This has been a bit of a busy week, so rather than have one big Editor’s Blog, I’ve chosen to break things up according to subjects, and keep editorial blatherings tied to specific subjects. (Which I think makes sense, right?)First up is an interview with Andrew Lockington, with whom I last corresponded around 2001 soon after speaking to the people behind the stellar Robert Evans documentary, The Kid Stays in the Picture. The original article appeared in Music from the Movies (which you can read via scans for Pages ONE, TWO, and THREE), and threaded together separate interviews with co-directors Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein, as well as composer Jeff Danna.
Around that time I emailed Lockington regarding the song “What’ll I Do?” the gorgeous Irving Berlin tune sung by William Atherton for The Great Gatsby (which Evans produced in 1974), as orchestrated by the late, great Nelson Riddle. (If you’re not familiar with his work, he was an exceptionally refined composer/arranger/orchestrator who had superb taste in shaping songs to suite not only the strengths of singers like Frank Sinatra, but rework them in ways the original composers never figured would work.)
In any event, at that time my record collection was quite big, and I had a copy of the original 2-LP soundtrack set release by Paramount on their standard crappy vinyl (often filled with bubbles and bits of paper from garbaggio/reconstituted vinyl). I emailed Lockington – then orchestrating Danna’s score - so he could match the orchestration, because the directors had cut scenes to fit that version, and Danna’s gorgeous music made use of the song at key points because it really is the unofficial Robert Evans Life Theme. (If you’ve seen the film – which I urge if you haven’t – you know how it fits the narrative.)
Fast forward 7 years, and Lockington has landed the plum position as composer of New Line’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. Rather than bathe the film in bombast, he composed a startling, retro-eighties orchestral score that’s one of my most cherished scores of the year. In addition to the album review (available as a downloadable MP3 album from New Line Records in North America, and as a CD and MP3 album from Silva Screen in Europe), we’ve also got an interview with Lockington, covering his background, scoring 3D, and his latest projects.
I have a great deal of fondness for 3-D (not the eyeball pain from Polaroid glasses, but nostalgia for the format), and we’ll have some upcoming reviews of rare and lesser-known 3-D films on DVD, VHS, and a few oddball formats. (I wish David Buttolph’s great score – in stereo! – for House of Wax (1953) would get a CD release, but that’s a gripe for a future blog.)
Also added is a CD review of Trevor Rabin’s Get Smart score. Rabin’s best known for his rather bombastic action scores (Bad Boys, Armageddon) but Varese Sarabande’s new CD reveals Rabin does indeed have a sense of humour, and knows how to have fun with a very simple (and repetitive) TV theme.
Coming next: reviews of Saul Bass’ Phase IV (1974), Why Man Creates (1968), and Bass on Titles (1977).
And imminent: reviews of Zak Penn’s The Grand (2007) and Incident at Loch Ness.
- MRH
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