Today marks Howard Shore's 61st birthday.  It is hard to believe how far the original Saturday Night Live alum has come since those days as musical director for the program.  His work with director David Cronenberg began with 1979's The Brood, but it was the remake of The Fly (1986) that would gain the composer wider recognition.  This score no doubt opened some important doors but it meant that Shore was pigeon-holed in sci-fi horror.  His superb score a few years later for The Silence of the Lambs would cement this a bit more.

Shore tended to continue taking assignments that underline the bizarre (Naked Lunch) or subsequent thriller films.  For the most part, Shore's process seemed to mean fewer scores with denser, richly-layered music that melded so well with the films they supported that they often went unnoticed by all but dedicated film music fans.  There seem to be two kinds of Shore fans.  The ones who have been buying his film scores as they appeared on CDs, and those who discovered the composer's music in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Of all the music Shore has composed, those three scores stand out as the finest music for a film in years (probably since the Star Wars films).  The final film score will soon be released in its entirety to match the previous two.  Again, that is an amazing achievement.

I remember hearing The Fellowship of the Ring in the film and thinking, "now there's a great score."  It took some arguing with many people at the front end of my review of the original CD.  But it turns out that I was dead on as the year continued and the accolades from far more recognized writers began to appear as well. 

Even with the great success of these films, Shore was suddenly taken off the King Kong remake...you can even see him conducting in the film.  It makes one wonder what that score might have been.  But we still had his superb music for The Aviator and the minimal but quite effective music for The Departed.

The tango theme from The Departed is a real stroke of Shore's genius.  The subtlety of this particular musical form, its associations with intense emotion, and the overall connections to dance make this particular musical thread an amazing connecting tissue that plays against the manipulating of characters.  It is one of the simplest ideas but goes such a long way. 

So Happy Birthday Maestro!  Here's to many more surprising and wonderful musical opportunities!

Headed out to seee the third Spiderman film today.  It is actually a fairly good film with a bit more comedy in it than the previous two installments suggesting a greater comfortability of characterizations.  Some of this is also due in part to the physical representations of larger themes by each of the characters in the storyline.  There are a few places where the film drags and could have used a little trimming but otherwise it is good popcorn fare with a wonderful Bruce Campbell cameo--Stan Lee's is pretty good too.

As to the music I would be surprised if there was a score release.  If there is, it would probably be interesting to see what Christopher Young wrote that did not end up in the film.  The list of individual tracks by Danny Elfman, John Debney, or a combination of the two with Young appear mixed in with the songs licensed, but mostly nonexistent in the film itself.  Elfman's main theme is used throughout, almost consistently, in the film that it can get distracting at times.  Integration of sequences with the music then becomes more diffuse and less helpful in creating dramatic flow or musical continuity thorughout the picture---yeah, I know most people are busy being wowed by the CGI.

I'll leave it to the true film score geeks to categorize and identify every shred of music in the film.  It's one of those times where I enjoyed the film music in the film, just too often I was conscious that it seemed to have both come from someone else's pen and movie.  Too bad, because Young deserved better.  So I wonder if Raimi has now ticked off two of Hollywood's better composers!

The new Harry Potter trailer appeared as well.  Though some of the music in the trailer sounds like it is new, I have to wonder if the studio will get nervous and track in thematic threads from the previous four films.

Is it me, or is getting to easy to just cut and paste everything these days?

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Finally had a chance to hear Shore's score for the kid friendly The Last Mimzy.  It is a bright little film score that has its good moments.  There are some gestures and musical moments in the score that sound a lot like Shore was being asked to mimic a temp track using music by John Williams.  So for those hungry for a little of the older maestro, this may fit the bill for now.