For Vendetta, with a straightforward horror composition for Asif Kapadia’s moody ghost story, The Return, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as a traveling business woman who begins having nightmares of a murder that occurred 15 years ago, which inevitably draw her to the site of the killing. The soundtrack CD, released this week on Lakeshore Records, opens with Patsy Cline’s timeless rendition of “Sweet Dreams (Of You” and then gets into a full half hour or more of score. Marianelli eschews his gift for melody but retains a strong sense of lyrical harmony in his score for The Return, which is very much an understated composition that whispers from the corners of the film, subtly enhancing its mood and wafting overtones of warm harmonic tonality throughout scenes that are immeasurably enhanced by the affect of its fluid strains. The orchestral build-up of “Collision” or the drifting synchronicity of “Memory Lane,” or the chilling violins of “A Close Shave” are quite compelling. One of the score’s best moments is found amid the introspective piano and string workings of “Annie Dies,” while still devoid of specific melodic phrasing, the layers of tonality and rhythm and texture are simply beautiful, finally fading out amidst a glissando of wind chimes, followed by the violin resolution of “What Really Happened” and the album closer, “Sea Horses.” It’s all very restrained, enveloping the story with very attractive and evocative tonalities, light and airy and striking; a far cry from the dark and horrific tonalities of many horror films. As effective and scary as some of those scores can be, Marianelli chose to contrast the movie’s spookier moments with music of sublime if melancholy or slightly haunted beauty. As a CD, his approach results in a very likable sound design that is rich in tonality and very attractive textures.
The Return Soundtrack © Lakeshore Records
I had the pleasure of writing the notes for Perseverance Records’ premiere release of Phillip Lambro’s jazz-based score for the 1975 heist film, Murph the Surf, but I’m pleased to say my enthusiasm for recommending the CD has less to do with my involvement than my honest enjoyment of the score. It’s about a far from Lambro’s hauntingly atonal Crypt of the Living Dead score, which Perseverance released last year, as you can get. For this forgettable heist drama, which can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be a drama or a comedy and winds up becoming simply innocuous, concert composer Lambro in one of his few Hollywood scores, giving the film a very direct jazz-based, up-tempo vibe to it, as was befitting for a 1970s crime flick. Performed by players hand picked from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other orchestras, Murph the Surf has a terrific sound. Lambro’s score shapes the same arc that the film’s plot takes – moving in continuity from the dark riffs that embody the Museum robbery sequences, while also obliging somewhat different and brighter textures for the flashback sequences that tell the thieves’ back-story as those scenes are intercut with those of the burglary as it progresses. It’s an extremely enjoyable score and nicely preserved from obscurity by Perseverance.
FILM MUSIC NEWS
If Doug Adam’s thoroughgoing analysis of Howard Shore’s score for The Two Towers in last week’s box set of the Complete score wasn’t enough thematic exegesis for you, or you’d just like a simpler track-by-track explanation of the music appearing in the two Lord Of The Rings – The Complete Recordings box sets, surf over to the LOTR soundtrack’s home page and download the free PDF files with the Annotated Score guides to both Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers. Both documents are suitable for desktop printing and provide a thorough explanation of the score from a track-by-track perspective – in addition to, or in lieu of, Adam’s exhaustive thematic examination that came with the box sets for both scores.
www.lordoftherings-soundtrack
Tom & Jerry Soundtracks © FSM
Unlike Carl Stalling's Warner Bros. cartoons, which were heavy in dialogue to allow for characterization, the chase-driven Tom and Jerrys were largely bereft of dialogue, and allowed Bradley more latitude for musical cohesion. However, the rapid-fire Tex Avery shorts required music every bit as schizophrenic and, in retrospect, postmodern as Stalling's famous scores.
An earlier Tex Avery compilation CD released in 1993 by Milan was taken from the shorts' composite soundtracks, including dialogue and effects - for this premiere CD, concentrating on Bradley’s last period at MGM (which offer the best sound quality), FSM provides music from nine cartoon scores in glorious stereo sound, rescued from the original 35mm three-track masters. These have been supplemented with an additional 16 monaural cartoon scores taken from 17.5mm masters. The result is 25 complete (or nearly complete) cartoon scores in marvelous sound quality. The scores cover a cross-section of Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery shorts in a variety of styles (romantic, straight-ahead chase, jazzy) and for different settings (Naples, the Old West, 19th-century France), with an enjoyable variety of the main title themes.
Klaus Badelt’s next score will be for Redline, a car racing action film directed by Andy Cheng (End Game) and starring Nathan Phillips, Eddie Griffin, Tim Matheson and Angus Macfadyen. Produced by Chicago Pictures, the film is also said to feature music by Wycleaf Jean. Badelt’s other upcoming films include Premonition, a thriller directed by Mennan Yapo in which a woman foresees her husband’s death and tries to prevent it, and Heaven and Earth, a small British film directed by Marleen Gorris. – via filmmusicradio.com
Perseverance Records has releases David Williams’ scores for The Prophecy and The Prophecy II. Their limited release of Paul Hertzog’s score for Kickboxer has sold out at the label but may be found via some of the online retailers. Soundtrack CDs to Deadly Friend (Charles Bernstein; very limited release) and Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Jim Manzie), are in the works. www.perseverancerecprds.com
Soundtrack.net has posted a fascinating interview with David Arnold all about his score for Casino Royale (read Mania’s review of the score here: < http://www.mania.com/52856.html> ). “There was no more freedom as such on Casino Royale than there was on Die Another Day,” Arnold relayed to interviewer Dan Goldwasser. “You still have the job of scoring the film that is in front of you, and not one perhaps you wished had been made, or preferred had been made. Ultimately, I found it more satisfying because for the first time in a long time, it felt like there was an element of truth to the piece – even though it was ultimately a fantasy. I can really only credit the screenplay and Martin Campbell's direction of Daniel Craig for that; it was really down to Daniel being able to inhabit the character in the way he did. I felt it gave the character so much more credibility.” On the influence of 007’s seminal composer, John Barry, Arnold stated: “No in-jokes on this score, I'm afraid. John casts a very large shadow over the Bond movies, and it's not one that I'm afraid of living under. Barry is the sound of Bond as far as I'm concerned, and it's amazing how much like a Bond film it becomes when that sound appears. Even the other composers who have worked on Bond films over the years have tipped their hat to him. I try to reach out a little every time, but you can't stray too far. I write the only way I know how for the film that's in front of me, alongside the requirements of the producers, studio and director. We end up with what I have done.”
Read the complete interview at http://www.soundtrack.net
New releases from Varese Sarabande this month: Sean Callery’s score music for the hit TV series 24, seasons 4 and 5, plus music from the video game; Trevor Rabin’s powerful and heroic score for Phil Joanou’s sports drama, Gridiron Gang; Patrick Doyle’s dramatic score for the coming-of-age drama, Wah-Wah; up next month is Alan Silvestri’s score for A Night at the Museum, James Newton Howard’s Blood Diamond, Andrea Guerro’s music for the next Will Smith romantic comedy, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Thomas Newman’s music for the post-WW2 film noir, The Good German. www.varesesarabande.com
From Japan, notable new soundtrack releases include a pair from one of the country’s top female composers, Michiru (Godzilla X Mechagodzilla, etc.) Oshima – Chevalier, Production I.G.'s latest anime soundtrack, composed by, featuring a melodic, dramatic score, and Project Blue: Earth S.O.S. an animated TV show. Also released is a piano album of Tamiya Terashima’s music for Studio Ghibli's anime, Tales From Earthsea, featuring piano, folk instruments, guitar, and violin, and Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack from the latest series from the hit anime Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, Solid State Society.
And from Italy, new releases from Digitmovies include Ennio Morricone’s taught and melodic score for Umberto Lenzi’s 1974 thriller Spasmo. Morricone has created a score full of tension based on dissonant music of contemporary art, mixing the orchestra with electronic sounds which are contrasted by two recurrent melodic themes. For this definitive edition, Digitmovies used the stereo master tapes of the original recording session preserved in the RCA vaults. Also available is Stelvio Cipriani’s horror score for the 1971 giallo L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco (The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire). The score is based on a romantic main theme which is reprised with a number of different variations, including a vocal version sung by Nora Orlandi. The dark side of the score is provided by a series of macabre and suspense themes. The third November 30th release is the jaunty Guido & Maurizio de Angelis score for the 1976 Bud Spencer comedy, Il soldato di ventura (Soldier of Fortune).
Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.arksquare.com/index_main
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
For questions or comments, contact the author at
Soundtrax@cinescape.com
