Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Film Scores

Christmas Movie Music Stocking Stuffers on KWAX

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s a yuletide treat: I hope you’ll join me for an hour of musical stocking stuffers.

We’ll begin with selections from “Miracle on 34th Street,” from 1947. Maureen O’Hara, Natalie Wood, and Edmund Gwenn star. Gwenn won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Kris Kringle. Cyril J. Mockridge’s alternately bustling and sentimental score employs “Jingle Bells” as its Santa motif.

Then, drawing from the countless adaptations of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” we’ll turn to a 1938 version, featuring Reginald Owen as Scrooge. Franz Waxman’s music draws on traditional carols and, when Scrooge undergoes his Christmas morning transformation, a sly riff on Georges Bizet’s “Jeux d’enfants.”

For those who enjoy a little carnage with their Christmas, we’ll also hear selections from “Home Alone.” The 1990 film, in which diminutive Macaulay Culkin subjects would-be burglars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern to a battery of cartoon violence, features a candy-coated score by John Williams.

There are those who consider “Ben-Hur” to be among the greatest film scores of all-time. From Miklós Rózsa’s work on the 1959 Oscar champ, we’ll hear music from the film’s opening Nativity sequence.

Then, Cary Grant plays an angel who answers the prayers of David Niven, attempting to raise funds for a new cathedral, in “The Bishop’s Wife.” Along the way, Grant also happens to fall for Lauretta Young. Monty Woolley, Elsa Lanchester, and James Gleason add to the whimsy. This charming 1947 romantic fantasy sports a memorable score by Hugo Friedhofer.

Finally, any sentiment in “The Holly and the Ivy,” from 1952, is hard-earned. Ralph Richardson plays the clueless patriarch of a troubled family, a village parson more concerned with his parishioners than those living under his own roof. When the family reunites for Christmas, longstanding frictions continue to wear, but they are gradually resolved. Malcolm Arnold’s score gives little hint of the film’s inherent drama. However, he does provide some boisterous arrangements of some familiar carols.

Pour yourself a cup of cocoa and settle in for a cinematic Christmas. Yule be glad you did, 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 EST/5:00 PM PST

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

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

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

December 20, 2024
National Geographic TV Music After Thanksgiving

On the day after Thanksgiving, with the house alive with memories and perhaps a few lingering relatives, enjoy an hour of music from television “events” that once appealed to the entire family.

Years in advance of modern cable, at the very dawn of color television, the National Geographic Society aired its first “special” on September 10, 1965. The program, titled “Americans on Everest,” featured stunning footage taken from the summit of the world’s tallest peak. These specials really were special, with breathtaking images and real-life adventures unlike anything previously experienced in American living rooms.

Three months later, viewers were introduced to the familiar “National Geographic Theme,” which was composed by Elmer Bernstein for the third of the broadcast specials, “Voyage of the Brigantine Yankee.” When one realizes that Bernstein also wrote the score for “The Magnificent Seven,” it becomes one of those “Ah ha!” moments. Both themes remain among the most recognized by American audiences.

National Geographic went on to work with a number of the top film composers of the day. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll travel the world with four of them.

Bernstein, who was also responsible for the music for “The Ten Commandments,” “The Great Escape,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” returned in 1967 to write the music for a follow-up to “Voyage of the Brigantine Yankee,” called “Yankee Sails Across Europe.”

Ernest Gold, composer of “Exodus,” was engaged in 1972 to write the score for “The Last Vikings,” a documentary about the inhabitants of the rugged northern coast of Norway, who at the time still practiced some of the traditions followed centuries before by their Norse forebears. Gold’s score is a good example of what a talented composer can accomplish through an economy of means – in this case, a wind ensemble, harp, cello and percussion.

Leonard Rosenman, a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions, and Luigi Dallapiccola – a most unlikely pedigree on which to build a career in Hollywood – wrote classic scores for “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Fantastic Voyage.” He also composed the music for one of the best known of the National Geographic specials, “Dr. Leakey and the Dawn of Man,” in 1966.
Finally, Jerome Moross wrote a charming and buoyant Americana score for “Grizzly!,” which aired in 1967. Moross, of course, was the composer of one of the all-time great western scores, for “The Big Country.”

Naturally, we’ll also get more than our share of that iconic National Geographic theme. All of this music was issued on limited edition compact discs from the Intrada label.

I hope you’ll join me for music from outstanding television documentaries produced by National Geographic, 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 EST/5:00 PM PST

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

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

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

November 29, 2024
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
Confidence Men Movie Music on KWAX

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase that’s often been associated with P.T. Barnum (who likely never said it). From our perspective in November 2024, we know there couldn’t possibly be that many gullible people. Could there?

All the same, this week on “Picture Perfect,” I stand to make a bundle with an hour of cinematic shell-games. We’ll hear musical selections from films about confidence men, charlatans, and hucksters.

In “The Magician” (1958), also known as “The Face,” Ingmar Bergman explores the idea of theatre as both confidence game and beautiful mystery. Max von Sydow stars as a traveling illusionist whose troupe of strolling entertainers, The Magnetic Healing Theatre, is put to test before being granted permission to perform at the royal court. The score, by Erik Nordgren, is sparse, made up of a dozen very short pieces for harp and two guitars, some movements for brass band, and in the main title, the addition of percussion.

George C. Scott plays Mordecai Jones, a confidence man who defrauds the populace of the American South through various means, with a specialty in rigged punchboards, in “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967). The film, shot on location in Kentucky by director Irvin Kershner, features a gallery of colorful character actors, including Jack Albertson, Slim Pickens, Strother Martin and Harry Morgan. The happy-go-lucky score, by Jerry Goldsmith, makes use of harmonica, banjo, and freewheeling honky-tonk piano.

Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) is based on the real-life exploits of the chameleonic Frank Abagnale, who, before his 19th birthday, manages to successfully pull a series of cons worth millions of dollars. Along the way, he poses convincingly as a lawyer, a doctor, and a pilot. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Abagnale, and Tom Hanks, the bank fraud agent who develops an unusual relationship with him, as the light-hearted cat-and-mouse thriller unfolds. John Williams wrote the intimate and jazzy score, a throwback to the musical syntax of caper films of the 1960s, but also to the composer’s own jazz roots (when he still went by “Johnny Williams”).

Finally, we’ll hear music from that classic of religious hucksterism, “Elmer Gantry” (1960). Burt Lancaster plays the hard-drinking, fast-talking salesman-turned-revivalist, in one of the great movie performances. Lancaster was recognized with a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor. Shirley Jones, of “The Partridge Family” fame, won Best Supporting Actress for playing one of Gantry’s shady ladies. The film’s brilliant score was by none other than André Previn.

You can listen with “confidence” to “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 EST/5:00 PM PST

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

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

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

November 8, 2024
Theremin Sounds from Classic Sci-Fi & Horror Films

We all know the sound. That crazy, trilled electronic whistle that dips into a whoop. Or it starts in a trough and shoots up into the super stratosphere. It’s the sound of UFOs and mad science. It’s the sound of the theremin.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we anticipate a hands-off Halloween with selections from four films enhanced by Leon Theremin’s visionary instrument.

“The Thing from Another World” was one of two seminal science fiction scores written in 1951. (The other was Bernard Herrmann’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”) On the soundtrack, the theremin acts as a musical counterpart to James Arness’ rampaging humanoid carrot. This was unquestionably composer Dimitri Tiomkin’s wildest hour; he never wrote anything like it again.

“The Thing” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” may have been the most influential, but “Rocketship X-M” was the first. The film was rushed into production to beat George Pal’s “Destination Moon” to theaters in 1950. It was shot in just 18 days! The unlikely plot has the crew of a moon expedition blown off course to Mars. Interestingly, the composer was none other than Ferde Grofé – he of the “Grand Canyon Suite” fame.

Far more reputable, but still not wholly comfortable with its science, is Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” from 1945. Gregory Peck plays an amnesiac, who may or may not have committed murder, and Ingrid Bergman is the psychoanalyst who falls in love with him. The film is of greatest interest for its production design, which features dream sequences conceived by Salvador Dali, and for its score, by Miklós Rózsa.

Hitchcock disliked the music – he thought it got in the way of his direction – but Academy voters disagreed, and the score earned Rózsa the first of his three Academy Awards.

Closer to our own time, Howard Shore incorporated the theremin into his Mancini-esque music for “Ed Wood,” released in 1991. The film is Tim Burton’s love letter to the grade-Z director of “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” “Plan 9” is widely regarded as the worst movie ever made (worse even than “Rocketship X-M”).

Make contact with the theremin – its distinctive, extraterrestrial timbre, you’ll recall, conjured without physical touch – on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

FUN FACT: On three of the four movies from which scores we’ll be sampling (“Spellbound,” “Rocketship X-M,” and “The Thing”), the original thereminist was Samuel Hoffman. Hoffman played in dozens of Hollywood films in the 1940s and ‘50s. By day, he worked as a podiatrist!

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 25, 2024

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