After a longer break, another classic score and another one of my all-time favourite movies: “RoboCop” (1987). Especially when watching the remake, you can see how sophisticated and visionary the original oneis. Directors such as Paul Verhoeven are highly missed these days. That might be one of the reasons that going to the movies is not so exciting any more like a few years ago. Or is this feeling more the result of me getting old and glorifying my childhood? The movie “RoboCop” is a 1987 American action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Kurtwood Smith and Ronny Cox. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan, in the near future, the movie features police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) as a cyborg police officer RoboCop. Neumeier explained that he first got the idea of RoboCop when he walked with a friend past a poster for “Blade Runner”. He asked about the plot and was told: "It's about a cop hunting robots". In 1981, Neumeier wrote the first treatment, about a robot police officer who was not a cyborg but in the development of the story, his computer mind became more similar to human. Three years later, Neumeier met music video director Michael Miner, who worked on a similar idea: a police officer who has been seriously injured and becomes a donor for an experiment to create a cybernetic police officer. For director Verhoeven, “RoboCop” marked the first major Hollywood production. He first threw the script into the bin, but his wife picked it up, read it more thoroughly and convinced her husband that the plot had more substance than he had originally assumed. The character of RoboCop was inspired by British comic book hero Judge Dredd (which played Sylvester Stallone later) as well as the Japanese toku series Space Sheriff Gavan and Marvel’s superhero Rom. I found an interview with Verhoeven about the movie: When I first saw the movie as a teenager, I was shocked about the violence. The murder of Murphy and the malfunction of the ED-209 were two of the most shocking scenes I watched so far. Extreme violence is a constant topic of Verhoeven's movies, perhaps a result of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Verhoeven explained that he wanted the violence to be "over the top" in an almost comical fashion. For me, this is not convincing. Even in the uncut director’s cut, the violence is not shown in a comical approach such as in “Tom & Jerry”. The scenes are just shocking, really disturbing and will stay in your mind forever after you saw them. Here is not the place to talk about the various aspects of the movie, the problems during the shooting, Verhoeven’s clever idea to postpone the shooting of Murphy’s death further and further, so he had more time for the shooting in general, and the controversy among the critics about this movie. I also do not care if critics are considering “RoboCop” as a fascist movie. When watching the movie for the first time, I remembered that the way how the news and commercials are moderated was even more shocking for me: With an always smiling attitude, perfectly tuned up and without any emotions, these people are the real robots and compare to them, you can see how human Murphy is! Here you can see a clip with them: Two final aspects I want to mention: Paul Verhoeven who is also a member of the Jesus Seminar and the only member who does not have a degree in biblical studies is known for his heavy use of Christian symbolism. In “RoboCop”, you can see various aspects that portraits Murphy as a Christ figure, for example, his horrific death and return (resurrection) and the showdown with Clarence Boddicker when RoboCop is walking through ankle-deep water and creates the illusion of him walking on water. The second interesting aspect is that Verhoeven chose to cast Kurtwood Smith and Ronny Cox against type by making them the bad guys. Cox was known for "nice-guy" or fatherly roles, and Smith had been cast as more intellectual characters. Smith’s outfit with the rimless glasses created a similarity to the picture of Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and the architect of the Holocaust. The music After “Flesh & Blood” (1985), a title that summarizes the main aspects in Verhoeven movies, composer Basil Poledouris worked the second time together with the Dutch director. They also do “Starship Troopers” in 1997 together. Interesting is that also Jerry Goldsmith worked on three films by Verhoeven, and if Jerry would not have died, they would have done more movies together. The soundtrack used both synthesized and orchestral music as a mirror to the man-versus-machine theme. The score alternates brass-heavy material, including the RoboCop theme and the ED-209's theme, with more lyrical pieces for strings, such as during RoboCop's homecoming scene. The electronics - many of which were designed and performed by British keyboard player Derek Austin - are working quite well within the orchestral score (performed by the Sinfonia of London Orchestra). Overall and because of the specific use of the electronics, the score seems now to be a little bit old-fashioned when you are listening to the soundtrack these days. Jerry Goldsmith’s scores are more timeless in their approach. I still just have the original Varese album from 1987 with 15 tracks but to really enjoy the score, you should buy the expanded Varese 2004 album or the complete Intrada Album from 2010 which is unfortunately out of print. The tracks I will mention are from the Varese album. Interesting for the score is that the main theme is not played during the Main Title. We will hear the main theme for RoboCop first when Murphy is dead and returns as RoboCop which makes sense. Therefore, the first time, we can hear the theme is in track 4 “Rock Shop”. The main theme, you can hear here: The RoboCop Theme and the “Terminator” theme are often compared, perhaps because on the theatrical trailer, the theme of “Terminator” was used. Brad Fiedel’s theme is stronger because it is simpler, Poledouris theme is more heroic and offers the better music. I also found a live performance of the theme here: The second track is the first action track of the score which underscores Murphy’s first patrol in the violent Metro West district. Murphy gets confronted with the notorious gang of Clarence Boddicker after they have committed an armed robbery and gets killed by them, reanimation failed, all underscored by Track 3 “Murphy’s Death”. After this action, we have with track 5 “Home”, the first quieter part of the score, a powerful scene when RoboCop visits his former home, one of the best tracks of the whole score. Listen especially to the beautiful part from 2.35”, this is really touching if hear this music in combination with the scene. Another track where this theme is played is track 7 “The Dream”, and then later combined with the RoboCop theme in the second part of the track. Further use of the theme is in Track 11 “Drive to Jones' Office” and in Track 15 “Robo Tips His Hat”. Here a clip to track 5: Track 6 unterscores the famous scene when RoboCop gets confronted with ED-209 who tries to kill him after Ronny Cox admitted his culpability in Morton's death and the reason for the Directive IV. The theme for ED-209 is a great musical expression of the fearful robot. Another track I want to mention is track “Betrayal” when RoboCop is confronted by the police after the just escaped ED-209. This is another scene where you can find Christian symbolism: When Murphy weakens after the constant fire on him, he lays down and crawls in a similar position like Jesus when he broke down carrying his cross. I really admire how Verhoeven was shooting this scene with the effect of lightening, like a big nightmare that came finally true. The last track is “Showdown” for the final confrontation with Boddicker and his gang. Overall good action music, I was disappointed that this track marks the closing of the album because I was missing some kind of End Credits with another use of the heroic RoboCop theme. Another reason to get a better and longer soundtrack album of this score. After his soundtrack for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Conan”, Basil Poledouris was able to create with “RoboCop” another outstanding score for a genre classic with a remarkable theme. This shows the qualities of this already forgotten composer. Time to discover Poledouris and his music again! If you compare Jerry Goldsmith’s score and Basil Poledouris’ scores to Paul Verhoeven’s movies, I prefer Jerry’s because of the better themes, the more dynamic action music and the overall better musical approach. Despite that, “RoboCop” is a classic and the theme timeless. Compare this theme to the themes the actual generation of composers are creating, and you clearly got an idea of the lack of quality of film music these days, but again, perhaps I am just glorifying my childhood… Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2019, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

As my first review for this year, I decided to start again with my favourite composer Jerry Goldsmith. Jerry would have been 90 years old on February 10 this year, and as you can read all over the internet, he is greatly missed. I chose a soundtrack which is perhaps not so well-known but unique in the typical usage of orchestra and electronics. Even though “Extreme Prejudice” is not one of my favourite soundtracks, I have two tracks that are my all-time favourite tracks by Jerry Goldsmith. The movie “Extreme Prejudice” is a 1987 American neo-western action film starring Nick Nolte, with a supporting cast including Michael Ironside, María Conchita Alonso, Rip Torn, William Forsythe, and Clancy Brown. Walter Hill directed the movie based on a screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Deric Washburn (he collaborated with Michael Cimino on “Silent Running” and “The Deer Hunter”) from a story by John Milius and Fred Rexer and was considered as an homage to “The Wild Bunch”, the famous 1969 epic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, with whom Hill worked on “The Getaway” (1972). “Extreme Prejudice” and “The Wild Bunch” are both ending with a massive gunfight in a Mexican border town. The title originates from "terminate with extreme prejudice," a phrase popularized by “Apocalypse Now”, also written by Milius. Here is the trailer. Goldsmith composed music for it but it was not used when Tri-Star executives cut their own trailer and did not use the original music anymore: Nick Nolte’s character is loosely based on the Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson. The movie was first to be directed by Milius in 1976 but when the director moved on, the project landed in the hands of Hill in 1982. Even Jonathan Demme was considered before Hill Carolco Pictures finally signed Hill to direct with Harry Kleiner to re-write the script. Kleiner wrote also “Bullitt” (1968), directed by Peter Yates, starring Steve McQueen. Hill and Nolte worked together on “48 hours” (1982) with Eddie Murphy giving his film debut. I saw the movie once in my life, as a teenager and just because Jerry Goldsmith composed the music. Overall, I did not like it. I could not get into the characters, the violence was over the top sometimes, and you could feel that the long production history and the complex cutting process did not result in a convincing movie in the end. Compare to the showdown of “The Wild Bunch”, the big shooting scene in “Extreme Prejudice” is not very well directed, and the continuity mistakes are a result of the constant cutting process in the end. The music I bought the Silva Screen Original CD when it came out and did not like the music because of the too heavily used electronics. What I even though immediately loved was the last track “A Deal”, this track is one of the best tracks Goldsmith ever composed, and the combination of electronics with the orchestra is just marvellous. This CD already offered “The Funeral”, a track Goldsmith composed for a scene that was deleted after the first two screenings. 2005 La-La Land Records released an expanded CD with 20 tracks and very informative liner notes. Even though this soundtrack is still not one of my favourites, I really began to like it, and “The Plan”, the original nearly 10 minutes track which was also on the first CD, became one of my all-time favourites. Walter Hills long-time collaborator Ry Cooder was not available during the post-production. Therefore, the director went to Goldsmith and when Cooder became available Hill asked him to contribute the source songs heard in the background. When Goldsmith composed this score, it was in a period when he used the electronics in a very experimental way. He composed with “Runaway” (1984, directed by Michael Crichton) his first only electronic score, with “Hoosiers – Best Shot” (1986, the basketball sports movie) one of his best orchestra-electronic scores, one of my favourite scores, and with “Warlock” (1989) a score which he orchestrated by himself in a unique way. “Extreme Prejudice” is a kind of combination of elements from famous earlier scores, for example, the solo trumpet from “First Blood” or the pan flutes from “Under Fire”. Here is the opening scene with the music. In the liner notes, Hill explained that Goldsmith wanted to do a “big orchestral session, but I told him that I wasn’t used to big orchestras on films I direct.” I do not understand this comment: If Hill was not used to a big orchestra, so why not just trust such a gifted composer and let him do this work? Remember Goldsmith just composed the music to “First Blood”, and this powerful score demonstrated how much the orchestra could support an action movie! Hill continued: “Jerry understood and reassured me that he wanted to do a lot of different stuff with the synthesisers and mix it with the orchestra – but not be too big.” It seems that “being not too big” was a constant fear of Hill for both the music and the movie. Perhaps someone who reads this could explain this to me. The score was recorded in Hungary, and rumours said that the orchestra was not up to Goldsmith’s standards like later the Munich Orchestra for “Total Recall”. The composer preferred to record his scores in London, and the National Philharmonic Orchestra became his standard such as the London Symphony Orchestra became the favourite one of John Williams. The score is composed of tracks with the orchestra in front, and synthesizer tracks with the electronics as the main instrument and the orchestra just adding some color into it. Track 6 “The Set Up” is one of these mixture tracks, and with “Dust” and “To Mexico” we have two fine musical interpretations of the feeling of loneliness. What I really like in “Extreme Prejudice” is the typical examples of building suspense. The main title called “Arrivals/Main Title” is a very good example. Most of the more orchestral tracks (e.g. track 13 “Identities”, track 14 “To Mexico”, track 15 “No Friendlies” and track 17 “They Don’t Care) are composed in this typical suspense style. With the expanded release, you can now listen to all the heavy electronic tracks which I am still not a big fan of. In the liner notes, Walter Hill explained that after listening to the original version of “The Plan”, he thought that this track was “too big” for the scene and asked Goldsmith to composer a smaller one. With tracks 9 to 11 - the new music for The Plan, The Bank (Part 1 -4) -, you can now listen to these electronic tracks that underscore the Bank Robbery. The synthesizer track “Fighting and Dying” underscores the music for the big showdown. I do not understand why Goldsmith composed such a piece of weak music for it. Maybe Hill ask him again to slow down because he thought that orchestral music might be too big? In the scene, the music is barely heard, so why not just skip the music in general? Compare this showdown with the famous shooting scene in “The Wild Bunch”, and you realized how bad “Extreme Prejudice” is and what a great director Sam Peckinpah was. Even after listening over and over to the pure electronic music of “Extreme Prejudices”, I still cannot get into them. Here is the shooting: What makes this score unique in another way is the very less thematic material. In track 4 “Cash” (one of the best tracks), we have something like a love theme, played as “First Blood” homage on a trumpet, but for a score of 64 minutes, this lack of theme music is astonishing. When I listen to this CD, I normally choose a few tracks, for example, the original version of “The Plan” and “A Deal/End Credits”. When I as a teenager put a nixed tape together with my favourite Goldsmith tracks, I had a sequence with “Hoosiers”, the main theme, the last track from “Leviathan”, then “A Deal” and the end titles of “Rent A Cop”. So, why do I consider “A Deal” as one of the best tracks Goldsmith composed? First, it is the very complex musical structure with orchestra and synthesisers, second the dramaturgical structure which reminds me of the last track of “Under Fire”, and third, it brings the thematic material which was spread out through the entire score in different tracks to a powerful ending. Here is the music: It is a funny observation in the end that Walter Hill asked Goldsmith to compose new music for the plan scene because he was afraid that the original music was too big. Perhaps he was afraid that the music is far better than his picture? Overall, it is interesting to observe that a lot of people still speaking about the music but not so many are talking about the movie which flopped. So, the music is now more famous than the film, and I am pretty sure that this was not the intention of the director. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2019, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

This week I will talk about “Henry V”. I was not able to watch “Thor” to discuss Patrick Doyle’s music because of the usual Christmas craziness, private issues and longer working hours. Also, I thought that the music for “Henry V” is a much nicer score for the Christmas days because of the fabulous “Non nobis, Domine”. Usually, I try to find a Christmas soundtrack but could not find anything special to recommend this year, perhaps James Horner’s “Grinch”? But this will be something for next year. The movie “Henry V” (1989) is the directional debut of Kenneth Branagh and also the first time, the director works with his favourite composer Patrick Doyle together. The film stars Branagh in the title role with Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Alec McCowen, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, and Christian Bale in supporting roles. Here is the trailer: The film received worldwide critical acclaim and has been widely considered one of the best Shakespeare film adaptations ever made. For her work on the film, Phyllis Dalton won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design and Kenneth Branagh, in his directorial debut, received Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Director. I was pretty impressed when I saw the movie for the first time. Compare to Laurence Olivier’s “Henry V” from 1944, Branagh’s movie is more realistic, the text of the play is heavily edited, and as a great idea, Branagh additionally used flashbacks using extracts from Henry IV in which Henry interacts with the character of “Falstaff”, who, in Shakespeare's Henry V, is never seen, merely announced to be deathly ill. The film also uses Falstaff's line "do not, when thou art King, hang a thief" from Henry IV but gives it to Bardolph, to highlight the poignancy when Henry later has Bardolph executed. If you imagine that the budget of the film was just $ 9 Mio., it is astonishing what Branagh has achieved. The music For Patrick Doyle, it was not only the first collaboration with Branagh, but it was also his first film score ever. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performed the score, conducted by Simon Rattle, and the soundtrack album features fifteen tracks with a running time just under an hour. Funny fact: Patrick Doyle also appeared in Henry V as Court (credited as Pat Doyle), who is the first soldier to begin singing "Non Nobis, Domine" following the conflict at Agincourt. Here is a live version: In the liner notes, Doyle explains that “music has been a part of my career”, but until he met Kenneth Branagh, he was principally an actor. He points out that Branagh was first a little worried to work with an inexperienced composer, but after he played some sketches, Branagh was convinced. Doyle explains further how Simon Rattle became involved, and the album has also some liner notes by Rattle. Branagh originally planned 50 minutes of music, but in the end, the film score grew up to 90 minutes. The director thought the film needed this amount to underscore the emotions, and therefore, Doyle composed the music like a musical mirror and explained that his approach was operatic. The album starts with the peaceful “Opening title” and brings us with track 2 “Henry V Theme” already some action music. This continues in track 3 “The Three Traitors” and track 4 “Now Lords, for France”. Between these more dramatic tracks, we have some quieter tracks such as track 5 “The Death of Falstaff” (I like especially the majestic horn part) and track 9 “Upon the King” with a very nice flute solo. Track 8 “The Death of Bardolph” is a sad and melodramatic track for one of the very touching moments of the movie. Tracks 6 “Once more unto the breach” and track 7 “The Threat to the Governor of Harfleur...” offers again more dramatic music. Here is Band of Brothers Speech before the battle, perhaps an inspiration for Mel Gibson's "Braveheart". Track 10 “St. Crispin’s Day” give us finally the music for the big battle scene. One reviewer of the score said this track works like a symphony. I do not agree with this, but the track has a clear dramaturgical structure that is very convincing. The track starts with the drums to announce what will come, then it slows down and builds up the tension again with the strings and the piano, at 5’40, we have a touching quieter part before the track erupts again with dramatic music. For a track with over 14 minutes, there is surprisingly not very much action music in it, it is overall a very powerful but also an intimate piece. The last two minutes are an instrumental version of the song “Non nobis, Domine”, a wonderful part in this track. In the liner notes, Kenneth Branagh explained that he wanted the score to be of “our time” and did not want authentically “medieval” sounds: “The score needed to be classically rich in tone but instantly accessible”. After listening to “The Battle of Agincourt”, you have a clear picture in mind what he meant. Track 11 “The Day Is Yours” is another example of the melodic, powerful but also intimate music, Branagh wanted to have. Without a doubt, track 12 “Non nobis, Domine” is the highlight of the score, no more words necessary for this astonishing piece of music! I found one live verion, recorded during the 15th World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony & Concert where Patrick Doyle was honoured. Belgian Dirk Brossé conducted. For the people who remember: Brossé conducted the last Jerry Goldsmith concert in the Barbican when Jerry was already to ill to come, and he also conducted the John Williams concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 October 2018 when John Williams was already in London but to ill to conduct. Track 13 “The Wooing of Katherine” is a melodic piece for one of the best scenes in the movie, and with track 14 “Let This Acceptance Take”, we have the last majestic track before the “End Title” with an even more powerful version of “Non nobis, Domine” closes the album. “Henry V” received Academy Award nominations for Branagh as Best Actor and Best Director and won the Best Costume Design. The film holds an amazing 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Patrick Doyle’s first-time film music score is a marvellous debut that ranks as one of the best soundtracks of this composer. It is perhaps also his most classical one in the style of composing which is obvious in “St Crispin’s Day”. The over-the-top attitude of scores such “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” you cannot find here, but the score has all the elements that you will find in the following scores of Patrick Doyle: wonderful melodies, action-packed tracks and his sense for lovely songs. In the liner notes, Branagh praised the composer: “What he produced surpassed my wildest expectations. A score of immense variation, power and melodic beauty, it as much as any other elements gives this film the chance of having a truly popular appeal. The music combines fearsome emotional guts with a magnetic “hummability”.” If you do not have this score, I highly recommend buying it, and during all the Christmas songs in the next days, the song “Non nobis, Domine” can provide you with a nice break but still enlightens your heart for these most special days of the year. Merry Christmas! Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

This week finally the review of Jerry Goldsmith’s “Fierce Creatures” (1997), a fabulous and unusual score in many ways and worth to discover again. The movie The huge success of “A Fish Called Wanda” (1988) caused a kind of problem. I guess the cast - John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin - had so much fun to do the movie that the idea of coming together again was obvious, but the plot of “Wanda” did not really allow a convincing sequel. So, the idea of a different movie sounds like a better approach. Cleese began writing the script in 1992 and shooting began on 15 May 1995. Here is the trailer: While not literally a sequel, “Fierce Creatures” can be considered as a spiritual successor, for example, again Jamie Lee Curtis falls in love with John Cleese, and Kevin Kline does not like this. The humour is not as good as in “Wanda”, sometimes it is really crappy, but John Cleese has some great scenes, e.g. when he tastes the blood of a visitor because he thinks her accident is fake, and Jamie Lee Curtis which looks pretty hot has some great scenes when looking at Cleese and gives him a very special and naughty smile, underscores by Goldsmith in “A Long Story”. When watching the movie, I really had trouble to understand why Cleese chose a zoo as the setting. I imagine any other setting would give the team better chances to show more wicked humour. Preview audiences expressed dissatisfaction with the ending, and a reshoot was scheduled. Director Robert Young was not able to do it, so Fred Schepisi with whom Cleese had been discussing a version of “Don Quixote” took over. Schepisi tried to take out the opening 15 minutes but then it was put back in, and, in Schepisi’s opinion, killed the movie. I would not be so harsh, but the movie is not a great one, except for some scenes and, of course, the music. Australian Schepisi worked with Goldsmith on a few movies such as “Mr Baseball” (1992, one of the most unusual Goldsmith’s scores of the 90s), “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993, a funny Tango score), and “I.Q.” (1994, a funny romantic comedy with Walter Matthau as Einstein and Meg Ryan and Tom Robbins. For this score Goldsmith used as a base the famous German song “Alle Voegel sind schon da”, and the score is great fun). The music “Fierce Creatures” is one of the few comedy scores by Goldsmith, and it is really a shame that he did not compose more music for comedies. Some scores such as “The Secret of NIMH” do have comic elements because of the musical Micky Mousing, but real comedy scores are very rare among Goldsmith’s works. The base of the score is a jazz theme, the “Willa’s Theme” for Jamie Lee Curtis character, which works also as the main theme, composed for piano, electric guitar and a quartet of strings. This track sets the tone for the score. The piano is the main instrument, underscored mostly by the strings, and some woodwinds. The orchestra is small, and this is a nice switch between the big orchestra works Goldsmith composed the years before and after. The CD consists of 13 tracks and runs nearly 30 min, a short but highly enjoyable score. With just 20 minutes music in the final film, some material was arranged and recorded by Goldsmith specifically to round out the album. If you consider the length of the score, then the variation and fun are quite amazing. Of course, the score does not have the quirky humour of “Gremlins 2” or “The Burbs”, but this approach would not have been suitable for the movie. The slightly and minimalistic approach for “Fierce Creatures” was absolutely perfect. The second track called “First Day” is a more lively track, with an electric guitar and more percussion, the jazz tone is more obvious here, and the woodwinds are more dominant, another highlight of the score and one of the most enjoyable. “Chores” is funny and the most varied track of the score. Goldsmith switches the tones between the score and sometimes even within a track. With “The Funeral”, we have a very emotional piece that seems quite unusual for a comedy score, the feeling of solitude by using the piano and the strings is stunning, and how Goldsmith then brings the clarinet in is a wonderful example of how gifted he as a composer was. Here is the track: The next track “Trained Seals” repeats the sad tone but then lights up to the faster “Under Control”, nearly an action track if you compare the rhythm with the other ones. After the shorter “Contact”, we have with “A Good Idea” again a faster track. I especially like the xylophone part here very much. “The Grave” focuses again on the woodwinds, before “A Long Story” underscores one of the best scenes. If you know this track and then watch the scene like I did, especially the last 20 seconds, you know what I mean. Here is the scene: With “You’re Fired”, we have the last track before the “End Credits”, a fast and funky track before “End Credits” brings all the material to a wonderful ending. “Fierce Creatures” is by far not as good as “A Fish Called Wanda”, overall it is a pretty average and sometimes boring movie if you consider the cast. Some scenes are quite nice, but the sense of humour is not very sophisticated and not so over the top as in “Wanda”, but we have to be glad that this movie exists because it gave us one of the few Jerry Goldsmith’s comedy scores and for me, one of his finest score in the 90s. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

Today just a short post and the reason why I did not post so much in the last months. I finally finished my book about 50 Best Soundtracks and added also the interview with Michael J. Lewis in this book. I rewrote all the reviews in this book, added more material and created a Kindle ebook version and also a paperback version. Happy to get your feedback and share our love for the Amazing World of Movie Music. Here is the link to the Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FC141NQ Here is the link to the paperback version: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1717705847 Happy reading and thanks for following!

Even though I still think the original trilogy will be the best Star Wars movies ever, I always look forward to a new one being released. It is astonishing how big the franchise has become, and I also think that the new Star Wars directors are creating better movies than George Lucas is with his own new films now. I really like John Powell’s score to this new Star Wars movie, and decided to put a review on my blog for this week because the soundtrack has some fabulous action tracks and is a perfect example how to bring the Star Wars music to a new generation of film music fans. The movie Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), based on the character Han Solo and directed by Ron Howard, is the second Star Wars anthology film following 2016’s Rogue One. I am starting to like these movies more than the “official” sequels. Rogue One was a very good war movie, while Solo is a good action movie with western elements and decent action scenes. The film stars Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, alongside Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover and Paul Bettany. George Lucas began the development in 2012 and asked Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay, which was completed by his son Jonathan after Kasdan was hired to write Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Kasdan is a fabulous writer and author of The Empire Strikes Back (with Leigh Brackett), Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, Return of the Jedi and Silverado, to mention just a few. Principal photography began in January 2017 under the direction of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The pair left the project in June after being fired over “creative differences”, and Ron Howard took over directing duties. With an estimated budget of at least $250 million, it is one of the most expensive films ever made and will need to gross $500 million to break even. On Wikipedia, there is more information about what these “creative differences” were. It was reported that the directors were fired after Kennedy and Kasdan disagreed with their shooting style. Lord and Miller believed they were hired to make a comedy film, while Lucasfilm was looking to only add “a comedic touch”. I have read that Disney considers Solo a flop. I think there are three reasons for this. First, the Han Solo actor Alden Ehrenreich is just not as cool an actor as Harrison Ford and even though he tries his best with a nice smile, his constant remarks of “that’ll be fun” or “no worries” are just annoying. George Lucas invented a large number of wonderful characters in Star Wars, but Solo might be his greatest achievement. Han Solo, possible the favourite character in the Star Wars universe, is a character everyone likes, considers as charming and can relate to despite him being a cynical pirate. And Ehrenreich? He is just the nice guy from the neighbourhood and a typical actor for today: nice, kind and, most of all, quite boring. Of course there will always be only one Harrison Ford, but perhaps you remember the bar scene from The Intern (2015). Anne Hathaway is going out with some of her colleagues and Robert De Niro is the intern. As the evening progresses, she gets drunk and then looks at her colleagues, typical hipsters, with frustration and complains: “How in one generation have men gone from guys like … Harrison Ford to…”, and Hathaway looks at her colleagues. That is exactly the problem with today’s generation of actors! The second issue with Solo in my opinion is the typical trend of being politically correct. In an interview, Lando actor Donald Glover said Lando is a pan-sexual character. “How can you not be pansexual in space?” Glover said. “There’s so many things to have sex with. I didn’t think that was that weird. He’s coming on to everybody. It just didn’t seem that weird to me because I feel like if you’re in space, it’s kind of like the door’s open ... this thing is literally a blob. Like, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ Who cares?” Glover’s remarks are slightly different from Kasdan’s own reasoning for announcing the character’s sexuality. Kasdan told Huffington Post he wanted to bring more LGBTQ representation into the Star Wars universe, and wished he pressed a little more to have that representation visible in Solo. “There’s a fluidity to Donald and Billy Dee’s sexuality. I mean, I would have loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie. I think it’s time, certainly, for that, and I love the fluidity ― sort of the spectrum of sexuality that Donald appeals to and that droids are a part of.” People who want to see a new Star Wars movie do not much care about politically correct topics, especially not about bringing more LGBTQ representation into the Star Wars universe. Star Wars is a fairy tale and, as Rogue One showed us, can also be a war story, but is has nothing to do with being politically correct or discussing whether a character should have sex with a machine such as L3. In my opinion, most people are tired of this trend of always being politically correct, and that might be the reason why the first Expendables with Sylvester Stallone and the old action actors from the 1980s was such a success: it was just good old-fashioned entertainment! I found a fan video about this aspect: A third reason may be its difficult production history. There was criticism that the directors were encouraging too much improvisation, which was believed to be “shifting the story off course” from the script. Lord and Miller also refused to compromise on certain scenes, such as filming a scene from fewer angles, thereby reducing the options available in editing. Finally, Howard took over and re-shot nearly 70% of the film. Even though these differences cannot be seen on screen, I feel this is not a typical Ron Howard movie. If you compare this movie with Ransom (1996), A Beautiful Mind (2001), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Frost/Nixon (2008) or Angels & Demons (2009), there is a lack of good storytelling and a sense that Howard was not involved in the project from the outset. Anyway I had fun; the action scenes in particular are brilliantly filmed. Now let’s talk about the music. The music In July 2017, John Powell was announced as the main composer of the score. John Williams composed and conducted the Han Solo theme on the CD called The Adventures of Han. Powell began writing the music in late 2017 and included Williams’s new theme a great deal in his score, as well as Williams’s music from previous films, most convincingly in the track Reminiscence Therapy, one of the best tracks on the CD. Powell, born in 1963, learnt the violin as a child before studying at London's Trinity College of Music. He later went into jazz and rock music. After leaving college, he composed music for commercials, which led to a job as an assistant to the composer Patrick Doyle on several film productions, including Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Powell was a member of Hans Zimmer’s music studio, Remote Control Productions, and has frequently collaborated with Harry Gregson-Williams and Zimmer himself. My first CD with Powell’s music was Antz (1998) and later I bought Chicken Run (2000), both highly enjoyable movies and scores. Powell was also responsible for the music for the Shrek movies, all with Gregson-Williams, and composed the music to John Woo’s action classic Face/Off (1997, his first major film score), Ivan Reitman’s mediocre SF action comedy Evolution (2001), Sylvester Stallone’s D-Tox Eye – See You (2002, for me the worst Stallone movie ever), Matt Damon’s The Bourne Identity (2002) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010, a very popular score), to name just a few. Even though I like Michael Giacchino as a composer and have already discussed two of his soundtracks in this book, I did not buy his music for Rogue One. While watching the movie, I just could not get into the music. With Powell’s music, it was different. I really liked his action tracks because they gave the movie the right drive, so I bought the CD and decided to discuss this music in my book here. In an interview on YouTube, John Powell explains the difficulties of composing a score like this these days. He said that John Williams is “harmonically incredible fluid, it is polyphonic music, and nobody is doing this anymore”. Most composers, he pointed out, are stuck now in the “keyboard player mode”, and in Powell’s opinion it is very hard to break out of this. He said the most important part was to get “flow”. Williams’s music is “always flowing forward; it is not just pulsing forward, like most of the score they have to do these days, it is flowing forward.” To get a better idea of what Powel means, I suggest you listen to Hans Zimmer’s action tracks from Gladiator and then to John Williams’s Star Wars action tracks or John Powell’s Solo, especially Reminiscence Therapy, and you will understand the difference in these two composing styles. The CD has a huge number of fabulous action tracks. One of the highlights is Corellia Chase. I particularly love the music from 0’47 (strings part), which is wonderfully composed. This track is typical of most of the action pieces because the busy brass section reminds you of John Williams, but Powell increased the percussion section to give the music a very modern touch. Another highlight is Flying with Chewie; the title says it all. Meet Han, the second track on the CD and the first original by Powell, is an epic track with sweeping strings and the typical special percussion arrangement that can be heard throughout the music. This fresh touch makes the CD so enjoyable! It is a short but epic track! My favourite track is Train Heist for the best action scene in the movie. The track starts slowly, before the action starts at 1’30. The following seconds of music, brass combined with the percussion, is great action music. In my opinion the horn section should be a little bit louder. The action continues with Marauders Arrive (another quieter moment in the middle of the track), before we have a song in a French chanson style with Chicken in the Pot. Is This Seat Taken? is good suspense (Star Wars theme for a few seconds). L3 & Millennium Falcon offer another example of just how perfectly Powell uses the various Star Wars themes in his score. The short Lando’s Closet gives us a lyrical love theme for Lando. The next two action tracks – Mine Mission and Break Out – are highly enjoyable and in the spirit of John Williams; even the brass section sounds familiar! As mentioned above, Reminiscence Therapy uses the Jedi theme even more effectively and some notes are copied from the music for the chase in the asteroid field from The Empire Strikes Back. After listening to this music, I think John Powell would be the perfect person to continue the Star Wars saga. These tracks are exactly the kind of music I missed when listening to Giacchino’s Rogue One! Into The Maw is the busiest action track of the score, with the orchestra on fire here! Testing Alliance is a nice balanced piece between all the busy action music. The last track called Dice & Roll is more of a musical joke with its very modern way of using the Jedi theme and brings the album to an end. Unfortunately, it lacks end credit music. John Powell’s Solo is so enjoyable that it will be very difficult for any other composer to compete with his soundtrack this year. I did not expect very much of the music when I was buying my ticket for Solo, but I felt greatly entertained by the movie and especially by the music. Well done, John Powell! Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

This week another classic score by Bernard Herrmann for one of the few comedies by Alfred Hitchcock. Even though I prefer Bernard Herrmann as conductor of his own music, I will discuss the album with the complete soundtrack, conducted by Joel McNeely, and performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The movie “The Trouble with Harry” is a 1955 American Technicolor black comedy film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay by John Michael Hayes was based on the 1949 novel by Jack Trevor Story. It starred Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, and Shirley MacLaine in her first film role. Here is the trailer: The plot takes place during a sun-filled autumn in the Vermont countryside and is about how four people of this small village are dealing with the dead body of Harry. The film is not really a murder mystery, it more a romantic comedy with thriller overtones and black humour. You can see Hitchcock’s genius in the bathroom scene in the last 10 minutes of the movie, one scene full of suspense and a great twist. The film is one of Hitchcock's few true comedies and has surprisingly some element of frank dialogue. One example of this is when John Forsythe's character Sam Marlow tells MacLaine's character that he would like to paint a nude portrait of her. The paintings of Marlowe were painted by American abstract expressionist artist John Ferren, who was present during principal photography in Vermont. He instructed John Forsythe in the correct painting technique for his on-screen work. Hitchcock was particularly interested in Ferren's work because of his vivid use of colour, which he thought would match the autumnal colours of New England. The music “The Trouble with Harry” is the first collaboration between Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock. In an interview for “The New York Times” on June 18, 1971, Hitchcock stated that the score was his favourite of all his films (Wikipedia, but I could not find any quote for this to check this statement). Very popular is a new arrangement of the highlights of this score, done by Herrmann, and called “A Portrait of Hitch”. I found a piano version of this suite: Joel McNeely’s album consists of 40 tracks, and a lot of them are not even running one minute. There is no break between the tracks, so it gets difficult to separate the tracks if you are not constantly looking at the track listing on the album. The “Overture” which can be considered as the main title features the main theme with the famous tuba motif for the dead body Harry. With the second track, we have the beautiful autumn theme for the Vermont village. From all soundtracks for Alfred Hitchcock movies, this score is the most lyrical one and offers one of the most beautiful music Herrmann ever composed. A good example is track 4 “The Captain”. One of my favourite tracks is track 8 “The Doctor”, Herrmann uses the string section for a beautiful motif for the doctor. This lovely theme is constantly interrupted by the Harry theme, the music follows very much the direction of the scene, one of the best scenes in the whole movie. A similar track is track 13 “The Doctor’s Return”. With track 16 “Tea Time”, we have the best performance of the love theme, and with track 18 “Waltz Macabre” and the following ones called “Waltz Reprise” and “Valse Lent”, we have three Waltz tunes for the comedy elements of the story. “Valse Lent” is the longest track of the whole score and the most lyrical one, too. Because the police, portrayed by Deputy Sheriff Calvin Wiggs, gets more and more involved into the story, the music gets darker, and Herrmann offers more suspense music as in track 29 “Suspicion”, track 30 “Porch Talk”, track 36 “Afterbeats” and track 37 “Bathtub” for the already mentioned bathroom scene. The last three tracks “Confession”, “The Solution” and “Finale” brings the story and the album to an end. After watching the movie, you really wish that Hitchcock and Herrmann would have been more involved in comedies. I found a fan video with music and pics from the movie: “The Trouble of Harry” ranks as one of the finest examples of black comedy music and is also in the longer version a joy to listen to because you can have so much to explore how Herrmann develops his themes and his black comedy music for this music. The orchestration is quite unusual but also typical Herrmann, and the famous “Harry” motif is one of the best and well-known motifs composed by Bernard Herrmann. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

The plan to talk about another Bernard Herrmann score, the music for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Trouble with Harry”, was skipped after I saw Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”, not because I like the movie very much, it was because Alan Silvestri composed the music for another big blockbuster again. We should all support him by buying this CD! The movie Steven Spielberg is one of my favourite directors, and I saw nearly every film he directed. Even though I still prefer his earlier ones such as “Jaws”, “Riders Of The Lost Ark” or “Duel” instead “War Of Worlds”, “Hook” or “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, I wanted to see his new movie. I liked Spielberg’s Polit-drama “The Post” very much, and it has a great performance by Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. I highly admire Spielberg to direct a totally different movie with “Ready Player One”. This reminds me of the story that Spielberg was directing “Schindler’s List” while he still has to finish the post-production of “Jurassic Park”. I saw “Ready Player One” in a cinema in the south part of London and chose not to see it in 3D. The audience was mixed, a lot of teenagers, and they seem to have a lot of fun seeing the movie and watching the energetic action scenes. If you imagine that Steven Spielberg is 71 years old, and he is still able to direct a film that these young kinds which are at least 50 years younger than him attracts than you cannot praise Spielberg enough for this. Here is the trailer: “Ready Player One” is a 2018 American science fiction adventure film and written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, based on the highly successful novel by Cline from 2011. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn as the bad guy. The movie is set in 2045 when most people escape their miserable daily life by entering the virtual world of OASIS. Wade Watts, played by Sheridan, discovers clues to a hidden game within the Oasis that promises the winner full ownership of this virtual world. Nolan Sorrento, played by Mendelsohn, head of the video game conglomerate Innovative Online Industries is also keen to win the game and get the total control about Oasis to control the players and make even more money finally. Wade with his love-interest Samantha, aka Art3mis, fights with their teenager friends against Sorrento and his unfair methods. In the end, the kids win and discover that spending time together in the real world at least two days per week is not only nice, it is absolutely necessary. The movie is a traditional underdog story with mind-blowing visual effects but a lack of a proper story-telling and especially convincing characters. I think I did not enjoy the film so much because I am not the target group of the movie even though I enjoyed the homage of childhood memories of the 80s such as the Delorian from “Back To The Future”, King Kong, RoboCop, “Tron”, or Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shinning”. In the book, there are nearly 100 references to films, television shows, music, toys, video games, anime and comics of these eras. I found a video with Spielberg talking about the movie: The weekend I watched this movie, I was in the mood to see two movies on the same day. After watching “Ready Player One”, I went to see “A Quiet Place”, John Krasinski’s horror movie about a family who must live in silence because the earth is conquered by cruel creatures that hunt exclusively by sound. Perhaps it is a matter of age, but it was fascinating for me to see and explore that this cheaper movie with a very simple story but directed with an amazing sense for suspense and character development was so much more enjoyable than the bigger than life movie before. The audience applauded after “A Quite Place”. They did not applaud after “Ready Player One”. “A Quiet Place” is one of the best movies I saw in the last years. What an amazingly entertaining movie! The music Like always, John William was planning to compose the score but then left the project to work on Spielberg’s “The Post” and to “Star War: The Last Jedi”. Alan Silvestri was hired who got praised by Spielberg in the liner notes of the CD. Because Spielberg asked Silvestri to reference his own music from “Back to the Future”, you can find a lot of similar music in the score for “Ready Player One”. The soundtrack comes with 84 min on 2CDs, highly unusual these days and also with a wonderful End Credits music. The tracks on the CD is overall in the similar style and similar quality, so no real track stands out as a single highlight. The album does not start with the Main Title (you can find this track on the second CD as second to last track), it starts with a track called “The Oasis”, nearly two minutes long and the most lyrical track of the album, a very nice vocal track with a choir and fantasy lyrics. Highly enjoyable, composed in the style of typical New Age music of the 80s. Here is the main theme: Before we have with track 3 “Why Can’t We Go Backwards?”, the track for the race that brings us after a slow start the typical action music Silvestri is famous for and also reference to Max Steiner’s King Kong theme from 1933. The usage of the strings and the cymbals is typical for Silvestri, similar music you can hear in track “High 5 Assembles”. It is perhaps not the straight forward action track you expect and not my favourite of the score, but overall a nice one. Track 2 “Hello, I’m James Halliday” start with the famous organ of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata und Fuge in d-Moll”, before we get introduced to James Halliday’s plan with the Oasis. Track 4 “An Orb Meeting” brings us nicely composed suspense music with another musical joke in the last 90 seconds of the track. “Real World Consequences” we have the first real action piece with a first little reference to “Back to the Future”. This track is one of the best of the whole score. I do not want to go through all the tracks, so let me mention a few: “Welcome To The Rebellion” is the most lyrical track of the score after the beginning, a highly enjoyable piece of music, that has a very nice part with the flute and the woodwinds section. One of my highlights of the score. “Orb of Osuvox”, I want to remember because of the percussion part here which I pretty like. The last two tracks of the first CD and the first of the second CD are typical suspense music. If you compare both CDs then the second one is more enjoyable because of the higher amount of action music, one of the better longer ones is “Looking For A Truck”. When seeing the movie, I was thinking of this truck idea is a reference to Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” or more to the “A-Team”, but their truck had a different style? Except for the typical Silvestri action tracks such as in “Hold On To Something”, I pretty like the shorter “Get Me Out Of This” because of the percussion rhythm here, this is a very enjoyable track. The most lyrical track of the second CD is “What Are You?”. The next one “There’s Something I Need To Do” continues the lyrical approach and gives us one of the best performances of the main theme. The last tracks are “Main Title” and “End Credits”, my favourite track. Here is a piano version of the score: Overall, the score is for sure not Alan Silvestri’s best work because it lacks a main theme that jumps directly into your mind. The theme for “Back to the Future” was more exciting or recently Silvestri’s theme for “The Avengers”. When listening to the music, you have the feeling “I know this from anywhere”, but that seemed to be the concept of the movie and the music with all its various references. I still recommend buying the score because you will have with this score a nice reference to your childhood memories such as “Back to the Future”, and that is not bad these days. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

The idea to discuss Marc Shaiman’s music for “The Addams Family” was a result of the live performance of the movie in the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 26, 2017. It was inspired by the pre-Halloween time in London, and the audience, especially the kids, had a lot of fun in dressing up and enjoying the wicked humour of the movie. The movie I am a big fan of composer Marc Shaiman, and “The Addams Family” (1991) was one of the movies I just watched because he composed the music for. Based on the famous TV-Series, Barry Sonnenfeld put a fabulous cast together to bring the macabre family to the big screen. Nowadays, you think of Sonnenfeld as the famous director of the “Men in Black”-trilogy, but back in 1991, “The Addams Family” was Sonnenfeld’s debut as director. He formerly worked as director of photography on the Oscar-nominated “In Our Water” (1982) and on various movies of Joel & Ethan Coen such as “Blood Simple” (1985), “Raising Arizona” (1987) and “Miller's Crossing” (1990). Two times, he worked with Rob Reiner, on the classic comedy “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) and one year later on “Misery”, one of the best Stephen King adaptation. “The Addams Family” is a fictional household created by American cartoonist Charles Addams (1912 – 1988). The characters include Gomez and Morticia Addams as dearly beloved couple, their children Wednesday and Pugsley, Uncle Fester and Grandma, butler Lurch, and the disembodied hand called Thing. Invented as a satirical inversion of the ideal 20th-century American family, the Addams Family became quite popular. They originally appeared as an unrelated group of 150 single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in “The New Yorker” between their debut in 1938 and Charles Addams' death in 1988. In 1964, “The Addams Family” made their debut on television. Created by David Levy and shot in black-and-white, the series ran for 64 episodes. CBS has a rival called “The Munsters” which ran for the same two seasons and achieved higher Nielsen ratings. Comparing both shows, I prefer “The Munsters” because I am big fan of Fred Gwynne as the Frankenstein's monster-type Herman Munster. Vic Mizzy composed a famous opening theme for “The Addams Family” that Shaiman used in his score. Here is the original them: For the movie, Anjelica Huston played Morticia and was nominated for a Golden Globe, and Raul Julia played Gomez. Christina Ricci gave a marvellous performance as Wednesday, and Christopher Lloyd played Uncle Fester. The movie was so successful that a sequel was released, but the death of Paul Julia destroyed the idea of a third movie. I do not want to talk a lot about the plot, so people who did not watch it before can still enjoy it. Overall, you can say that Sonnenfeld perfectly captured the spirit of the Addams Family and seeing it on a big screen with the live performance of the soundtrack was highly enjoyable. For me, the movie is a classic of morbid and bizarre black humour. Here is the famous school play scene: The score This is the first review of a score by Marc Shaiman on my website. I pretty like the composer and his composing style with his freshly attitude, lovely melodies and musical jokes during his scores. Shaiman, born 1959 in New Jersey, is a Grammy, Emmy, Tony award-winning, and multi-Oscar-nominated American composer and lyricist for films, television and theatre. Some people may best have known him for writing the music for the Broadway musical version of John Waters’ “Hairspray”. When looking at his film credits, you may be surprised about the bunch of famous movies Shaiman composed the music for such as “Broadcast News”, “When Harry Met Sally...”, “City Slickers” (a fabulous score), “Sister Act”, “Sleepless in Seattle”, “A Few Good Men”, “The American President” (a wonderful movie!), “The First Wives Club”, “In & Out” and “Patch Adams”, just to mention a few. He frequently works on films with Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner and appeared also in many of these films in a short cameo. In “The Addams Family” he plays the orchestra conductor in the party scene. He even co-produced and co-wrote cuts on Mariah Carey's 2010 Christmas album “Merry Christmas II You”. The “Addams Family” album consists of 13 score tracks and a few nice songs, and while writing this review, I discovered there is a La La Land album with even more tracks and unreleased material. The first track features the famous “Addams Family” theme and after that theme, we get introduced to Shaiman’s main theme for the family, a lovely and very lyrical and romantic theme. Track 2 “Morning” underscores watching the hand Thing doing its job. Shaiman used pizzicato strings to underscore the hand tipping on the floor and later a lot of different percussion instruments. Here is the scene: The most recognizable instrument in this score is an electronically harpsichord that gives the score a classic feeling from ancient times. “Seances & Swordfights” underscores one of the wicked humoured scenes, one of the best tracks because of Shaiman’s sense for comedy music. Track 5 “Family Plotz” shows us Gomez remembering his old times with brother Fester, one of the most lyrical tracks of the score. Track 7 “Evening” features Shaiman’s Addams theme with a fabulous ending of the track when the Addams couple shows us how deeply in love they are. The music erupts with a passionate climax that is highly over the top but perfectly suitable for the scene. Track 8 “Party … for me?” is the second longest track in the typical waltz style of the score, a highly enjoyable piece of music. Shaiman brings us first again into the romantic mood with a solo violin, then uses the waltz, switches later to some jazzy music and finishes the track with a romantic tune again. The next track “Mamushka” is a very funny track for the musical scene in the movie. Gomez dances the famous, Russian-inspired family tradition dance and invites Fester to join him. I read that this scene was originally filmed as a complete musical number, but the long sequence wasn't received well with test audiences because it slowed down the movie. So, they put the full song on the score album, the lyrics are fabulous! Here is the scene: With “Fester Exposed”, Shaiman underscores Fester’s emotional trouble after the great evening he had with the Addams and the love he received from them. Will he continue with its original wicked plan? The longest track is next one called “Rescue”, an eight-minute action track for the big showdown of the music. “Finale” brings the score to an end and gives us a romantic surprise that starts the next movie. I found a nice piece with the waltz for the Addams family: Marc Shaiman’s music for “The Addams Family” and the sequel “The Addams Family values” are great examples of what film music composed by a highly gifted composer is able to achieve. Watching the movie on a big screen and seeing the fun of the orchestra playing this highly artistic comedy music was a real pleasure that I did not want to miss. There are just a few composers who are able to compose real comedy music, and Marc Shaiman is surely one of the best. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2018, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

This week I will talk about a fabulous score for a controversial movie from a controversial director, but from a non-controversial composer. I attended James Newton Howard’s “Three decades of music for Hollywood” at the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 9th, 2017 and had great fun listening to his music and his stories about the various movies he composed the music for. He is a great guy and a very gifted composer, and I was touched by his heart-warming and humble attitude. The movie “Signs” (2002) is an American science fiction horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. After his box-office hits “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and “Unbreakable” (2000), both with Bruce Willis, Shyamalan changed the male actor to Mel Gibson. I read that Shyamalan thought that Gibson was more suitable for this role. Even though this movie was criticised, e.g. for the finale and for the visualization of the aliens, I like this movie more than the following ones by Shyamalan such as “The Village” (2004) or “Lady in the Water” (2006). I am not sure if I was perhaps just spoiled with the previous ones, but after “Lady in the Water” I did not watch any movie from Shyamalan anymore. Perhaps I should start again? In “Signs” Mel Gibson plays a former priest named Graham Hess who discovers a series of crop circles in his cornfield. Hess realizes that these circles are a result of extra-terrestrial life. Hess lives together with this younger brother Merrill, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and his asthmatic son Morgan (Rory Culkin) and his daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin) who leaves glasses of water around the house. Merrill is a failed baseball player, and Hess has lost his faith after his wife Colleen died in a traffic accident caused by Ray Reddy, played by Shyamalan. Here is the trailer: When the aliens begin to attack the house of the family, Gibson and Merrill have to fight back. The whole alien attack is not shown with a high amount of special effects than in other SF movies. Shyamalan concentrated on the personal conflicts within a typical American middle-class family and created with “Signs” a very intimate movie. The seriousness of the plot and storytelling resulted in a parody, “Scary Movie 3” with Charlie Sheen. The music “Signs” was the third time that James Newton Howard worked together with the Indian director. When introducing this music in the concert, the composer sat at the piano and played the famous three-note motif. When I saw the movie in the theatre, I was immediately caught by this haunting and minimalistic motif. When Newton Howard played this theme, it was even more obvious how great this theme is in its simplicity. The composer followed the intimate storytelling and used this minimalistic approach during the whole score. Therefore, the music is not written for a big orchestra and mostly features suspense music with some outburst of the orchestra for the frightening moments. The “Main Title” starts with the strings and introduces the three-note motif. With this track that soon gets dramatic and scary, the tone for the whole score is perfectly set. A fabulous start! Here is the main title: After this start, we have with track 2 “First Crop Circles” a more lyrical piece. It is astonishing how flexible the three-note motif is. In the main title, the composer used it for scary music, here it is used in a more intimate way. However, the haunting feeling still exists. Track 3 “Roof Intruder” starts with sudden suspense music. Listen especially to the part from 1’00 when we have a shift in the music. Track 4 “Brazilian Video” is again suspense music, but this time for one of the most surprising scenes. Here is the scene: Track 5 “In the Cornfield” is with over five minutes one of the longest tracks. Here, we have the theme mostly played by the piano. Track 6 “Baby Monitor” is one of the shortest, but also one of the most beautiful tracks, one of my all-time favourites. Track 7 “Recruiting Office” continues with quieter music and has from 1’10 one of the most beautiful moments of the score. Track 8 “Throwing a stone” is another five-minute suspense track with a nice woodwind section from 3’07, before track 9 “Boarding up the House” underscores the preparation for the alien attack. Track 10 “Into the Basement”, another five minutes piece, brings us first some peaceful moments before we get back to the scary parts. Track 11 “Asthma Attack” is the last track before the grand finale (track 12 and 13 “The Hand of Fate - Part I & Part II”). This track starts with a shocking moment and continues with more lyrical music. “The Hand of Fate” underscores the final confrontation between the family and the aliens. We see that this attack is a revenge by one of the aliens because it was hurt by Gibson before. The music features the biggest outburst of the orchestra and the greatest performance of the three-note motif. Before that, the music slows down while we see a flashback about the accident of Hess’ wife. These final tracks are a masterpiece and a benchmark of how to create suspense and very emotional moments with minimalistic but very effective music that scares the hell out of you. It is astonishing how James Newton Howard is able to use the three-motif in a scary, then soon in a peaceful way that underscores from 5’01 the victory over the hostile intruder. Even though this finale does not have the surprising moment of “The Sixth Sense” or the disturbing and philosophical context of “Unbreakable”, it works because it brings the plot to a convincing end. “The Hand of Fate – Part II” closes the album and underscores that Gibson had found his place and his faith again. Some users commented this finale with “miracles exists”. As a result what he have seen, it is convincing that Hess found his faith again. For another user, the water might be a symbol for Holy Water and the aliens a symbol for demons. Anyway, there is more in this scene to discover. So, if people are just angry because of the fake visualization of the alien, they did not get the idea of the scene. “Signs” is still one of the best films by M Night Shyamalan, and even though I have to admit that “Sixth Sense” might have the better plot and twist, I like “Signs” better, and the three-note motif is the biggest reason for this. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2017, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

Jerry Goldsmith’s first score to the “Star Trek”-franchise is also one of his best, and the new main theme he created works as a benchmark how good a movie theme should be. The love theme is one of his finest, and the soundtrack was at that time mind-blowing because of the use of electronics. Time to discuss this score finally on my blog. The movie When the original television series was cancelled in 1969, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of “Star Trek”, got in touch with Paramount to continue the franchise with a feature film. The final success of the series convinced the studio to begin work on the film beginning in 1975, but the different attempts did not convince the studio. Steven Spielberg’s successful “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) let Paramount get back to the idea of a “Star Trek” feature movie. Director Robert Wise was assigned to direct the movie. Wise, winner of two Academy Awards, worked with Goldsmith together on the classic “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) starring Steve McQueen, and also directed the first adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel called “The Andromeda Strain” (1971) and one of the best movies based on a book by this famous author. I found a nice interview with Wise and Goldsmith: How the script was developed and the final movie was put together, is a very complicated story that I do not want to summarize here. In my opinion, the plot is not convincing and lacks the quality of a big screen adventure, it is more the plot of a TV episode which was blown up to fit a movie with 132 minutes. Even though the original cast returned and the Special Effects were astonishing. Finally, Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra were assigned to finish the Special Effects. In addition, 100 matte paintings were used, provided by Richard Yuricich. The music Jerry Goldsmith did not compose the music for all the movies, he composed the music for the first move, then took a long break and came back with the great score of “Star Trek: The Final Frontier” (1989), composed the wonderful theme for “Star Trek: Voyager” and worked then on the feature-films of the Star Trek Next Generation crew: “Star Trek: First contact” (1996, with his son Joel, and for me Jerry’s best score for the franchise), “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998) and “(Star Trek Nemesis” (2002, the last movie with a score by Jerry Goldsmith I saw in a movie theatre). “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” is not only one of Jerry Goldsmith’s best scores and one of the best soundtracks ever, it also typical in a lot of ways for Jerry Goldsmith: an astonishing score for a movie that did not convince critics and failed to achieve a cult status such as “Star Wars”. Compared to “Superman”, “Star Trek” was more successful but because of a dialogue-heavy storyline and a lack of action scenes, fans do like the sequel “The Wrath of Khan” better, and that has a score of James Horner. While researching about the movie, I read that Gene Roddenberry had originally wanted Goldsmith to score Star Trek's pilot episode, "The Cage", but the composer was unavailable for this job. When Wise signed on to direct, Paramount asked the director if he had any objection to using Goldsmith. Wise replied: "Hell, no. He's great!" Wise later considered his work with Goldsmith one of the best relationships he ever had with a composer. Even though, Goldsmith had a period of three to four months to compose the music, I read that because of the time pressure, Alexander Courage (composer of the original Star Trek theme) who later became another orchestrator for Jerry among his friend and long-time orchestrator Arthur Morton, was hired to provide arrangements, and also Fred Steiner write some cues. I found a nice video about the shootings. You can see the struggle of Indian actor Persis Khambatta who played in her debut Ilia the struggle when she finally loves her wonderful hair. I totally agree with one of the comments on this video: It is totally strange after seeing her hairless now seeing her with hair, you cannot imagine her with hair anymore. “Star Trek”, as the original series pointed out, is a series about discovery and exploring new worlds. Therefore, the space ship can be considered as vehicles such as ships or waggon to explore new territory like people in the Wild West did. Goldsmith's initial bombastic main theme reminded Wise of sailing ships, but unable to articulate what he felt was wrong with the piece, the director recommended writing an entirely different piece. Compared to the original theme, this new Star Trek theme is more elegant and more majestic and during this collaboration with the franchise, Goldsmith created variations of the theme. I was so lucky to attend one of Goldsmith’s concerts in the Barbican Hall in London where Goldsmith focused a lot on the musical material for the “Star Trek”-franchise. The importance of the score for the movie, you can see at the fact that a three-minute “Overture” was composed for the movie, as an initial opening before the credits opening. For this track, Goldsmith used the “Ilia” theme, the love theme of the movie. Among the famous main theme and the love theme, we have the “Kingon”-Theme which is thrilling because of the percussion effects. Goldsmith used a lot of electronic instruments for the score, for example, the Blaster Beam, an electronic instrument 4m long and created by musician Craig Huxley, who played a small role in an episode of the original. This Blaster had steel wires connected to amplifiers fitted to the main piece of aluminium, and the instrument was played with an artillery shell. Goldsmith decided to use it for V'Ger's cues. Here is the scene with this battle: There are different album versions of the soundtrack, and I will focus on the 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, a two CD Set, with 18 tracks. The CD starts with the “Ilia’s Theme”, the love theme of the score, a wonderful romantic piece of music. With track 2, we have the “Main Title” with the new theme and then immediately the famous “Klingon Battle” for the first attack the cloud. This track is well-know and very famous for the percussion effects in music. I do not want to go all of the following tracks. My favourite one is track 6 “The Enterprise”. I copied a link to the scene here. If you watch how Kirk looks at the Enterprise you get the feeling that this music is also a kind of love music (from 2’40). It is one of the best examples how to underscore a scene like this, what a great piece of music with a perfect suspense line until you finally see the new spaceship at 3’59, and, of course, the music fully erupts here. Track 7 “Leaving Drydock” continues with this approach and gives us another fine performance of the main theme. This scene is created like similar scenes in the old swashbuckler movies when the ship finally leaves the harbour and reaches the open ocean to explore new adventures. Half of the music on the album underscores the Enterprise flying into the cloud and doing researches. It is therefore very difficult to just mention one or two tracks because these tracks work more than a suite and it is difficult to separate them. One of my favourite ones is track 9 called “The Cloud” because I love the winding effects in the beginning. Goldsmith is marvellous here in building up tension and the space atmosphere but using the different instruments of an orchestra and combining it with the various electronic effects. That is just an astonishing piece of music! The following track “Vejur Flyover” is perhaps even better and uses the way of creating atmosphere in a more advanced way but you should also have the scenes in mind. Track 13 “Spock Walk” is highly entertaining because of the short action music when Spocks pushed his energy on and enters the cloud. With track 17 “A Good Start” and then the famous “End Title” the albums come to the end. I love the energy of this last track with its main theme that even after nearly 40 years it is has still the power to carry a whole new franchise. Compare this theme with Michael Giacchino’s for the new franchise-series, and you know what I mean. “Star Trek – The Motion Picture” is a classic SF picture and even though it is because of this lack of humour and the philosophical overkill not my favourite one in the series, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is one of his best scores ever and still a masterpiece of modern film music composing. Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2017, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.

The idea to talk this week about another score by James Newton Howard after I saw him at a live concert performance in the Royal Albert Hall at Friday, November 3rd, I had to skip after seeing Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of this classic novel by Agatha Christie. The movie When I was a teenager I saw the classical adaptation by Sidney Lumet from 1974. British Actor Albert Finney who the younger generation perhaps remember as Ed Masry, the boss of Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich” (2000) who finally got Roberts an Academy Award, played the first and only time Hercule Poirot. Even though Peter Ustinov’s performance of the great Belgian detective with his famous grey little cells is perhaps more famous, Finney’s performance is marvellous. The prologue gives the audience the background story about the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong, the infant daughter of wealthy British Army Colonel Hamish Armstrong. Lumet created this prologue in special black and white setting and interrupt the scenes with newspaper reports. English composer Richard Rodney Bennett created a haunting music for this scene, and this whole prologue is one of the most haunting scenes I ever saw as a teenager, especially because of the twirling sound of Rodney Bennett’s music. The movie itself is for me the best adaptation of the novel by Agatha Christie. Lumet brought a star cast together: Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, and Michael York – just to mention a few of them. Agatha Christie was normally not very pleased with film adaptations of her books, but this one she thought it was well made except Albert Finney, she did not like his moustache. Perhaps that is the Kenneth Branagh put so much effort into his one. I read that director Lumet first approached Connery as the biggest star: If you get the biggest star first, the others will come along, he said. Interesting is also that Ingrid Bergan was offered the role of Princess Dragomiroff, but she refused and wanted to play Greta Ohlsson. Lumet decided to give her one big scene where she talks for almost five minutes. The short was all done in one long take. Bergman loved this idea, gave a great performance and won the Academy Award for this role. Overall, this movie is so good, for sure, one of the best adaptations of Agatha Christie – Billy Wilder’s “Witness for the Prosecution” (based on her stage play) from 1957 is for me still the best – that a new adaptation of this famous novel might be a very difficult approach. I have the feeling that Kenneth Branagh wanted to do it so much better that he put too many ideas into this new adaptation. The setting is amazing, the scenes with the sun setting are beautiful, and the cast fabulous, but overall the movie is too melodramatic. I did not read the novel so far, but this very melodramatic scene when Poirot confronts all the murders and Michelle Pfeiffer has her great scene is far too over the top. Here is the trailer Michelle Pfeiffer said in an interview that Branagh opened the murder mystery and made it very big and romantic. Perhaps that was the mistake? The original story is complicated enough and critics were not very pleased with the ending of the story, and perhaps Branagh thought he had to give Poirot more dominance in the story because he is playing this character, but in my opinion, the movie is best when Branagh focuses on the murder mystery. I was highly irritated when I saw one scene and Branagh put the camera high on top like the camera position in the second murder scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, but I still have no idea why Branagh did it for his scene. You expect more because you know this scene from “Psycho”, but then nothing exciting is coming. Also, Branagh tries to get some humour into the scenes, but I often was not sure if some scenes are meant to be humours, e.g. when Poirot says he is the greatest detective on earth. Why is he saying it? To introduce himself? This is highly arrogant, and Poirot would never do this. Or is this a kind of being sarcastic? I still do not understand this. Overall this movie is not very balanced, and I think that directly compared to Sidney Lumet’s version this movie is not as good. What is always good, is the music of Patrick Doyle, and his score and especially the song he wrote for Michelle Pfeiffer, are the reasons I am talking about this movie this week. Here is an interview with Michelle Pfeiffer: The music Kenneth Branagh’s long-term composer Patrick Doyle composed the soundtrack, and the album has 24 tracks, including the song “Never Forget”, sung by Michelle Pfeiffer as end credits. After Doyles’ fabulous score for “Cinderella”, one of my favourite soundtracks in the last years, I was highly looking forward to it. Here is an interview with the composer: The tracks are mostly short, except one track called “Justice” (9:29 minutes long), the song and the last track called “Orient Express Suite” which closes the album. Track 1 “The Wailing Wall” opens the movie in Jerusalem and starts unexpectedly with some oriental action music, quite fun to listen to. Track 2 “Jaffa to Stamboul” introduces the lyrical moments of the score, a wonderful track. With “Arrival” (track 3), we have the first of a lot of suspense and mystery tracks. This is my first highlight of the score. Track 4 “04 The Orient Express” introduces finally the main theme, this is a very elegant theme with dominance of the string section, a fast-forward driving piece of music, perhaps a musical translation of the feeling of travelling in such a luxury train. A fabulous track and just because of this theme the score is worth buying. Track 5 “Departure” continues the musical translation of travelling. Track 6 “Judgement” is a lyrical one that builds up the tension. The main instrument of this score is the piano, in the song played by Doyle himself, and this track is a good example how Doyle uses the variety of the piano in the score. The music follows the dramaturgical structure and the way Branagh is telling this murder mystery very much. Except for one action scene during the investigation, there is not really a lot happening. Therefore, most of the tracks are short and pure suspense or atmosphere tracks, starting with “Touch Nothing Else” (track 7). The following tracks “MacQueen”, “Twelve Stab Wounds”, “Mrs Hubbard” (better one because of the orchestration), “This is true”, “Geography”, “One Sharp Knife”, “Ma Katherine” and “True Identity” does not really stand out, so it is difficult to recommend one. It seems they are all belonging together and can considerate as one big musical suite. “Dr Arbuthnot” (track 19) and ““Keep Everyone Inside” (track 13) are different because they feature some nice action, and track 10 “The Armstrong Case” (track 10) is more composed in the chamber music style while “Confessions” (track 14) is a very sad one that will touch you before the emotions run high in the final showdown. “It is Time” (track 20) is an introduction to the longest track called “Justice” that underscores Poirot solving the case and showing us his emotional suffering. This track is a summary of the whole soundtrack and worth listening to it. Doyle created a beautifully sad piece that transforms the emotions of the murder and Poirot’s conflict what to do in a timeless musical language. Track 22 “Poirot” is a pure piano piece that does not fit to the tone of the other tracks. With the next one, we have Michelle Pfeiffer’s song, for me the highlight of the whole soundtrack before the last track called “Orient Express Suite“ repeats the main theme and closes the album. Another interview with Doyle: In conclusion, “Murder on the Orient Express” is not Doyle’s best score, but he underscores the atmosphere of the movie. The weakness of the score, e.g. no variation of the theme so that not really a track that stands out, is a result of the movie. Overall, it is a nice and elegant score with a very nice main theme and a beautiful song that brings Michelle Pfeiffer finally back again on an album. This is the best reason to buy this score, and Thank you, Patrick Doyle to do this! Copyright © Stefan Riedlinger, 2017, all rights reserved. The reviews and other textual content contained on the amazingmoviemusic.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Stefan Riedlinger.