islanded in a stream of stars

I have officially been cited by LAPD...

For crossing an intersection diagonally, instead of at right angles.

Serves me right for not paying attention to the officers on the corner where I was headed, but I'm still pissed at myself. The absurdity of this situation almost rivals the time I caught frostbite in January in the middle of Los Angeles. If you're going to be written up by the police for something this dumb, you want it to be over-the-top ridiculous, like dancing in the street in a gorilla costume. Now I'm hoping that the ticket to arrive in my mailbox before I move out or else it'll go on my record.



Someone in the yann_tiersen community just recommended the most amazing covers of cues from Amélie, Goodbye, Lenin! and a few other Tiersen compositions. I tend to be notoriously picky about recordings of soundtrack cues not done by the composer (and sometimes even by the composer himself - I was unexpectedly disappointed by Tiersen's the Black Sessions), but Dave Thomas's performances are a real treat. This classical guitar cover of the Amélie waltz is pretty awesome, too.



My inner literary geek is selfishly glad to know that Dmitri Nabokov is going to publish his father's unfinished work, The Original of Laura against the dead man's wishes.



Random meme that I found entertaining:

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?

If the tickets are sold out for tonight's final panel for the Academy's Music Soundtrack series, I think I really will cry. I wanted to order tickets earlier but didn't because my coordinator for CIRCLE, the class I'm TAing next week, has rescheduled our orientation planning week THREE TIMES. And she lectures us about professionalism...

LA folk, have any of you ever been to the Linwood Dunn theater before? If you have, do you know what the seating capacity is? I'm really worried that the tickets will be sold out by the time I get there tonight; I'm leaving at 6:15 from South Central (USC) for an event that starts at 7 in hope that I can still buy tickets at the door.

Honestly, the only reason why I'm going is because of Michael Giacchino, he of Medal of Honor, Alias, Lost, the Incredibles, Mission: Impossible III and Ratatouille musical fame. You know, pretty much the only living composer I idolize whose life expectancy is predicted beyond the next 30-40 years (with the exception of madbard, naturally). Out of all of the composers I follow, I know Giacchino's body of work better than anyone else's and have been following his career since he started working on Alias. I have every film soundtrack (as well as the MOH video game ones) that contains his music; if you rummage through my past LJ entries, the and the notes on my hard drive, you'll see my incomplete documentation of how I predicted what would happen next on Alias/how the music aurally illustrated the storyline within each episode. I think I'll keel over happy if I can ask him a question or get his autograph and possibly faint if I can get a photo with him afterwards.

I don't really have the time to do this, but carpe diem, right?

As I've been listening to some new soundtracks from the library (which has a surprisingly classy Philip Glass selection; I now have the whole -atsi trilogy!) and inspired by some of swashbuckler332's recent recs, I'm listing a couple of my favorites as of late from random categories.  If it's possible, I swear I feel some of my reviewer "muscles" atrophied - I have a bunch more half-formed reviews I wanted to write scattered about on paper, on my computer and in my head; I'll get around to them when I can. 

I swear, once I get back to college I *will* track down Jon Burlingame (the Man from UNCLE soundtrack producer) and have lunch with him.  Spring term once I'm done with all of my core requirements, I will turn my entire schedule upside down if necessary so I can take that TV music course of his.


Compilation: Bernard Herrman Film Scores: From Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver, as conducted by Elmer Bernstein.  I normally dislike compilations as a whole, especially ones that are supposed to reflect a composer’s oeuvre, as they tend to include all of the main pieces you already have anyway or are totally butchered by an inept conductor.  Thankfully legendary composer Bernstein makes sure such an awful fate doesn’t befall Herrmann. The listener is treated to a delightful sampling of Herrmann’s compositions for Hitchcock, with a sprinkle of his best works from the post-Hitchcock era (I love Bernstein’s concert suite of Taxi Driver) as well as Citizen Kane, the masterpiece that was his start in the film industry. The selection of works balance familiar staples (the controlled chaos that is the main title fandango of North by Northwest, the driving title theme and infamous shower sequence from Psycho) with the less well-known (the jaunty but slightly off-kilter title theme from The Wrong Man, the haunting and reflective “Book People” cue from Fahrenheit 451).  This presentation strikes a balance between the contemplative and quietly revealing with sheer emotional intensity.  It helps that most of the pieces are difficult to find – where else will you find a rendition of “the Storm Clouds,” as conducted by Herrmann in The Man Who Knew Too Much remake?  Like Herrmann, Bernstein lends a lyrical expressiveness to the music without making it farcically overwrought while throwing in his unique brand of exuberance for his friend’s work.  My only minor quibble was with Vertigo’s “Scène d’Amour,” which has my favorite build-up out of all recorded versions of this cue, but soon loses steam once Madeleine is “revealed” again.  But on the whole, you can’t go wrong listening to a lovingly presented album of some of film's greatest music.

Runner-up: Festival de Cannes: 60th Anniversary has some of the best selections of late 20th century, hands down.  Most multi-decade “classic film” compilations pander to mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, featuring only a few well-known composers, with a couple of acknowledged Oscar dramas thrown in.  They generally focus on the 70’s onwards, feeding into John Williams and his stylistic ilk, and a couple other sentimental pop favorites (Marvin Hamlisch’s The Way We Were and “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic almost always appear, too).  The Cannes selections are far more worldly and much more stylistically intriguing – so many musical gems spanning genres that would otherwise be very difficult to find.  Kudos to the producers who thought of featuring the M*A*S*H title theme followed up by the title theme from Z.  If you ever want a quick sampler of great film music from around the world and across time, this would be a great place to start.


Best re-released score as conducted by someone else: Joel McNeely’s recording of Vertigo, written by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann, finally does justice to one of the most beautiful scores ever written after the original conductor Muir Matheson (curse you, studio musicians’ strike!) butchered.  I’ve written a fair amount about this score previously; though a few minor cues are missing, having an authentic loyal to Herrmann’s vision is far worth it.


Best animated feature: The Hayo Miyazaki-Joe Hisaishi director and composer partnership is easily the best in the film industry, rivaled only by the Alfred Hitchcock-Bernard Herrmann and Steven Spielberg-John Williams pairings.  Joe Hisaishi’s Howl’s Moving Castle is a delightful and charmingly atmospheric score that expresses the conflicts of loyalty in a beautifully understated way, reflective of the characters’ caution in revealing and giving themselves fully to others.  The soaring waltz theme captures the sense of adventure and wonder of the magical world in which Sophie finds herself. 

Runner-up: Michael Giacchino’s Ratatouille.  Giacchino’s strengths lie in his ability to tell a story musically – he recreates the film in the acoustic medium to heighten our understanding of what’s happening onscreen (because otherwise, how would you ever figure out the labyrinthine plot of Alias?  I have a number of entries dedicated to score analysis of a couple of episodes, although most of my score notes are still on post-its.).  The music don’t just heighten emotion or evoke an atmosphere; they are an aural transcription of the story.  Yes, you’ve got a fair number of leitmotifs to represent the characters and certain locations (Remy and Linguini cooking, Linguini and Collette, the rat colony, Gusteau), but what makes them interesting is how they interact with each other as they do in the film.  Giacchino takes great delight in mixing musical pastiches (the “welcome to Gusteau’s” cue at the start of the movie with the Marseilleise leading into a jaunty Left Bank accordion is brilliant), but I confess I still prefer the deeper thematic substance and homage to orchestral jazz that was the Incredibles.


Best movie whose only redeeming feature is the score: John Barry’s The Specialist.  One might be initially wary of the reliance on a predominant theme that characterizes some of Barry’s later works (same scoring approach as the Scarlet Letter) - more of a European approach for a mediocre American would-be blockbuster.  There’s a quietly smoldering anguish in the jazzy notations of recurring refrains of “Did You Call Me.”  As Elmer Bernstein has remarked, very rarely is a film score pure jazz as the spirit of jazz requires improvisation.  Barry’s music is well aware of the stylistic constraints, and the longing we hear is all the more heightened by the fleeting semblance of musical freedom.  The emotional chaos and literal violence (the titular character specializes in explosives) are underlined by a restrained, subtle sense of form that lacks the space to grow.

You know you're seriously desperate to stay awake by all measures when you find yourself listening to the original Batman soundtrack as musical crack...and starting to like it.  Maybe more than 'starting to.'

Unfortunately, it's really inappropriate considering that I'm writing about an epileptic woman killing herself. And in a weird way I guess it all ties back into terror management theory and how people are afraid of death and subscribe to social institutions as life-affirmation to fill in the existential void. And this theory may actually be rubbish if you read Leary and Schreindorfer.

My brain is tired, yes. And I only have myself to blame for being a dumbass procrastinator.

Do I actually detect some fragments of melody in Philip Glass's Notes On A Scandal score? My knowledge of music theory is virtually nonexistent, but this definitely isn't his old school minimalism. If this and snow in Malibu doesn't indicate that there's something freaky going on in the world, I don't know what is.

I'm also starting to understand why film critics panned the score for being too overwrought and taking the edge off of some potentially black comedy. Glass is definitely capable of great subtlety - the Hours and Glassworks are some of my favorite works of his characterized by this more reflective tone - but it sounds like he's gone with a La Belle et le Bête-ish approach here.  There are some moments highly reminiscent of the Hours, though the orchestration sounds much fuller and the tone more dissonant.

To continue with the film music ramblings, I've come across an original recording of Elmer Bernstein's the Man with the Golden Arm title theme. The website also has some great recordings of pieces from different film scores performed by the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra Society; I recommend Miklos Rozsa's lovely El Cid. 
blofeldscat
, please forgive my ignorance in not knowing where to put the accent marks.

Much to my delight, I've found an affordable recording of Bernstein's 'Toccata for Toy Trains' - I almost typed 'Toycatta' there. There's a re-recording conducted by the composer on the FSM-released Elmer Bernstein's Film Music Collection, but the Eames Brothers film compilation contains the gem, 'Westinghouse in Alphabetical Order,' which was written as musical accompaniment for a stock holders' meeting to look over company merchandise!  Now if I could find a recording of either of Bernstein's stage musicals, Merlin and How Now, Dow Jones or John Barry's Lolita, My Love...

There's nothing I'd like more right now than to write up an initial review of David Arnold's Casino Royale soundtrack. blofeldscat wrote a great review and feature about the evolution of Arnold's musical approach, so I'm afraid anything I write will. (For the record, I did get the excerpt about From Russia With Love from your book; I'm still mulling it over and am in the midst of coming up with a response.) My initial impressions of soundtracks tend to be rather cursory and misjudged; I usually dislike/feel indifferent, and then a few weeks later upon the second listening

I am so out of practice. It's pathetic — several months and the terms are starting to slip my mind.

( A few brief, crude initial impressions — I'll get back to these later )

Coincidentally enough, I have to put off this review (and finishing up the Elmer Bernstein concert review from two months ago) because I need to finish up my paper about consumerism and James Bond.

With luck, I'll be seeing the movie this weekend.

There's something profoundly disturbing by how beautiful the music of war is. Strip away the harsh dissonance and the sharp discipline of an even-numbered time signature, and you're left with moments of piercing lyricism to which no love theme can compare. Should we be surprised, then, that the death scene in any good war movie is more liable to break your heart than the fleeting romance?

Perhaps it's music's way of reminding us that conflict can bring out the most terrible and the most noble in us.

First off, many happy returns to latina_business!

I was tempted to make this a real post about what I've been doing the past few weeks but as I'm lazy and there's way too much to talk about, I'm putting it off.

So instead, I present some random thoughts on the upcoming Casino Royale: (more of a rant, to be honest)

What is with the 800 millionth Felix Leiter being brought back? OK, so this is theoretically pre-Licence to Kill, but still, the character had but a fairly brief appearance in the Casino Royale novel; there's no real need to reintroduce him unless he's going to actually be a continuing player in future Bond movies. But the filmmakers haven't been too kind to Leiter; wisely, they've given him a break after Licence to Kill. Leiter's role in the movie has increasingly shrunk over time (with the exception of Licence to Kill) to the point where the modern audience has no idea who the heck Leiter is. Leiter is probably Bond's closest professional friend in the literary canon, butif they're going to do a John Terry as Leiter in the Living Daylights kind of deal (Remember him? Exactly.) then they might as well get some random CIA agent named Marcus Dixon and put him on extraneous wiretapping duty. Casino Royale really isn't the best vehicle for developing the Bond/Leiter relationship.

And to a lesser extent, why are they bringing back Villiers, who's essentially the stand-in for M in For Your Eyes Only because Bernard Lee died shortly after Moonraker? Yay for the whole blast from the past thing, but it's kind of weird to do that sort of resurrection when all of the original actors are gone. I'd rather have Robinson of the Brosnan era MI6 staff come back-yeah, he's not original Fleming but he's better than the vast majority of unmemorable MI6 background staffers/allies of recent years. He'snot exactly the most recognizable of Bond's superiors-seriously, more people would probably remember General Gogol or even the Minister of Defence from the late 70's-80's.

And, um, isn't Mathis supposed to be French? Or did I just not read the book closely enough...perhaps he's Swiss/Italian?

On the note of old-school MI6 staff members-oh where oh where is MONEYPENNY?! How can you have an old school Bond movie without Moneypenny? If you can't have that character back, then the least you can do is bring in May, Bond's literary housekeeper...

And why is the only old-school Bond alumni besides Judi Dench (as M, naturally) Tsai Chin?! You probably have no idea who she is anyway-she's the Chinese girl from the pre-titles sequence of You Only Live Twice. Actually, I made an icon of her the other day from virtually the only non-screencap image of her in existence: .

Like Anthony Chinn (no relation, as far as I know of) and many other various bit part Bond alumni she's taking on a totally unrelated role in this film, as far as I can tell. If the filmmakers were trying to go for a vaguely recognizable cameo appearance, they're really targeting the diehard fans.

Though it is pretty cool that they have a relative unknown as Vesper. I must confess that I secretly hoped that Mia Maestro woul get the part-yeah, Vesper's British through and through though she can speak French "like a native," but she seemed so well-qualified for the role in acting ability as well as physical appearance (re: Fleming's description of the character). Hopefully Eva Green can act; I've never seen her in anything before.

Thank God David Arnold is laying off on the techno wall of sound approach for Casino Royale. Hopefully this film will provide him with an opportunity to show off some strong dramatic writing for the Bond/Vesper relationship, i.e. musically develop Bond's relationships and actually have the music reflect the complexities of the storyline after failing to do so for the World is Not Enough. I've always been disappointed with the lack of development of Elektra's theme from TWINE.


Edit: So much for continuity in Bond's past...the current filmmakers seem to be of the persuasion that Bond was lying to impress Moneypenny in You Only Live Twice about doing a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge. At least the website is pretty accurate to Fleming's background of Bond, although they don't seem to mention that Bond owned his first Bentley at age 7 or so!

(I just made up the age, but he was no more than a teen if we are to take Fleming literally.)

Second edit: I lied. If you look under the military records of the online dossier, it does say that he got the first in Oriental languages but also claims that he took classes at Oxford (?!)

Due to the fact that Giacchino's obviously not the only one whose music is used for Alias now despite having sole credit, it's getting even more difficult to analyze the music. Especially since I can't really take notes as Ellie immediately deleted the episode after viewing. Needless to say this review will have a little less score analysis than usual.

( Spoilertastic for the past few season 5 episodes; you've been warned )

Sometimes I think my brain is operating differently from what I want it to be doing. For some reason it's been randomly spewing out candidates and composers from the AFI's top 250 film scores of all time list that didn't make it. I have no idea why it's doing this, considering that I haven't looked at that list in at least two months. It's very distracting.

I couldn't fall asleep until 1:30 last night because I've started to work out ideas about what to write for the 24 hour plays. I really hope I will be writing after all; I've been wanting to be a playwright for the past four years and actually might have a decent idea for a satire/sort of dark comedy.

I think I've officially caught senioritis, or second semester senior slacker-dom. Help! I'm determined not to procrastinate too much yet; 3rd quarter is always the hardest for me because of the ensuing apathy, but at the moment I'm determined to break that spell. I was hoping that I wouldn't become infected until after AP exams, too.

Then again, I don't have to do all of the Euro unit reading tonight, do I? Will someone please be kind enough to reply "no" to my question?