April 30, 2007

  • April "New" to the Collection

    Can you believe one-third of the year is over?  Where did it go?  April is usually a sleeper month for film score fans as studios quickly dump product to make way for the ever earlier summer blockbusters, kicking off later this week with Spiderman 3 (no score disc announced yet).

    It is not uncommon to have at least a few highlights from the first part of the year but there was not much to get excited about.  David Shire's score for Zodiac is really the only film music that got any buzz and positive feedback.  Danny Elfman's score for Meet the Robinsons was an interesting mix of standard Elfman ideas but without anything really standing out.  I have not heard Howard Shore's music for The Last Mimzy, it's on my pick up list.  So we are heading into the summer now with very little to get excited about musically speaking which means that there will hopefully be some surprises along the way.  It is perhaps a mark of the change in Hollywood that many of the stock summer composers seem to be in hiding so far.

    Some highlights that made it into the collection this month:

    1. Author! Author!  (Grusin/Mandel)  This early 1980s Pacino film features a wonderful little score by Dave Grusin that fits right in with his jazz recordings of the period.  It also features a rejected score for this troubled film by Johnny Mandel.  Both scores feature some wonderful music and you get a sense of the stylistic changes undergoing film music at this unusual period.  The disc is printed in limited quantitied from Varese Sarabande's CD Club:  www.varesesarabande.com.
    2. Dogma (Shore)  I finally picked up a copy of Shore's wonderful score to this Kevin Smith classic (one of his better films).  Shore's music is a treat for those who are suffering from withdrawal after his Lord of the Rings scores.  This is an equally engaging orchestral score with shades of humor.
    3. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Mizzy)  This is a release from Percepto that I somehow managed to never get around to picking up until now.  I love this movie...it is my favorite Don Knotts feature film next to The Incredible Mr. Limpett.  You only need to hear the organ music from the haunted organ sequences to make this a must buy.  Mizzy's music is a joy to listen to and like other releases from Percepto this one is worth picking up for the wealth of information in the accompanying booklet.  A great guilty pleasure CD for children who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s watching this film.
    4. Used People (Portman)  I cannot tell you how many times I passed up this Big Screen CD in cutout or used bins.  I have no idea why because I generally like Portman's music.  I am glad that I finally decided to do so since this disc is now many years deleted from the catalog.  This is a wonderfully magical score with a hint of mid-century jazz tossed in to boot.  If you see this one lying in the dust bin somewhere it is a truly worthwhile listen, even for non-film music fans.

    Finally, I received for review a disc labeled simply: Score.  It features music by German DJ and composer Matthew Herbert.  This is essentially a compilation disc of Herbert's music for most all of the films he has worked on over the past five years or so.  It also includes a moving segment from a ballet that uses found material (Israeli Bullets, and RAF Tornado shells from Iraq) to create musical instruments that are used in the piece.  This movement makes up roughly a fifth of the total disc.  Some of the music has a more intimate film score feel and there are some great big band sounding cues that alone would make the disc worth checking out.  I was pretty much ready to dismiss this release when I popped it in the player, but not anymore.  Definitely worth checking out--release date, May 3.