FILM MUSIC MUSINGS

 

Here is the  feature on this blog that is akin to the You Tube Film Music Cue of the Day, in that it deals, once again, with one of the great passions of my life:  FILM MUSIC.

I have a huge document called My Top Scores List in which I have picked the Top 5 Film Scores for each year since 1980 along with some commentary on my choices.

You can imagine that by now the list is fairly long and contains a lot of info that I think is blog-worthy so I'm going to start publishing excerpts from the list right here on my blog.

So,

without further ado

Here is Film Music Musings

 

What a year 2004 was!!!

Not only was there great film music that year but it also featured three movies that were IMO the best of the decade in The Passion of the Christ, The Phantom of the Opera, and Alexander.

I also greatly enjoyed National Treasure that year as it was kind of an American Da Vinci Code and I also thought Troy was a good movie that year.

All in all a very good year for movies and movie music.

 

2004

The Passion of the Christ – John Debney

Troy – James Horner

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – Edward Shearmur

National Treasure – Trevor Rabin

Alexander – Vangelis

 

2004. What a year for scores! This will go down as one of the best years for film scores of all time. It is certainly the greatest year so far this decade. However, it was basically a year of two films, one at the beginning of the year and one at the end. The year began with the powerhouse of a film from Mel Gibson called The Passion of the Christ with music by John Debney. What? Wait a minute, John Debney? The guy that wrote Bruce Almighty last year? Yes, that John Debney. Debney comes out of nowhere with the score of his life for the movie event of the year. This score is majestic with just the right touch of authenticity that mixes into the grand whole to make a satisfying and enriching musical listening experience. It enhances the film and supports the film exactly the way good film music is supposed to do. This one will go on the best of the decade list. The only word I can give it is awesome. The next score on the list is by one of the big three (although this year saw the sad passing of one of the big three, Jerry Goldsmith). James Horner steps in to save a movie and composes a great score in just two weeks. The score to Troy replaced Gabriel Yared’s hopelessly inadequate score (that strangely enough, many people have hailed as a masterpiece, not me) and replaced it with one of Horner’s best efforts and his first score to appear in the Top Five since 2001. This score features lots of themes and big orchestration. It is just the kind of score that I love to hear for this kind of epic sword and sandal movie. The next score is by Edward Shearmur who is quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s best composers even if the movies he serves aren’t all that great. A case in point is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. This is a wonderfully big orchestral score (I nearly jumped up and cheered after the opening orchestral introductory main titles) with a touch of Golden Age sympathy. Now the movie was a complete mess but the score seemed to overshadow its failures and was the best thing about it. Likewise the same can be said of Oliver Stone’s Alexander score by Vangelis. Vangelis’ score is definitely the best thing about the movie and it seemed that Vangelis really loved this movie because he scored it with some of the biggest and inspiring moments of the year in film music. For a scene of young Alexander riding a horse Vangelis scores an inspiring cue that is rapturous. He loved this movie and in turn I love the score that he gave the movie. Now we come to the most surprising and perhaps troublesome score on the list and that is Trevor Rabin’s score for National Treasure. I loved this movie!! It was one of my favorite movies of the year and the score is all Media Ventures. So, how can I put it on the list? Perhaps my love of the movie is overwhelming my better judgement but I think this is a fine score that actually has cohesion (which a lot of modern electronic/orchestral/Media Ventures scores seem to lack). To me, this is what Indiana Jones would sound like if it wasn’t a period movie. And this score has led me on an appreciation tour of the Media Ventures world, that I have up to this time ignored, which is a good thing to broaden my horizons. This score featured a moving melody for the treasure and the Gates family and some good electronic inspired action music. (I compare it to The Rock which also starred Nicolas Cage but was a mismash of crashing sounds and thematic emptiness) What a year!!! The best of the decade, so great that I had to come up with a Next Ten List just to encompass the year. But the other movie that rounded out this year was the film adaption of:

The Phantom of the Opera – Andrew Lloyd Webber

What can I say about this movie? It was absolutely brilliant in it conception and outstanding in its execution. The music of this musical is enchantingly rich and magically seductive as is the title character. Joel Schumacher has redeemed himself in my eyes with this everlasting movie. It is the best movie of the year and I hope it goes on to win the Academy Award because it richly deserves it. I love the “take” on the Phantom and Christine is absolutely divine in this movie. It simply hits all the right notes and elevates the play into the realm of great cinematic art. I can’t say enough about it, the best movie of the year! 

The Next Ten

King Arthur – Hans Zimmer

SpiderMan 2 – Danny Elfman

Van Helsing – Alan Silvestri

Hidalgo – James Newton Howard

The Punisher – Carlo Siliotto

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – John Williams

The Alamo – Carter Burwell

Alien vs. Predator – Harold Kloser

The Village – James Newton Howard

Hero – Tan Dun

This year was such an incredible year that for much of it I thought I would do a Top Fifteen list instead of just a Top Five. Instead I decided to do a Next Ten list featuring all the scores that I thought were worthy but not quite Top Five material. First the big composers each contributed a score that was great: Zimmer, Williams, Elfman, Silvestri and Newton Howard gave us two. All these scores above were either on the list at one time or were early favorites to be on the list. However I would like to talk of some of the newer composers that wrote compelling scores this year. Starting with an Italian newcomer Carlo Siliotto who wrote a haunting score for Marvel’s action movie The Punisher with a main theme that is as memorable as it is moving. Moving on to Carter Burwell, a journeyman composer who came up with his finest work for the disastrous (literally) movie version of The Alamo. Harold Kloser contributed his Alien vs. Predator score for the best action movie of the year which had an impossible legacy to uphold but did it in its own way. And finally a score for the most beautifully shot movie I’ve ever seen, Hero from Zhang Zimou which featured a score by Tan Dun who took the best parts of his Academy Award winning Crouching Tiger score and gave us a score of equal power and sophistication. All these scores have something special in them and contributed to the greatest year of film music in recent memory.

Award Season Note:

The Award winners this year were, once again, a disappointment to me. The Golden Globe winner was Howard Shore’s score for Martin Scorcese’s The Aviator about the aviation, film and women exploits of Howard Hughes. The score is actually not half bad. It is a modern contrapuntal affair with a lot of dissonance and artistry. But, it is Martin Scorcese who can’t score a picture to save his life. He took Shore’s score and bastardized it in the film, merging it with period pieces and desecrating the work that Shore had accomplished. Scorcese is a disaster as a film-maker and his worst sin is in the scoring of his pictures. Terrible.

The Academy Award winner turned out to be Jan AP Kascmarik Finding Neverland score. This year the Academy disqualified many scores that could have ruined the category such as Shore’s Aviator and Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (the eventual Best Picture Winner). It was a horse-race between Debney’s Passion of the Christ and Kascmarik’s score and the Academy went with the score tied to the Best Picture nominee Finding Neverland. Disappointing . Neverland is a nice little score but it is far too undistinguished and bland. (I picked twenty great scores this year and Neverland didn’t even make that cut, that should tell you something). Neverland is fairly bland in my opinion and when you consider James Newton Howard’s adventuresome score last year for the live action Peter Pan it is a shame that the Academy chose this score.

So, the awards are once again a disappointment. I watch them every year hoping that they will get it right but they only really do every once or twice a decade or so. So, this year is a wash but hope springs eternal for next year…

WRESTLETALK

 

 

I just finished reading Dusty Rhodes' autobiography (pictured above) and it was a pretty good read (not the best wresting autobiography I've read but one well worth reading) and it got me thinking about what might have been in wrestling history.

Back in 1987, Dusty was the head booker for the remnant of the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) based out of the Carolinas under the ownership of Jim Crockett Promotions known as World Championship Wrestling (WCW).  They were the main competition to Vince McMahon's WWF (World Wrestling Federation) and both promotions were riding high on the rising tide of popularity that wrestling was experiencing at the time.  

In fact, it was in 1987 that I began watching wrestling and I really liked both federations with a slight edge going to WCW over the more-cartooney WWF (but my favorite wrestler, along with everyone else was Hulk Hogan).  WCW had the better wrestling and since it was a more Southern based company and style of wrestling, I gravitated more to it.

As I said above, Dusty was the head booker for WCW, which means he was the match-maker and in charge of all the storylines of all the wrestlers.  Basically, he was the boss and the creative force behind WCW.

In late 1986, Ric Flair was the WCW World Heavyweight Champion and a creative calamity and personal tragedy had occurred in WCW when Magnum T.A. (Terry Allen) had had a career-ending, life-threatening car accident.  Magnum was booked (meaning it was planned) to defeat Ric Flair for the World title at Starrcade 86 in November 1986.  Magnum was a handsome, charismatic, and talented wrestler (he looked a lot like Tom Selleck, hence the Magnum name) and it was thought that he was the best wrestler to challenge the popularity of Hulk Hogan (who was the WWF World Champion).  However, life intervened and all those plans had to be shelved permanently when Magnum was hurt and subsequently had to retire from wrestling.

So, the thinking was to stick with Flair as champion and make him even more of a heel (a bad-guy wrestler) than he was before.  Flair became one of The Four Horsemen (a bad-guy faction of four wrestlers who then went on to dominate most of the titles of WCW with Flair as the World Champion).  Flair was on something of a roll as he had just come off of being voted Pro Wrestling Illustrated Wrestler of the Year for 1984, 1985, and 1986 (the first wrestler in history to win three Wrestler of the Year awards, much less three in a row).  The thinking was that Flair would be the direct opposite of Hogan positioning WCW as the opposite of the WWF.  The flaw in that thinking was that Hogan was the most popular wrestler up to that time and maybe of all time and WCW had no one to battle that popularity.  The hope was that the superior wrestling product of WCW would trump the glitz and merchandizing of the WWF.

That brings us to 1987.

In 1987, the WWF presented Wrestlemania III with a main event of Hulk Hogan defending the World title over Andre the Giant.  It was the biggest event and match of all time (up to that time) and a huge success.

WCW had no answer.  

The only thing they could come up with was to have a temporary champion defeat Flair for the World title and then have Flair regain the title at Starrcade 87 in November.  The only problem with that is that no one was rooting for Flair to win the title back due to his heel status and WCW (with Dusty calling the shots) had Flair win the title clean (no cheating) at Starrcade which also didn't contribute to his heel status.  All it did was confuse the fans by making them want to root for Flair which was contrary to the business model that WCW had laid out over the previous couple of years for Flair and the company against the WWF.

So, lets play what-if for a moment.

It has always been my opinion that WCW stuck with Flair too long (he dominated the World title picture until 1991 when he left the company for the WWF).  Dusty could have ended it right there in 1987 and gone a different direction which is what I'm about to propose.

In 1987, there was a young wrestler named Barry Windham.  He was a tall blonde Texan with tons of wrestling ability (and the son of legendary territorial wrestler, Black Jack Mulligan who was one of Dusty's greatest foes).  Barry wasn't the most charismatic wrestler in the world but he had some great matches with Flair in 1986 and 1987 and would have been a good choice to move the title too at Starrcade 87.  Then in 1988 they could have proceeded to have up-and-coming Lex Luger (who was a member of The Four Horsemen and a Hogan-like power wrestler) challenge Barry for the belt (they could have even switched the places of Barry and Lex having Lex leave the Horsemen and Barry join, which actually did happen but Barry wasn't the World Champion and never achieved that title remaining one of the great underachievers in wrestling history).  In short, it would have been a move to a newer generation of wrestlers.

Well, woulda-shoulda-coulda...

In reality (and history), WCW didn't move to a newer generation but held on to Flair as champion and by 1989 the company was bankrupt, Dusty was fired, and WCW was sold to Ted Turner and continued on till 2001 when WCW was finally bought out by Vince McMahon and shut down permanently and a great chapter of wrestling history was closed forever.

 

 

YOU TUBE FILM MUSIC CUE OF THE DAY

 

This feature on my blog showcases one of my great loves and personal hobbies:

FILM MUSIC.

I am a passionate fan of film music and my collection of film music is vast but I want to combine that with a visual aspect (which film music should be aligned too) so I'm going to use You Tube to accomplish this goal.

I will search through You Tube and find videos that feature film music and embed those videos on this blog.

So, I've been doing alot of thinking lately about sequels.  Ever since that Empire Magazine movie poll of the Top 301 Movies of All Time and they named The Empire Strikes Back as the #1 movie which completely shocked me.
For the full post go here:  http://mattstarr28.blogspot.com/2014/08/empire-magazine-strikes-back-ok-here.html
The other day, I caught Rocky III on TV and I realized what a really good movie it is and it got me once again thinking about sequels and if they can stand alone without someone seeing the prior films in the series (which you can't with Empire Strikes Back, you must see Star Wars first to understand Empire, otherwise you would be completely lost).
And I have to say, Rocky III could be one of the best examples of a sequel that could stand on its own.
I remember that Rocky III was the first Rocky movie I saw and I saw it in the theatres when it came out in 1982.  I had not seen the other movies but I remember that I wasn't confused because everything you need to know, all the essential information, is presented so that you don't have to see the other movies to enjoy and follow Rocky III.  Now, of course, you may miss some of the emotional impact of the story arc of Apollo Creed training Rocky if you haven't seen their past but that's also explained as the movie goes along.
Rocky III may be the best of the Rocky movies and it was definitely my favorite until Rocky Balboa of 2006 (which IMO was the best movie of that year and one of the best of the decade)
I also realized the great music by Bill Conti that I often overlook as one of the great scores of the 70s and 80s, so for the YouTube Film Music Cue today, I give you the training montage from Rocky III, one of the great inspirational moments in film history from a great movie of the 1980s.

 

A couple of footnotes to Rocky III:

Rocky III was also the first time I saw Hulk Hogan and any professional wrestling and I was intrigued but that curiosity didn't bloom until 1987 when I started watching wrestling, an interest that remains to this day.

Also, the other day I caught the 2nd James Bond movie, From Russia With Love and thinking once more about sequels, I realized that the James Bond movies aren't really sequels at all.  They are movies in a series but they are not sequels because you don't have to see any previous James Bond movie to enjoy any of the others (that is until Quantum of Solace which follows directly from Casino Royale and is a sequel, maybe that's why Quantum is unequivocally the worst Bond movie of all time, they were trying to make a Bond sequel which doesn't work for James Bond movies).  

Sequels vs. Series.  It would make an interesting film study.

 

TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

If you got to know me a little, you would find out that I'm one of the few regular people that is on Twitter.

One thing that I like about Twitter is that you can get sent all kinds of interesting and funny and amazing pics, so I'm going to be posting those pics that I find interesting or funny or amazing.

So

without futher ado here is the

TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

 

NOW THIS IS A REFRIGERATOR!!!

 

 

 

CHECK OUT MY NEW VIDEO

 

THE PRESIDENT'S SONG

Sung to Yankee Doodle

All the names of the Presidents of the U.S. in order with a little commentary and historical facts along the way.

Pretty cool, huh?

TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

If you got to know me a little, you would find out that I'm one of the few regular people that is on Twitter.

One thing that I like about Twitter is that you can get sent all kinds of interesting and funny and amazing pics, so I'm going to be posting those pics that I find interesting or funny or amazing.

So

without futher ado here is the

TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

 

FALLING WATER FROM ABOVE

 

 

 TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

If you got to know me a little, you would find out that I'm one of the few regular people that is on Twitter.

One thing that I like about Twitter is that you can get sent all kinds of interesting and funny and amazing pics, so I'm going to be posting those pics that I find interesting or funny or amazing.

So

without futher ado here is the

TWITTER PIC OF THE DAY

 

The saying goes that "Money Can't Buy You Happiness!"

But it sure could buy you a long driveway to a big house!