I'm so happy about GOP presidential hopeful (and master crap marketer) Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax scheme. It's made this Friday Double so much easier to compose than usual. Thanks, Pizza Guy!
Leave aside the fact that even other Republicans hate 9-9-9; just note that it might have been stolen from a video game. One of Cain's rivals, Michele "Corn Dog" Bachmann, even poked fun at his plan by insinuating a connection to the number 666, that well known symbol of the Antichrist.
Naturally, then, my first selection today comes from Omen III: The Final Conflict. This 1981 mess was (fortunately) the last* of the Omen movies, which centered on one Damien Thorn, who is meant to be Antichrist. This selection contains both the main title and a second track ("The Second Coming"). Combinations like this aren't uncommon in modern films, but Jerry Goldsmith made it a habit.
I could have picked the better known "Ave Satani" from the first Omen movie, which Goldsmith also penned. Since Herman Cain is running for President, just like Damien Thorn did, this choice made better sense.
The best thing about Cain's 9-9-9 scheme is that it's so easy to mock. The folks over at Stephanie Miller's talk-radio show have taken to calling it "Nein! Nein! Nein!" and that inspired me to come up with another renaming: "Plan 999 from Outer Space."
Oh, well. I might as well just give you the theme to the classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). I'm not sure who wrote it. Wikipedia credits someone named Frank Worth, but IMDB claims that it's Emil Asher, who didn't get the credit. Neither man sported a long film résumé.
On the other hand, I could just follow the lead of these stupid birds from Finding Nemo (2003) and just call Cain's scheme the "Mine! Mine! Mine!" plan.
It's at least as stupid as those birds.
*There was a 2006 remake of the first Omen movie. It was so forgettable, I forgot about it.
Enjoying the triumphant beat of a fantasy-football champion!
Showing posts with label Jerry Goldsmith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerry Goldsmith. Show all posts
14 October 2011
16 September 2011
Friday Double: (8) With thunderous applause
The Star Wars prequels are collectively so bad, I hesitate to call descriptions of any of their scenes "spoilers," but this post contains some. It's worth the trouble to finally introduce John Williams, the best American orchestral composer of the late 20th Century, to my Friday Double feature. He is to the prequels as the great Walter Payton was to the Chicago Bears 30 years ago: it's not the former's fault that the latter sucked so hard.
So, yeah, Amidala's lament, probably the single most famous line from the three Star Wars prequels, has crossed my mind recently. In Chapter III: Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine, having just defeated an attempt by the Jedi to arrest him for treason, is using the incident as an excuse to appoint himself as Emperor. The Senators cheer, prompting Amidala to complain to her few remaining allies. Of course, the Emperor has neglected to tell his adoring Senate of his other recent creation -- Darth Vader, who, as the following track plays in the background, has just committed one heinous crime and is now working on a second. [Amidala's line comes at about the 1:50 mark.]
It isn't that there's anything inherently wrong with "thunderous applause." A reaction like that is entirely appropriate, for example, after everybody's favorite benchwarmer ends a victorious game with, well, as much emphasis as possible. The first couple of minutes of this Jerry Goldsmith joint make a lot more sense if you watch the actual final scene. To skip that preamble, skip to about the 2:10 mark.
Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!
So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause. -- Senator AmidalaThe crowd reactions at the two latest Republican presidential debates brought this line to my mind. It's rather terrifying to realize that large crowds of Americans are now openly cheering RIck Perry's love of the death penalty, or the thought of leaving the poor to die for simple lack of money. People like that have always existed, but now they've lost even the decency to keep their vile sentiments to themselves.
So, yeah, Amidala's lament, probably the single most famous line from the three Star Wars prequels, has crossed my mind recently. In Chapter III: Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine, having just defeated an attempt by the Jedi to arrest him for treason, is using the incident as an excuse to appoint himself as Emperor. The Senators cheer, prompting Amidala to complain to her few remaining allies. Of course, the Emperor has neglected to tell his adoring Senate of his other recent creation -- Darth Vader, who, as the following track plays in the background, has just committed one heinous crime and is now working on a second. [Amidala's line comes at about the 1:50 mark.]
It isn't that there's anything inherently wrong with "thunderous applause." A reaction like that is entirely appropriate, for example, after everybody's favorite benchwarmer ends a victorious game with, well, as much emphasis as possible. The first couple of minutes of this Jerry Goldsmith joint make a lot more sense if you watch the actual final scene. To skip that preamble, skip to about the 2:10 mark.
Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!
18 June 2011
Friday Double: A little bit of this...
[Hey, it's still Friday in Pac-12 country. That counts, doesn't it?]
One of the really neat things about HBO's best series is their collective attitude towards original music. Some series, like Rome and Band of Brothers, have their own soundtracks. Others, like The Wire and The Sopranos, use tracks only for the main and end titles; any music in between is purely incidental.
Deadwood fell somewhere in between. It had an original opening title, and lush performances of 19th-century songs accompanied the credits. What little soundtrack music producer David Milch saw fit to use was adapted -- and it was also very effective. "Iguazu," a stunning 1998 guitar piece written and performed Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla, backgrounded some of the series' most tense and dramatic action scenes -- including a desperate pursuit of a runaway horse that turned the entire series. Here, it serves as the basis for a simple music video featuring some pretty desert scenery.
This is one of my favorite pieces of adapted soundtrack music, but Santaolalla has since written soundtracks of his own, including Oscar-winning scores for Brokeback Mountain and Babel and a terrific score for The Motorcycle Diaries. He's probably best known to casual moviegoers for "The Wings," the signature theme for Brokeback. As it turns out, I dislike "The Wings" because it fits that movie almost too well. Had it fit any better, it would have distracted from the movie instead of enhancing it.
That particular line has been crossed, and other great film composers have committed that turnover. Not for the first time, I present Jerry Goldsmith; and once again, it's for work he did for the Star Trek franchise. Here's "The Cloud" from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). As this music plays in the movie, the starship Enterprise is entering a vast, mysterious object that turns out to be much more than just a cloud.
The problem wasn't the music, which is gorgeous; nor was it the vast grandeur of this particular flight of the Enterprise. Either one, taken alone, is mesmerizing. It's the combination of the music and the visuals that caused me, and the movie, such grief. The whole composition was so hypnotic, it put my oldest sister and at least one of her friends, with whom I saw it, to sleep -- and they were hardly alone. Even though no one actually brought (let alone smoked) a joint into the movie room, I found myself nevertheless wondering where I could get some more of that bad-ass weed.
The moral, of course, is that soundtrack music can sometimes be too good. Critical plot turns shouldn't become their own drinking games, but that's what Goldsmith accidentally accomplished here.
One of the really neat things about HBO's best series is their collective attitude towards original music. Some series, like Rome and Band of Brothers, have their own soundtracks. Others, like The Wire and The Sopranos, use tracks only for the main and end titles; any music in between is purely incidental.
Deadwood fell somewhere in between. It had an original opening title, and lush performances of 19th-century songs accompanied the credits. What little soundtrack music producer David Milch saw fit to use was adapted -- and it was also very effective. "Iguazu," a stunning 1998 guitar piece written and performed Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla, backgrounded some of the series' most tense and dramatic action scenes -- including a desperate pursuit of a runaway horse that turned the entire series. Here, it serves as the basis for a simple music video featuring some pretty desert scenery.
This is one of my favorite pieces of adapted soundtrack music, but Santaolalla has since written soundtracks of his own, including Oscar-winning scores for Brokeback Mountain and Babel and a terrific score for The Motorcycle Diaries. He's probably best known to casual moviegoers for "The Wings," the signature theme for Brokeback. As it turns out, I dislike "The Wings" because it fits that movie almost too well. Had it fit any better, it would have distracted from the movie instead of enhancing it.
That particular line has been crossed, and other great film composers have committed that turnover. Not for the first time, I present Jerry Goldsmith; and once again, it's for work he did for the Star Trek franchise. Here's "The Cloud" from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). As this music plays in the movie, the starship Enterprise is entering a vast, mysterious object that turns out to be much more than just a cloud.
The problem wasn't the music, which is gorgeous; nor was it the vast grandeur of this particular flight of the Enterprise. Either one, taken alone, is mesmerizing. It's the combination of the music and the visuals that caused me, and the movie, such grief. The whole composition was so hypnotic, it put my oldest sister and at least one of her friends, with whom I saw it, to sleep -- and they were hardly alone. Even though no one actually brought (let alone smoked) a joint into the movie room, I found myself nevertheless wondering where I could get some more of that bad-ass weed.
The moral, of course, is that soundtrack music can sometimes be too good. Critical plot turns shouldn't become their own drinking games, but that's what Goldsmith accidentally accomplished here.
22 April 2011
Friday Double: What's a nice theme like you...?
...doing in a rotten series like this?
My knowledge of Star Trek arcana may not be enough to make me a hard-core Trekkie, but I was dedicated enough almost a decade ago to actually look forward to the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise. But my first hearing of the dreadful Faith of the Heart should have warned me about just how seriously the show would eventually suck. The Diane Warren composition didn't even fit with the visual part of Enterprise's opening title, let alone the spirit of the Star Trek franchise. I won't dignify that song with a link, because this Friday Double isn't about wastes of bad music on brutally disappointing television series.
It's about wastes of good music on brutally disappointing television series.
There are a few reasons why I don't hate Enterprise nearly as much as its predecessor, Star Trek: Voyager. First, Enterprise had better plots. Second, it didn't have salamanders. Third, I might have felt better about Enterprise had its opening title resembled the gorgeous treatment Voyager got.
To tell the truth, I had given up on Voyager well before it got to those salamanders. It's just too bad Jerry Goldsmith's theme couldn't grace a show that deserved it.
Jeff Beal, whom I sometimes call HBO's resident composer, penned my other feature today. Carnivàle had an opening title that framed it even more perfectly than Voyager -- but it sold a series that proved even more bitterly disappointing.
A blown Star Trek production like Voyager was inevitable, and so, too, was a bad HBO series. Even at that, though, Carnivàle gave the HBO viewing world a shock. Not even producer Ronald D. Moore liked it, as he would admit in a DVD comment track for his better known and liked series, Battlestar Galactica (2004).
So which other bad TV series got great opening credits?
My knowledge of Star Trek arcana may not be enough to make me a hard-core Trekkie, but I was dedicated enough almost a decade ago to actually look forward to the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise. But my first hearing of the dreadful Faith of the Heart should have warned me about just how seriously the show would eventually suck. The Diane Warren composition didn't even fit with the visual part of Enterprise's opening title, let alone the spirit of the Star Trek franchise. I won't dignify that song with a link, because this Friday Double isn't about wastes of bad music on brutally disappointing television series.
It's about wastes of good music on brutally disappointing television series.
There are a few reasons why I don't hate Enterprise nearly as much as its predecessor, Star Trek: Voyager. First, Enterprise had better plots. Second, it didn't have salamanders. Third, I might have felt better about Enterprise had its opening title resembled the gorgeous treatment Voyager got.
To tell the truth, I had given up on Voyager well before it got to those salamanders. It's just too bad Jerry Goldsmith's theme couldn't grace a show that deserved it.
Jeff Beal, whom I sometimes call HBO's resident composer, penned my other feature today. Carnivàle had an opening title that framed it even more perfectly than Voyager -- but it sold a series that proved even more bitterly disappointing.
A blown Star Trek production like Voyager was inevitable, and so, too, was a bad HBO series. Even at that, though, Carnivàle gave the HBO viewing world a shock. Not even producer Ronald D. Moore liked it, as he would admit in a DVD comment track for his better known and liked series, Battlestar Galactica (2004).
So which other bad TV series got great opening credits?
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