Mellowdrama: 'Enduring Love'

From Mellowdrama Records, the fine folks who brought you Roque Banos' sensational score for The Machinist...

Mellowdrama Records will release the Ivor Novello Award-winning soundtrack to Enduring Love in March 2006, with music composed by Jeremy Sams.

Sams' intelligent scoring for this adeptly-weaved thriller is furnished with a musical dynamism that favours intensity and heart-racing agitation. Expertly coloured throughout with virtuosic part-writing and jagged performance directions, the music is lent a false sense of intimacy that charges the furioso settings of the composer's character studies.

Enduring Love was the deserved winner of the Ivor Novello Award for 'Best Original Film Score' in 2004 and reunited Sams with his long-time collaborator, the director Roger Michell. The pair had previously worked together on The Mother (2003) and the television adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, a BBC Films co-production for which Sams received a BAFTA® Award. As an established director Michell is well-known to mainstream cinema audiences for subtle road-rage drama Changing Lanes and the romantic comedy Notting Hill.

Based upon a novel by celebrated British writer Ian McEwan, himself no stranger to international accolades, Joe Penhall's screenplay examines the impact of a fatal circumstance. A ballooning tragedy witnessed not only by Joe Rose (Daniel Craig, who also appears in Michell's The Mother) and his partner Claire (Samantha Morton), but also by Jed Parry (Rhys Ifans): a stranger who, in the moment, develops an uncontrollable and malevolent obssession with Joe.

As one of England's leading musical dramatists, Sams has further crafted a laudable reputation in the theatre. As a director, lyricist, and translator of opera libretti he has received great acclaim. In 2000 he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award as 'Best Director' and, in 2003, he received two Tony Award nominations for his English adaptation of the musical Amour from its French language origins. His reworking of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang into a stage musical based-upon Ken Hughes 1968 children's film, itself an adaptation of a novel by spy fiction author Ian Fleming, has become a worldwide success since its debut in London's West End in 2003.

With a captivating performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the forthcoming album will also feature extensive liner notes and lavish artwork.

As the film's tag-line suggests, “Some people never let go', and so we believe that listeners to Jeremy Sams' sublime musical effort might not too.

Visit Mellowdrama Records' website

Loving (H.P.) Lovecraft

Randall Larson at Cinescape has written an comprehensive article on the films and their music based on the works of horror legend H.P. Lovecraft. From high brow to Italian splatter, H.P. has seemingly been adapted by all with mixed results, but often the music has proven memorable.

'Lost' podcast - so '06

ABC's website for the hit fantasy-drama Lost has posted a podcast featuring composer Michael Giacchino, who guides the listener through the orchestra players that perform the music for the show. The composer also reveals several musical secrets behind the show. The podcast is indicative of the light, relaxed atmosphere of Michael's Lost sessions (I was lucky enough to attend one last year). Definitely worth a listen.

Brian Tyler's 'Annapolis'

Five clips from Brian Tyler's score for Annapolis have been added to his website. The score is an effective mix of the big orchestral sound of Brian's Children of Dune and the contempo, hard-rocking drum loops and e-guitar sound heard in his score for Papaparazzi. Fans of classic sports filmmusic need not worry, as the sixty-minute album favors the orchestral portion. The CD is due in stores Tuesday, from Varese Sarabande, the film is in theaters next Friday.

Dooley: 'When A Stranger Calls'

From the press (releases)...

Composer James Dooley scores When a Stranger Calls for Screen Gems and director Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Con Air). Starring Camilla Belle, Katie Cassidy and Tommy Flanagan, the film opens February 3. When a Stranger Calls is a retelling of the 1979 horror film that tells the story of a young high school student's nightmarish babysitting gig where she receives mysterious phone calls at the house to check on the children, only to find them dead. Dooley is well versed in the thriller genre, having previously collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the DreamWorks blockbuster The Ring.

Dooley's recent credits include DreamWorks' animated short A Christmas Caper starring the penguins from the hit film Madagascar, on which he previously teamed with Zimmer. This short was seen in theaters this past fall before the claymation feature Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit for which Dooley provides additional music. Dooley also mixed and scored the new animated film, Urmel Aus Dem Eis, or Impy's Island as it will be known in the US. The film is based on a German children's book about a dinosaur that hatches in modern times on an island where animals learn to speak. Additionally, Dooley has scored some of the industry's most successful videogames including Socom 3, US Navy SEALs, which he recorded at London's Air Lyndhurst Hall with a 70-piece orchestra.

James Dooley is a graduate of New York University where he majored in Music Composition. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles to study film composition with such composers as Christopher Young and Elmer Bernstein. He joined Media Ventures in 1999 and collaborated with Zimmer both as his Chief Technical Engineer and as a composer. In addition, Dooley has partnered with CDBABY.com to donate the proceeds from sales of his The Mars Underground soundtrack to the Red Cross national disaster relief effort. The Mars Underground is a landmark documentary about renowned aerospace scientist and visionary, Dr. Robert Zubrin quest for Mars exploration.

New Intrada title announcement

Intrada Announces:

The Lost World
Composed and Conducted by Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter

Five Weeks In A Balloon
Composed and Conducted by Paul Sawtell

Intrada Special Collection Volume 28

For this installment of the Intrada Special Collection, Intrada presents a 2-CD set featuring the music from two Irwin Allen epics from 20th Century Fox: The Lost World (1960) and Five Weeks In A Balloon (1962). Starring Claude Rains and Jill St. John, The Lost World chronicles the adventures of a professor on a perilous journey into the Amazon to investigate reports of living dinosaurs. In Five Weeks In A Balloon, starring Red Buttons, Barbara Eden, and Richard Haydn, yet another professor embarks on another fanciful adventure -- this time taking flight in a balloon over Africa.

For The Lost World, Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter provide colorful music ranging from soaring thematic ideas for the beautiful terrain to frightening action music for various dinosaur and hostile native attacks. On Five Weeks In A Balloon, Sawtell (flying solo on this one) brings a rousing adventure-packed score to the action. At the center is a rollicking theme song sung by The Brothers Four. Both scores are mastered from the original 35mm magnetic tracks warehoused at 20th Century Fox. The elements were beginning to deteriorate so some minor wow is audible throughout. But for the most part, the audio quality remains satisfying. A very few sequences could not be salvaged but most of both scores has been preserved, including complete main titles and end titles plus all of the major set pieces.

This Intrada Special Collection release is limited to 1200 copies.

Intrada Special Collection - Volume 28 - Available Now.

New 'Vitamin' format

You might have noticed that big, blue, Blogger strip at the top of the page. Blogger was the original way the news, etc. at Cinemusic was posted to the site. This was years ago, and the service was flakey to be kind. I switched over to an HTML method that seemd to take more time and effort, despite this it ran smoothly for a year or two. With '05 this section of the site took a significant hit. The doctors said it would never make it. Well, it's back, baby. I'll be posting via Blogger once again, so I can update anytime, anywhere. But I warn you, it could end up being considerably less frequent than anytime and anywhere! Thanks for checking in -- I hope there will always be something here worth reading. (As usual, if you are using Internet Explorer to view this page, it should look incorrect.)

FSM Online debuts

Film Score Monthly the print magazine is dead. But the folks behind the mag have ressurected the namesake with FSM Online, film music features and coverage for this digital age. If your prefered method of turning the pages of FSM was in the comfort of your bathroom, you will now have to balance a laptop (desktops are out of the question) on your knees.

A selection of interesting features have been included with the debut "issue", including the staff wrap-up of '05, as well as audio interviews with Patrick Doyle, John Ottman and others. They also promise that their entire back catalogue will be available as .PDF files shortly too.

The price is $4.95 (U.S.) per month. I signed up earlier this week and have gone through most of the articles and really liked what I've seen so far. FSM has had the rep of being the cranky, mouthy (er, American?) film music mag. While they have often lost a bit of perspective on the art vs. business of film music and therefore repeatedly beaten up on a few composers, they remain a truly passionate outpost. The move to the internet will help keep their record label afloat, no doubt pleasing many of our aging collector brethren.

For more info, check out FSM Online.

Monstrous Movie Music

Announcing the two newest Monstrous Movie Music releases!

Mighty Joe Young (and other Ray Harryhausen Animation Classics)
Features music from: 1949’s "Mighty Joe Young" (Roy Webb) [35:44] 1957’s "20 Million Miles to Earth" (Mischa Bakaleinikoff and Columbia library cues by George Duning, Frederick Hollander, David Diamond, Daniele Amfitheatrof, Max Steiner, David Raksin, and Werner Heymann) [21:07] 1956’s "The Animal World" (Paul Sawtell) [4:03] Bonus track! [:48]

This Island Earth (and other Alien Invasion Films)
Features music from: The complete score from 1955's "This Island Earth" (Herman Stein, Hans J. Salter, Henry Mancini) [37:42] 1962's "The Day of the Triffids" (Ron Goodwin's semi-rejected score) [20:10] The Main Title from 1958's "War of the Satellites" (Walter Greene) [1:23] The Main Title from 1956's "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (Daniele Amfitheatrof) [:47]

Both CDs contain 40-page liner books loaded with tiny-little headache-inducing photos, never-before-released information that only a few thousand sci-fi/film music nerds care about, and extremely silly humor. And even though each book contains approximately 20,000 words of text (about 129,000 characters, including spaces), we even found enough room to number the pages!

For more info and to order visit: mmmrecordings.com