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.
THE OSCARS
Academy Award nominations always stir up chat, if nothing else. This year there are a couple of surprise issues about the nominations. The initial surprise is that none of the five nominated scores seem overly undeserving. On the flipside, top of those creating annoyance by its absence is THE TWO TOWERS. A rather thorny matter was brought to light by Jon Burlingame in the L.A. TIMES a short while back, which goes some way to explaining this absence. A motion has been put before The Academy that sequel scores should not be eligible since they are in varying degrees extensions of existing musical material. The contention is over them qualifying as “Original.” This motion has been postponed until next year, but in even being suggested, it naturally has to have influenced the thinking behind much of the voting.
It would be fascinating to learn how seriously sequel scores are deemed to be a threat to the category. Was CHAMBER OF SECRETS or ATTACK OF THE CLONES really likely to see a nomination over Williams’ CATCH ME IF YOU CAN? Just which sequels in recent years have ruffled someone’s feathers? The last sequel to be nominated was INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE in 1990, and the only one to win was THE GODFATHER PART II in 1975.
What are they afraid of in the year ahead? BAD BOYS 2? FREDDY VS. JASON? No, it seems to me that Howard Shore was quite right to have had an appeal on stand-by. Someone at The Academy is only too well aware that the Score category is subject to being a popularity contest more often than not (hello, THE FULL MONTY). The category has undergone endless revision over the years to muscle out trends of popularity voting, such as splitting into both Dramatic Score and Musical or Comedy Score. So what’s going on here is the idea of THE LORD OF THE RINGS being a guaranteed best-seller across three consecutive years, isn’t something The Academy wants to see reflected in three years of gong-giving.
And I think that sucks.
The nominations for the year are as follows:
ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN - John Williams
- A change of pace for the guy, but not the most dazzling work. Certainly not amongst the 41 other nominations he’s had!
FAR FROM HEAVEN - Elmer Bernstein
- It seems Bernstein is a shoo-in on account of having been overlooked for too long. This is of course another of those widely known but seldom acknowledged voting trends. Charming as the score is, I disapprove of that being the reason for awarding the guy.
FRIDA - Elliot Goldenthal
- A little Mexican spice from Goldenthal was an enjoyable change of pace. Again, I don’t feel it’s his most dazzling work. MICHAEL COLLINS was a far more deserving score in 1997, certainly over THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Two years before that, his INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE easily had my vote over THE LION KING.
THE HOURS - Philip Glass
- Suddenly Glass is rather prolific in film music (6 movies in 1 year), so it was pretty likely one of them would be in the running. This is an interesting nomination. I agree with it more than if NAQOQATSI had come up, and certainly more than KUNDUN four years ago.
ROAD TO PERDITION - Thomas Newman
- This is the one I feel is the outside contender. This fifth nomination for Newman could be the one to acknowledge his growing popularity.
The Song category usually leaves me seething with despair. This year, the only hair-pulling I suffered was over GANGS OF NEW YORK, but I think I’ve said enough about my opinion of the use of music in this movie already. I’d prefer to see Goldenthal win for the song in FRIDA than for the score. I don’t think that’ll happen though. Is it going to be EMINEM strutting up to the microphone and having the show’s producers sweat over what he’ll say? Hmmm…
ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)
"Burn It Blue" from FRIDA
Music by Elliot Goldenthal, Lyric by Julie Taymor
"Father and Daughter" from THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE
Music and Lyric by Paul Simon
"The Hands That Built America" from GANGS OF NEW YORK
Music and Lyric by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen
"I Move On" from CHICAGO
Music by John Kander, Lyric by Fred Ebb
"Lose Yourself" from 8 MILE
Music by Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto, Lyric by Eminem
One of the fun aspects of watching the Oscars each year for me is seeing the Musical Director cope with the winners’ speeches. It’s no regular conducting gig for a composer, and must be a little weird if they’re nominated too. I did have to wonder last year if John Williams knew beforehand that he wasn’t going to win with A.I. or HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. This year it’s back to Bill Conti, waving the baton for the 16th time. He won in 1984 for THE RIGHT STUFF, and I guess The Academy knows they don’t have too much to worry about in a conflict of interest situation since he doesn’t seem to be doing anything else these days.
The other fun aspect is listening for what clips of film music get dotted about the show, usually with wild inappropriateness. Five years ago Jerry Goldsmith composed an original “Fanfare for Oscar” which seems to get buried under announcements or completely forgotten about altogether. Best of all is whatever’s used for the obituaries section. Here I’d rather they used nothing at all and just let the images speak for themselves. Still, the producers must know best right? They come up with those fantastic dance routines for the score extracts after all…
Actually this year will feature one very interesting use of film music, in that a couple of minutes from Mark McKenzie’s BLIZZARD will be used in a montage of best films. This movie won’t be out until the end of the year (when I’ll be talking to Mark to coincide with the album release), and to my knowledge this is an unprecedented application of film music to the event. Here’s what Mark had to say on how this came about:
“The producer faxed me a note to see if I had composed any new scores. I sent him BLIZZARD and he felt it would work well in the segment he was putting together to celebrate the 75th Academy Awards. There will be a montage of the best films over the past years and the first 2.5 minutes of music will be from BLIZZARD. It will be some of the first music over a billion people will hear Academy Awards night. I'm very happy about that!”
To see why I’m excited about that, head over to the composer’s site - www.markmckenzie.org to hear some extracts from this gorgeous piece.
NEWS NUGGETS:
There are a few composer announcements by which to update the look ahead to the Best of 2003 Column from a few weeks back.
THE CAT IN THE HAT is being scored by Marc Shaiman, an excellent choice for what will be Bo Welch’s feature directorial debut. Shaiman hasn’t played in this sort of genre since THE ADDAMS FAMILY movies, so this promises to be wicked fun. The movie is scheduled for 21 November.
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is to be Carter Burwell as I thought was most likely. He has worked on almost everything the Coen Brothers have done after all. Expect the unexpected come 1 October.
JERSEY GIRL now has a musical name, and it’s Jim L. Venable. This reunites him with Kevin Smith a third time after JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK and the CLERKS cartoon. I’ll be talking to Jim in the near future about the project, which is now set for release 7 November.
One more thing to mention is that Mark Mancina isn’t doing LARA CROFT AND THE CRADLE OF LIFE: TOMB RAIDER 2 after BAD BOYS 2 (Craig Armstrong has the gig), but IS doing HAUNTED MANSION later in the year. I wonder what daft name that’ll get expanded to so as to differentiate from the Disney ride (now we’re getting PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN: CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL)?
COMPETITION NEWS:
Winners of the signed copies of THEY by Elia Cmiral are Rupert Lally and muskyboy2.
This time I have 3 copies of the FABtastic new THUNDERBIRDS album by Barry Gray to offer, courtesy of the sweet-smelling souls at Silva Screen Records. To be in with a chance of winning, drop me a line to say who would be the ideal composer for a THUNDERBIRDS movie (hey – they’ll make it one day!), and why…
An extended Anniversaries section this time due to the delay in this Column coming along:
We celebrate the following Birthdays:
Laurie Johnson (DR. STRANGELOVE / FIRST MEN IN THE MOON)
- Born 7 February 1927, Hampstead, England, UK.
John Williams (STAR WARS / INDIANA JONES / E.T. / SUPERMAN – need me to go on?)
- Born 8 February 1932, New York, New York.
Jerry Goldsmith (STAR TREK / THE MUMMY / ALIEN / SUPERGIRL – ditto…)
- Born 10 February 1929, Los Angeles, California.
Gerald Fried (THE KILLING / PATHS OF GLORY)
- Born 13 February 1928, New York, New York.
John Corigliano (ALTERED STATES / THE RED VIOLIN)
- Born 16 February 1938, New York, New York.
Michel Legrand (THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR / ICE STATION ZEBRA (Just announced as coming to CD from the Film Score Monthly label http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/) / PRÊT-À-PORTER)
- Born 24 February 1932, Paris, France.
Robert Folk (POLICE ACADEMY / TOY SOLDIERS)
- Born 5 March 1949, New York, New York.
Bruce Broughton (SILVERADO / LOST IN SPACE)
- Born 8 March 1945, Los Angeles, California.
Brad Fiedel (THE TERMINATOR / TRUE LIES)
- Born 10 March 1951, New York, New York.
David Newman(BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE / GALAXY QUEST)
- Born 11 March 1954, Los Angeles, California.
We also commiserate the anniversaries of the deaths of:
Benjamin Frankel (THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT / BATTLE OF THE BULGE)
- Born 31 January 1906, London, England, UK.
- Died 12 February 1973, London, England, UK.
Jerry Fielding (THE WILD BUNCH / ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ)
- Born 17 June 1922, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Died 17 February 1980, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Alfred Newman (THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME / THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD / AIRPORT)
- Born 17 March 1901, New Haven, Connecticut.
- Died 17 February 1970, Hollywood, California.
Tôru Takemitsu (EMPIRE OF PASSION / RAN)
- Born 8 October 1930, Tokyo, Japan
- Died 20 February 1996, Tokyo, Japan
Sergei Prokofiev (ALEXANDER NEVSKY / IVAN THE TERRIBLE)
- Born 23 April 1891, Sontsovka, Russia.
- Died 5 March 1953, Moscow, Russia.
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