The return of Simon Rattle

…to the film scoring world, that is. All these years after his first (and only) foray into film music — his brilliant conducting job of Doyle’s Henry V, with the CBSO — it seems Rattle has embarked on a new scoring project, this time with the Berlin Philharmonic, for Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Although he may seem like an unorthodox choice for someone of Rattle’s caliber, Tykwer is a director (actually, he’s a director-composer) who’s wonderfully sensitive to film music and has a great dramatic sense. (Run Lola Run was one of the most enjoyable and listenable electronic scores in recent years.) I can certainly understand why Rattle was interested in working with him. I heard a bit of Perfume on SS.com the other day and I just might pick up the CD.

Basil Poledouris, 1945-2006

Terrible news today… we’ve lost another of the genuinely talented. Basil Poledouris, dead at 61, of cancer. Unbelievable.

He’ll always be known for Conan the Barbarian and his work on macho John Milius movies, but he was a really brilliant and well-rounded and quality composer (e.g. Lonesome Dove, Wind). If there was ever such a thing as the “Bronze Age” of film scoring, he has to be considered one of its very best artists, one of the ones with the most integrity and “voice.” His absence from the scoring scene in recent years was an unhappy thing.

A real class act, and a real loss.

Is Bollywood music going mainstream?

First, an explanation of this post’s title. By “mainstream” I don’t mean “mainstream in real life,” but rather “mainstream in the soundtrack fan world” — which, it goes without saying, is not “mainstream” at all.

While nobody yet on the FSM forum would be caught dead talking about A.R. Rahman, that doesn’t mean the answer to my question is “no.” (Especially since the FSM crowd can be so fusty.) Because I notice that on StreamingSoundtracks.com, Bollywood film music seems to be getting requested more and more. The usual gang at SS.com, who have very wide-ranging tastes, might just be seeking novelty, but when a new Bolly album gets added to the playlist, they seem to descend upon it very enthusiastically. And it’s not just the instrumental music they seem to like playing.

I also noticed the other day that you can get more Bollywood soundtracks on iTunes, where just a few months ago they couldn’t be found. Dil Chahta Hai, Swades and Musafir are now available (although, oddly, they do not have the latest, Aishwarya Rai version of Devdas, only music from a prior film version).

No film industry has been better at taking Western film conventions and making them completely their own like the Indian film industry has, and that includes their very unique music-scape. My favorite Bollywood movie isn’t a very adventurous choice (and they are very much an acquired taste and I haven’t seen very many of them) — Dil Chahta Hai — but it sure has a lot of great songs.

GoldenScores

It’s about time for a site like GoldenScores; all of the good reviews of the oldies, none of the boring press releases or interviews with [LA-Based A-List Composer's Protege of the Month].   Not that I mind those interviews, but it seems the same ones, with the same people, are on Every.  Single.  Site.

Waking Life

I think most people would either love Richard Linklater’s Waking Life or hate it. It is a rotoscope animation of a bunch of (real-life) characters from the Austin, Texas area spouting theories on life, the universe and everything, loosely bound by something resembling a plot. I can’t remember why I rented this movie, but I wound up merely liking it, though especially liking the chamber-jazz-tango score by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra. (The film actually includes an animated scene of a rehearsal for the score recording session! Weird.) The music is like an Americanized, less precious version of the score for Amelie. Not the kind of music I would have thought I’d go for, but my musical subconscious is full of surprises. Or maybe I am just dreaming that I like it.

Classic Notes in the Dark: Awards Season

(This is a repost/rescue of an old post from the previous incarnation of this blog. Since it’s getting to be that time of year again.)

It’s awards season again. Time for the different film music awards… and their agendas.

Is there such a thing as a really “real” film score award? One which is really about the best score (and best-scored film) of the year, the most outstanding work by dedicated career composers, and suchlike? If there is one, most would agree that the Oscars probably ain’t it. The Oscar film score category has a long and notorious history, which I won’t attempt to describe. The only question really answered by the Academy in its score nominations is, How Shall We Reward This Studio With One More Nomination? Unless, of course, the composer is Alan Menken. (It seems like a very long time ago now that Alan Menken was the bane of all score fans come Oscar time. How times change.)

For decades, the only alternative to the Academy Awards for annual recognition of scoring in this country (in the mainstream film community, that is, not ASCAP) has been the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Since 1976, the LAFCA has given out Best Music awards — as well as a “runner-up” award — to career film composers (Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Howard Shore, Elliot Goldenthal, to name a few), to slumming concert composers (Phillip Glass, Toru Takemitsu), to dabblers (Carmine Coppola), as well as to flavors of the month (Giorgio Moroder, Tan Dun, and James Horner and the Busboys). And in one astonishing run during the early ’90s, they gave an unprecedented three awards to Zbigniew Preisner — for his work on seven films. (I guess that makes Preisner the Alan Menken of the LAFCA…)

Because it’s not as if the LAFCA doesn’t play favorites, or have an agenda. But the awards have been given out long enough for the agenda to have changed. It appears that during the early years of the awards, during the late Seventies, that the awards reflected more closely the tastes, or the tastelessness, of the Academy: the winners included John Williams for Star Wars, Carmine Coppola for The Black Stallion, Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express, and Bernard Herrmann for Taxi Driver. During the 1980s, however, the LAFCA got adventurous with their music awards, citing composers and scores that Oscar wouldn’t have touched — Glass for Koyaanisqatsi, Ry Cooder for The Long Riders, Bill Lee for Do the Right Thing.

By the time the ’90s rolled around, the LAFCA’s agenda was pretty clear, at least where film music was concerned: anti-Hollywood, anti-blockbuster, and even anti-Western. Orchestral scores were out; ethnic and exotic (or just plain weird, in the case of Howard Shore’s Ed Wood) were in. So it was a great decade for Ryuichi Sakamoto (who won twice, for The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky), Phillip Glass (Kundun), Patrick Doyle (A Little Princess) and Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). And, of course, Zbigniew Preisner.

But LAFCA isn’t completely elitist; for example, the surprising runner-up for Best Music in 1997 was none other than Horner’s Titanic. In 2001, Howard Shore received his second LAFCA for The Lord of the Rings. It’s too early to tell whether this selection reflects a vote against Hollywood (i.e., for Peter Jackson more than for Shore) or for the Big Orchestral Score. In any case, I don’t believe that even an “alternative” annual film awards such as LAFCA are immune from using the score award to further the recognition of a film or director, or overall political mindset, rather than of scoring work itself. (By the way, check out this very revealing expose of the National Board of Review, which should give you an idea of the internal politics of the film awards industry. Somebody Talked!)

Sir Malcolm Arnold, R.I.P.

After 2004’s annus horribilis in which the film music world lost three greats (Goldsmith, Bernstein and Raksin), Arnold’s passing probably isn’t hugely newsworthy since he wasn’t working at all and apparently had senile dementia. But he certainly has to be one of the last, if not the last, of the great British film composers. Best known for Bridge on the River Kwai (although he wrote everything but the famous Col. Bogey March), but also for things like Inn of the Sixth Happiness and The Heroes of Telemark. And concert music, of course, as all British composers of his generation wrote.

The sad thing is that I doubt many fans will pause long enough from their heated conversations over the next CD box set release of [insert obscure film by major composer here] to notice the end of the era he represented. This is my cue to get my dismay about this sort of thing off my chest.

First, for the uninitiated: film music fandom is a really small world. Someone once estimated (with the help of sales figures from specialty labels) that there’s a core group of no more than 5,000 people worldwide, from Pakistan to Argentina to the U.S.A. (Six of whom, as the joke used to go, are women – but that’s not true any more.) It’s really one of the only music appreciation communities that is so small and so un-commercialized, that sometimes in order to join a good conversation or read a good magazine article, you need to be able to get by in a language other than English sometimes (and thank God for the Altavista translator…)

It used to be uncommercialized, and that’s the sad thing. When I got into it about 15 years ago, it was very much a hobbyist/collector thing, but people had a passion for talking about aesthetics and the mysteries of the industry and the old Hollywood stories, and of course, the music and the films. It was the sort of community where people made tapes for each other, and where you could trade an unpublished interview about Bernard Herrmann for a CD of music by Herrmann. I left the scene for about 5 years or so and when I returned, I honestly can’t much recognize “the place.” What happened was that a lot of unreleased music got licensed out to various labels, finally after being buried under LA freeways or whatever they used to do with the old masters; and boom, suddenly overnight everything has become about releases. Buying releases, planning releases, pestering the labels for hints about their next releases, bragging about the umpteen releases you just bought. Everything seems label-driven now, rather than driven by interest and curiosity about this strange and bewitching art form. It’s frightfully boring and incredibly sad. What happened to the music, man, the music?

Then again, I will never understand why some people have this driving need to have collections of stuff. 1000 CD’s you’re never going to listen to. Crazy.

But anyhow – farewell, Sir Malcolm. One more pip-pip has gone out of the music world’s cheery-o.