Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ennio Morricone

Spaghetti Western Music for Father’s Day on KWAX

This week on “Picture Perfect,” for Father’s Day, it’s a fistful of spaghetti for Dad.

We’ll be sampling an hour’s worth of distinctive scores from spaghetti westerns – ultra-cool, hyper-stylized entertainments, made by Italians but often shot in Spain, with their multinational casts heavily dubbed in post-production.

Spaghetti westerns frequently turned the conventions of American westerns on their heads. At any rate, the morality of the traditional western was made much murkier, with antiheroes cast as protagonists, usually motivated by greed and revenge. Especially greed.

As with the American film industry, only more so, when the Italians found something that worked, they went into overdrive, churning out literally dozens of knock-offs and imitations a year, until a given genre had run its financially lucrative course.

To this end, over 600 European westerns were produced between 1960 and 1980. The most influential of these were those directed by Sergio Leone, especially those of the so-called “Dollars” Trilogy – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

These, of course, featured then-rising star Clint Eastwood. His co-star in the second and third films was Lee Van Cleef, who in American westerns such as “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” had bit parts as one of the villain’s henchmen, but became an international superstar as the spaghetti western’s most reliable – and bankable – heavy.

We’ll sample from music for the “Dollars” Trilogy, composed by Ennio Morricone, and the “Sabata” Trilogy (which also starred Van Cleef), composed by Marcello Giombini.

Tell Dad it’s all-you-can-eat. We’ll be piling the plates high with music from spaghetti westerns, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 13, 2025
Remembering Pope Francis Compassion and Influence

It used to be common sense, handed down by those who learned it through hard experience, never to discuss religion or politics. But I hope it’s uncontroversial to state, regardless of one’s personal convictions or interpretation of Scripture or feelings about the Church, Pope Francis was a good man. He was a voice of compassion in an often cruel world that of late seems to be racing downhill on a banana peel. No one in his position could ever be all things to all people, but the very fact that in at least one of the world’s highest and most influential offices there was an adult with his hand on the tiller was somehow reassuring. May his successor continue to be a moderating influence. R.I.P.

Ennio Morricone, “Mass for Pope Francis”

April 21, 2025
Ennio Morricone Birthday Tribute & “Ennio” on Kanopy

Remembering Ennio Morricone on his birthday.

The streaming platform Kanopy is highlighting Giuseppe Tornatore’s epic Morricone documentary, “Ennio” (2021), among its featured offerings for November.

There was something about the then-young filmmaker that struck a chord with the composer when he agreed to write the music for “Cinema Paradiso” in 1988. The movie went on to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and of course the music became one of Morricone’s most beloved scores. Morricone scored every one of Tornatore’s films thereafter. Whenever he pondered retirement in an interview, he was always careful to mention that he might be tempted back by another Tornatore project. His final film score was for Tornatore’s “Correspondence” in 2016.

I posted some observations on the documentary after watching it in March. You’ll pardon me if my “review” wound up being almost as long as the movie!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1314087782843615&set=a.883855802533484

Access to Kanopy is free with your public library card, but you’ll need to sign up if you don’t already have an account..

View the trailer here:

November 10, 2024
De Palma’s Picture Perfect Soundtracks

Brian De Palma is an extraordinarily adept filmmaker, who has been criticized for his adherence to “genre trash.” He has always been attracted to suspense and crime thrillers, usually of an especially violent nature, many of them tinged with horror.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Hallowe’en right around the corner, we’ll hear music from four of De Palma’s films.

It’s hardly surprising that such an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock would also hire Hitch’s signature composer. Bernard Herrmann scored two films for De Palma – “Sisters,” in 1973, and “Obsession,” in 1976.

“Obsession” is a spin on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” A botched rescue attempt results in the death of a businessman’s kidnapped wife. Years later, he encounters someone who could be her doppelganger. The film stars Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow, and a very tan Cliff Robertson.

“The Fury,” from 1978, is a supernatural thriller based on a novel by John Farris. Two teenagers, endowed with powers of telekinesis and extra-sensory perception, are targeted by researchers who plan to harness them for their own nefarious ends. For a time, Kirk Douglas has fun as a former CIA agent, and John Cassavetes is a particularly slimy villain. Cassavetes’ comeuppance makes for one of the most memorable movie endings of its era – and we’ll leave it at that!

Critic Pauline Kael praised the music, which is by none other than John Williams – hot off his third Academy Award, for “Star Wars” – characterizing it as “as elegant and delicately varied a score as any horror film has ever had.”

Of course, “The Fury” was not the first De Palma film to deal with telekinesis. His adaptation of Stephen King’s “Carrie,” from 1976, became one the decade’s landmark horror films. It broadened King’s popularity and propelled De Palma into the A-list of Hollywood directors. It also essentially launched the careers of Amy Irving, John Travolta, and Nancy Allen, among others. Sissy Spacek was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the title role, as was Piper Laurie as Carrie’s overbearing, fundamentalist mother.

The music was by Pino Donaggio. The director had wanted to continue his collaboration with Herrmann, but the composer died before the film could be completed. Donaggio, though classically trained, made his fortune writing popular songs. His biggest hit was “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” which was recorded by Dusty Springfield and treated to a well-known cover by Elvis Presley. Donnagio went on to become a regular De Palma collaborator, providing the music for seven of his films.

Finally, we’ll turn our back on horror, to listen to music from a successful period crime thriller, loosely based on the real-life exploits of Eliot Ness and his fellow prohibition agents – “The Untouchables,” from 1987. Kevin Costner plays the by-the-book federal agent who is given a valuable lesson in street smarts by an Irish beat cop played by an Academy Award winning Sean Connery. (“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone.”) Capone is played, incidentally, by a baseball bat wielding Robert De Niro.

The score is by Ennio Morricone. Morricone, of course, was propelled to fame through his work on Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. He applies some of that same mythmaking skill to this big screen adaptation, which had previously been published as a memoir and developed into a popular television series starring Robert Stack. The high point of the film must be the director’s nail-biting homage to Sergei Eisenstein, a slow motion shoot-out around a baby carriage as it teeters down the stairs of Chicago Union Station.

Start your weekend with a step in the right direction, with music from the films of Brian De Palma, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 4, 2024
Summer Movie Music From Across the Pond

With just a little over a week left in August, summer has nearly run its course, but there’s still time for a quick European vacation. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we glance across the pond for an hour of music from foreign films with summer settings.

“A Summer Story” (1988), based on a tale of John Galsworthy, tells of a young London lawyer and a farm girl who fall profoundly in love at the turn of last century. Georges Delerue provides the poignant score.

The juxtaposition of “Igmar Bergman” and “comedy” may seem like something of an oxymoron, but the dour Swede’s “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955) proves to be a witty examination of the folly of the human heart. Frequent Bergman collaborator Erik Nordgren wrote the music.

Director Yves Robert adapted the memoirs of Marcel Pagnol, who spent his childhood summers in the south of France, into two lovely films, “My Father’s Glory” and “My Mother’s Castle” (both 1990). We’ll hear music composed for both by Vladimir Cosma. Pagnol’s experiences in Provence marked him for life, informing the films and writings of his maturity, including “The Baker’s Wife,” and “Jean de Florette.”

Finally, we’ll have a generous sampling from one of Ennio Morricone’s most beloved scores, that for “Cinema Paradiso” (1988). “Cinema Paradiso,” set in a post-war Sicily where it seems always to be summer, is a nostalgic paean to the shared experience of film and the significance it holds in our lives. It won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Join me for summer overseas this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 23, 2024

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