Friday Double: (6) The intransigent black hole

First, a quick observation on media coverage of the debt-ceiling hostage situation:  the word "intransigent" describes a driver who crawls down the road at 20 mph below the speed limit and then refuses to let anyone else pass.  Technicaly, it's possible to use "intransigent" to describe the Osama bin Ladens, Agosto Pinchets and Anders Breviks of the world -- but that seems woefully inadequate, doesn't it?  Given their grim determination to shove the United States through an event horizon, House Republicans shouldn't be described as "intransigent," either.

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Event horizons, as suggested by the teabaggers, were my initial excuse for this week's Friday Double picks.  These are the parts of black holes from which neither matter nor light can escape.  My original plan for today was to just post a couple of pieces of music with black-hole motifs.

Leave it to U.S. Soccer hand me a new excuse to pile on top of the first.  Men's national team coach Bob Bradley, whose firing I had been hoping to see following last month's Gold Cup debacle, got the sack yesterday.  No word on whether Bradley chose paper or plastic.

Click to hear how I feel about this development.

This pretty overture is exactly that -- the overture to The Black Hole (1979).  For a barely watchable piece of unintentionally funny science fiction, it's an enormous part of Hollywood film history.

• It was the first movie Disney ever produced for an audience that didn't include younger children.  The movie succeeded well enough to eventually spawn the Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures studios, and, from there, the Disney empire we know and love.
• Its John Barry score was the first to ever be digitally recorded.
• After this and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, no mainstream Hollywood movie ever includes an overture.

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Jürgen Klinsmann (Wikipedia)

Back to U.S. Soccer.  Today, the federation named former German head coach Jürgen Klinsmann to succeed Bradley.  If the deal leaves Klinsmann the control over the men's program he wanted five years ago, this could be a good thing.  But his actual coaching resume is mixed.  He did take the Germans into the 2006 World Cup semifinals at home, and he did lead Bayern Munich deep into the UEFA Champions League.  But both terms were short, and Bayern didn't do so well in the Bundesliga under his reign.

As it turns out, the main title to John Barry's Black Hole score expresses my feelings about Klinsmann's hiring.  Bradley left the men's program in worse shape than many of my fellow U.S. soccer fans seem to think, so I'm only willing to give him a 2-in-3 chance of success.  If he fails, it won't be all his fault.

Either way, click and enjoy the main title.

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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?

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Friday Double: (1) Planet Earth

When I remarked on the passing of composer John Barry several weeks ago, I noted that I haven't brought up my love film or video soundtracks here often enough.  Hopefully, this new Friday Double feature will fix that.  The idea is simply to cite two cuts that I like every Friday, both from the same movie, TV series or composer.  The BBC/Discovery documentary Planet Earth stars in our premiere edition.

George Fenton has earned five Academy Award nominations, including one for the score to 1983 Best Picture Gandhi, but most of his work has been for British television.  Planet Earth won him his second Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition (after the equally stunning Blue Planet). While he could give the next quarter-billion-dollar Hollywood epic a proper score, Fenton is probably a lot happier doing what he does now.  Good on him.

I'll probably post more examples of Fenton's incredible range in the future, but here's "Surfing Dolphins."  In the film segment, the dolphins aren't just surfing near a small beach; they're teaching their kids how to track down dinner.  The NFL fan in me has also noted that, poorly as they've played recently, this same music could easily accompany the numerous miscues from the Miami Dolphins' last few seasons.



I wouldn't have brought gridiron up had I not heard the Planet Earth theme backgrounding an NFL Network report last fall.  That struck me oddly, because the NFL strongly prefers to commission its own incidental music, via NFL Films.  Yet, here they were, using the work of George Fenton (an outsider!) to help document the decline and fall of wide receiver Randy Moss.

Well, the NFL was using outside music, and it was the theme to Planet Earth... but George Fenton didn't write it.  The theme is a 51-second cut from "The Time Has Come," whose actual authors are Tobias Marberger and Gabriel Shadid.



There it is: my first Friday Double.   Hope you like it.

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