Before we get to this week’s newly released / announced soundtrack tally, I should mention a pair of upcoming Blu-ray releases that will feature isolated scores.
Image has released Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone series many times on DVD – first as a series of non-chronological singles, then in boxed sets, and finally in a beautifully remastered 5-volume series that presented the episodes in their original broadcast order, with oodles of extras, including isolated scores.
Some of the isolated music tracks – which included early work by Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, and several gifted but marginalized composers like Nathan Van Cleave – were already present on the first wave of DVDs, but the Definitive Collection, as the latest sets were branded, seemed to included every possible isolated score that existed in the vaults, including Bernard Herrman’s “Little Girl Lost,” which Varese had to re-record because the stems weren’t available for a CD release.
Universal seems to have followed the trend and will be releasing the classic Boris Karloff series Thriller Aug. 31 with some isolated music materials. Thus far, there’s only been a re-recorded LP of Pete Rugolo’s music on the old Time label, but the new DVD set will feature “isolated music and effects tracks for select episodes from composers Jerry Goldsmith and Morton Stevens,” which is great news from a DVD label that’s shunned that specific special feature for years.
Back when I wrote for the print edition of Music from the Movies, I did a profile of the first volume of Image’s Definitive Collection (see parts One and Two), with some comments by an Image rep on the inclusion of the previously unreleased music stems.
Image recently announced the inevitable: Season 1 will make its debut on Blu-ray Sept. 14, with an SRP of $119.99 CAD. That’s one of the reasons I never bought the mega-set of the Definitive volumes (alongside bad book-styled binding with poor glue). Paramount has already put out the original Star Trek on BR, so it seemed logical TZ was on the way – the only caveat is how long it’ll take for all 5 seasons to be released on BR, and whether Image will package them in a mega-set.
(If the series’ release history tells us anything, most likely it’ll be a while for a mega-set, since they usually come out at a lower price because it’s one way for labels to blow out excess stock, after ardent fans have snapped up the pricier single season editions.)
In any event, Image’s PR sheets state the BR edition of Season 1 will contain the isolated scores, so as an ardent fan of the TZ series and the great chamber-sized scores by some of film music’s unsung heroes, I’m giddy. Varese Sarabande's original 5-LP slate of TZ music from the 1980s was one of the reasons I got into film music, and they were among the first soundtracks I bought while still in high school.
Moving on, Fox hasn’t been doing much with their back catalogue of late, and they’ve been focusing on key franchises and contemporary classics rather than re-starting the film noir and classics lines which film fans loved so much. The downside to that decision is a lot of little-seen and CinemaScope classics will never appear on DVD or BR, and what we've been getting is a regurgitation of films seemingly culled from AFI’s top whatever list – populist classics that will probably sell, albeit after already being released many times on DVD.
When the Alien Quadrilogy debuted in a box that unfurled like the felt wrapper my mother used to pack up the silverware, it was a pricey monster that eventually got knocked down to loss leader status. I waited long after writing up a detailed review of the set (see parts One and Two) and snapped it up for $14, which made a friend wince, seeing how he paid full price a few years earlier.
For the franchise’s inevitable BR release on Oct. 26 (SRP to be determined for Canada), Fox is porting over everything from the Quadrilogy, and taking an idea from the prior Alien boxed set, where Alien had an isolated score track. ALL of the 4 Alien films will have isolated music tracks, and the PR sheet’s wording is a bit murky in describing whether the scores will be the theatrical score edits, or the full realm of used and unused cues.
Jerry Goldsmith, for example, had to write a lot of alternate music for Ridley Scott’s Alien; more than enough to fill Intrada's non-limited, 2-disc CD set. In Aliens, director James Cameron dropped some of James Horner's cues in favour of sound effects. With Alien 3, Elliot Goldenthal had to contend with a film that was never in any final shape, and John Frizzell wrote a big chunk of music for Alien Resurrection. If these scores are included in their full length, the BR’s will provide fans a great chance to see the films as the composers envisioned before sound effects and radical editorial changes were brought into the blender. That, plus the music in uncompressed stereo.
Also announced is a new 3-disc set of Apocalypse Now for Oct. 19, which is moving from Paramount to Lionsgate (USA) / Maple (Canada). That’s a nice feather in the cap for the two labels, since Paramount’s been deleting a massive amount of back catalogue titles over the past two years. Apparently the new BR set will feature the theatrical and redux versions in the former’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 – reportedly a first for home video – plus the great doc Hearts of Darkness, where director Francis Ford Coppola almost lost his sanity making his epic. An isolated score track would be nice… but that doesn’t seem to be in the package, although the set will contain a featurettes on the synth score.
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Part 2: What in Hell is Wrong With You?
Lastly, this Tuesday John Carpenter’s Escape from New York makes its debut on BR via MGM / Fox in a new 1080p transfer, but if this set is an indication of where MGM’s corporate brain is right now, film fans will be in for a lot of disappointing catalogue releases.
Disc 1 features the film; Disc 2 has the film in Standard DVD, plus a theatrical trailer.
That’s it.
The 2-disc set MGM released in 2003 (when still solvent and sane) contained a deleted opening scene (a 10-min. bank robbery sequence); making-of featurettes on the film and comic book, photo gallery, and A COMMENTARY TRACK WITH DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER AND KURT RUSSELL, plus ANOTHER COMMENTARY TRACK WITH PRODUCER DEBRA HILL AND PRODUCTION DESIGNER JOE ALVES.
Around 2003, MGM exploited the old Avco-Embassy catalogue by bringing out excellent special editions of The Howling (1981), The Fog (1980), and Escape from New York, but of late they’ve done little of note for exploitation or classic titles. Older classics like Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and John Huston’s The Misfits, for example, are now out of print, and may stay that way for a while until the company’s financial issues are settled.
Most likely MGM is focusing on keeping a bare bones release schedule, with best-selling classics getting the BR treatment. The decision to port over zero extras from the SD-DVD is pure laziness, or some daft effort to double-dip the consumer. If MGM wants money, they should put out definitive editions filled with extant value added features, instead of going half-assed.
The Digital Bit’s Bill Hunt has had two large rants about what the labels are doing wrong with BR, and he’s certainly dead-on with the bizarre decision to hold back on extras in favour of bare bones editions that leave room in the future for a double-dip.
If you want the format to gain the broadest acceptance among consumers, make it the best product you can.
MGM couldn’t fit the previously released extras on a 50 GB BR disc?
Rubbish. MGM: go to the corner, and firmly plant that dunce cap onto your head until you wake up and realize you’re neither helping the market, the format, nor the company by being creatively numb and cheap.
Universal is equally contemptuous of their back catalogue. Joe Dante’s Matinee (1993) recently made it to DVD in an anamorphic transfer, but it’s a bare bones release that features none of the modest extras used on the old laserdisc. The label’s apathy is wholly confounding, because Dante had been making overtures to Universal for years, offering to loan production ephemera and participate in a special edition. At DVD Savant, Glenn Erickson interviewed Dante about the label’s ignorance, and it’s a saddening read, since the film will likely never get a special edition in North America.
Although... maybe in Britain? Carpenter recorded audio commentary tracks for They Live and Howard Hawks’ The Thing. Heck, even MGM Europe had the keen desire to create special editions around 2004 of Sergio Leone westerns before they were eventually ported over to Region 1 land, as well as war classics like 1969’s Battle of Britain and 1977’s A Bridge Too Far).
It reads like collector whining, but ask yourself this: If you just dropped $2000 on a new 1080p entertainment system, wouldn't you be irked that for $20, you get a bare bones release of a movie in a BR / DVD combo, but for $10 more, you get the special edition, albeit on DVD? The price point is retarded, and it's an example of inept planning within MGM's home video division, which seems to have been incipient since 2005. Certainly one reason MGM is a mess and Warner Bros. and Sony remain dominant forces in the home video market is where the latter two know how to exploit their catalogue titles with value added features, and logical pricing. Warner's A Star is Born (1954) is loaded on DVD, but if you spend a bit more, you get better resolution and the full package of special features.
That's just logical, so you have to wonder: What the hell is wrong with MGM?
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Part 3: New Soundtrack Reviews
Just uploaded are five CD reviews, with more to follow shortly: Franco Micalizzi’s Le Amazzoni / Battle of the Amazons (DigitMovies), Angelo Francesco Lavagnino’s score for the 1955 travelogue / documentary Continente Perduto / The Lost Continent (Alhambra), Mark Mancina’s complete Speed 2: Cruise Control (La-La Land), Theodore Shapiro’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid (La-La Land), and La-La Land’s Mike Judge double-billing of John Frizzell’s Office Space, and Shapiro’s Idiocracy.
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Part 4: Soundtracks – New and Imminent
Beat Records (Italy)
Lesbo (Alessandro Alessandroni, Francesco De Masi) --- late July; ltd. 500 copies
Milano: Il clan dei Calabresi / The Last Desperate Hours (Gianni Marchetti) --- late July; ltd. 500 copies
Via della prostituzione, La / Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (Nico Fidenco) --- late July; ltd. 1000 copies
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Film Score Monthly / FSM (USA)
Butterfield 8: Bronislau Kaper at MGM, Vol. 1 (1954-1962) --- Ltd. 1200 copies
Dragon Seed (Herbert Stothhart) --- Ltd. 1000 copies
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GDM (Italy)
Anastasia mio fratello / My Brother Anastasia (Piero Piccioni) --- early Sept.
Drammi Gotici / Gothic Dramas (Ennio Morricone) --- early Sept.
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Intrada (USA)
Maxie (Georges Delerue) --- Ltd. 1200 copies
Mean Season, The (Lalo Schifrin) --- Ltd. 1200 copies
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Kritzerland (USA)
Promises, Promises (Burt Bacharach / Hal David) --- mid. Aug.
Romantic Comedy (Marvin Hamlisch) --- early Aug. / Ltd. 1000 copies
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Lakeshore (USA)
Countdown to Zero (Peter Golub) --- Aug. 17
Dinner for Schmucks (Theodore Shapiro) --- Aug. 3
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La-La Land Records (USA)
Batman (Danny Elfman) --- 2CDs / Ltd. 5000 copies
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Theodore Shapiro)
Krull (James Horner) --- 2CDS / Ltd. 3000 copies
Predators (John Debney)
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MovieScore Media (Sweden)
Deadline (Carlos José Alvarez)
Legend of Silkboy, The (Alan Mayrand)
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Legend (Italy)
Fraulein Doktor (Ennio Morricone) --- mid-Aug. / Ltd. 1500 copies
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Music Market (Italy)
Super Bud Spencer & Terence Hill, Vol. 1 (various) --- early Aug.
Super Bud Spencer & Terence Hill, Vol. 2 (various) --- early Aug.
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Perseverance (USA)
Kickboxer (Paul Herzog) --- early Aug.
No Retreat, No Surrender (Frank Harris) --- early Aug.
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Silva Screen (UK / USA)
Expendibles, The (Brian Tyler) --- late Aug.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Brad Fiedel) --- mid-Aug.
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Tadlow (UK)
Lawrence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre) – early Sept. / 2-CD re-recording
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Toho (Japan)
Mothra (Yuji Koseki) --- early Aug. / 2-CDs
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--30--
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Mark R. Hasan, Editor
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