Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Dino Movie Mayhem on Picture Perfect

I know, I know, strictly speaking, Godzilla is not a dinosaur. Don’t give me any guff. All I’m looking for is an hour’s worth of “fearfully great lizards” (from the Greek), and I don’t care how I get them.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus will be on four films that convey the disastrous results of bringing dinosaurs into the world of men.

“One Million Years B.C.” (1966) features special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and an equally legendary fur bikini, worn by Raquel Welch. Not to be confused with the more recent “10,000 B.C.,” this was actually a Hammer Studios remake of a 1940 Hollywood film, “One Million B.C.” – a fact as little known as the well-kept historical secret that man and dinosaurs did indeed co-exist. With its stop-motion dinosaurs, fur bikinis, and Peter Brady-style volcanoes, this cheese ball classic is a guilty pleasure indeed. The music was by Mario Nascimbene, who wrote one of my favorite scores for Kirk Douglas, “The Vikings.”

Harryhausen also provided the special effects for “The Valley of Gwangi” (1969). Gwangi, a cross between an Allosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex, is discovered by cowboys in a lost valley in Mexico. Lending an air of realism, there is also a clan of Gypsies. Of course, the first thing you want to do when you discover a 14-foot predator is to monetize it by putting it on display for the public employing questionable safety standards. Obviously, none of these cowboys have seen “King Kong.” Gwangi is promptly conscripted into a wild west show, with predictable results.

The music is by Jerome Moross, composer of one of the all-time classic western scores, that for “The Big Country,” and there are musical moments in this film that almost seem as if they’re left over from the earlier classic. Which is fine by me.

Purists, no doubt, will object to my inclusion of Godzilla on a dinosaur program. Godzilla is not, strictly speaking, a dinosaur, but rather a monster unleashed by a nuclear blast. Still, according to the Smithsonian, he has the head and lower body of a Tyrannosaurus, a triple row of dorsal plates like those of a Stegosaurus, the neck and forearms of an Iguanodon, and the tail and skin texture of a crocodile.* No Ray Harryhausen stop-motion effects here. Just some guy in a suit. (Actor and stunt performer Haruo Nakajima played Godzilla 12 consecutive times, beginning with the original film.)

We’ll hear the “Godzilla” theme (1954), composed by Akira Ifukube. And we’ll preface that with a little conversation between Godzilla and Orga, from the 23rd Godzilla movie, “Godzilla 2000: Millennium.”

As he did with the Indiana Jones films, director Steven Spielberg turned to B-movie source material for his visual inspiration for “Jurassic Park” (1993), based on the novel by Michael Crichton. The herky-jerky dinosaur effects of yore are replaced by state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery, in the story of a safari park on a remote island gone wrong. Sure, we’ve come a long way from Raquel Welch getting carried off by a Pteranodon, but admit it, we all still want to see people fighting dinosaurs. Instead of fudging history, now we can feel superior by fudging science. “Jurassic Park” plays on the most recent scientific thinking, with DNA extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber, cloning, and the theory that dinosaurs were not lizards, after all, but rather birds. (Yeah, and Pluto isn’t a planet!) The music is by long-time Spielberg-collaborator, John Williams.

Dinosaurs walk the earth, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

*If we’re going to drag science into the thing, here’s an amusing article I discovered in Smithsonian Magazine, in which paleontologists speculate what dinosaurs may have been a part of Godzilla’s DNA. Before his radioactive mutation that is.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-kind-of-dinosaur-is-godzilla-45639768/?no-ist&fbclid=IwAR24EdNM5di33tj86DHPbteSnliHqkkP8ZtEMfkIC-eowDPRNmtZnSw1ks8

October 13, 2023
Metaphorical Big Cats Movie Music on KWAX

RrrrrrrrrrrrAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus is on metaphorical big cats.

Simone Simon’s barely repressed desires are made manifest in Val Lewton’s “Cat People” (1942). Lewton was a master of suggestion, with a majority of the horrors in his films imagined, rather than seen. Part of the reasoning behind the approach was practical, the result of shoestring budgets imposed by RKO. Whatever the case, the insinuating weirdness undeniably induces psychological chills. In fact, it was only as a concession to the studio that a literal big cat is included at all. The music is by RKO workhorse Roy Webb.

Sean Connery plays a Berber chieftain who faces off against Teddy Roosevelt in “The Wind and the Lion” (1975). In a letter to Roosevelt (played in the film by Brian Keith), Connery’s character writes, “I, like the lion, must stay in my place, while you, like the wind, will never know yours.” Jerry Goldsmith provides one of his best scores for the Moroccan adventure. In fact, he was fairly confident that he finally had a lock on the Oscar. He experienced a harsh reality check when he went to see “Jaws.” (Goldsmith would receive his only Academy Award the following year for his music to “The Omen.”)

Luchino Visconti’s epic telling of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, “The Leopard” (1963), is a melancholy exploration of the fading Sicilian aristocracy. A bewhiskered Burt Lancaster plays Prince Fabrizio, who feels himself slipping into obsolescence. Nino Rota gives the film a full-blooded, operatic soundtrack, full of lyricism and pathos.

Finally, Lyn Murray provides the breezy accompaniment for Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief” (1955), with Cary Grant a reformed burglar, known as The Cat, who attempts to clear himself of some “copycat” crimes, while romancing Grace Kelly on the French Riviera.

Any excuse to get “The Wind and the Lion” and “The Leopard” in the same show!

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of metaphorical big cats, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 6, 2023
Rediscovering Weingartner Composer and Conductor

Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) is best-recognized as a conductor. However, he considered himself equally, if not more so, a composer. He was one of a number of prominent conductors of the day who fit the Mahler paradigm. However, the works of Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, and most others of his profession are very seldom heard.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” as we’ll have a chance to enjoy Weingartner’s Symphony No. 2, from 1901, a fascinating mix of old and new, evidently romantic in disposition, yet very much of its time. The recording will feature the Basel Symphony Orchestra, which he himself directed from 1927 to 1934.

Weingartner held many conducting posts over the years. He succeeded Mahler as principal conductor of the Vienna Hofoper, from 1908 to 1911. He led the Vienna Philharmonic in an official capacity until 1927. He was later chief conductor of the Vienna Volksoper.

He thought very deeply about the problem of the symphony. I remember reading a book he wrote in which he examined the strengths and weaknesses of all the major symphonies written in the shadow of Beethoven, down to the dawn of the 20th century.

He himself composed seven symphonies, with other orchestral works, and thanks to the enterprising cpo.de – classic production osnabrück label (CPO for short), all of them have been recorded.

As a conductor, Weingartner was particularly well-regarded as a Beethoven interpreter. He’d been conducting the Beethoven symphonies as a cycle since at least 1902, and he was the first to complete an integral set of recordings. To round out the hour, we’ll have time to sample the scherzo from the Symphony No. 9, from his superlative recording of 1935.

I hope you’ll join me in raising a glass to Felix Weingartner. That’s “Wine from Weingartner,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Weingartner gets busted in Basel in 1927

September 30, 2023
Yom Kippur Music The Lost Chord on KWAX

Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night at sundown. The Day of Atonement marks the culmination of ten days of awe and repentance. Observed with fasting and prayer, it is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” we offer best wishes for a happy, healthy, and sweet new year with two complementary works inspired by the High Holidays.

Jacob Weinberg’s String Quartet, Op. 55, of 1950, falls into three movements: “Rosh Hashana” (the Jewish New Year), “Yom Kippur,” and “Sukkot.” “Yom Kippur” is based on the cantorial chant “Kol Nidre.” You know, the same melody employed by Max Bruch in his famous cello piece.

Ernest Bloch’s “Israel Symphony,” composed between 1912 and 1917, is more like an orchestral rhapsody in three sections – “Prayer in the Desert,” “Yom Kippur,” and “Succoth” [sic] – played continuously and culminating in parts for four vocal soloists.

Sukkot, which follows Yom Kippur by only five days, is the harvest festival, during which temporary dwellings (or sukkot) are erected to commemorate the Jews’ 40 years wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. In modern times, these are decorated with fruits and vines. In contrast to the austerity and fasting of Yom Kippur, Sukkot is a celebration of life and abundance. But in ancient Israel, it was a solemn affair, with sacrifices offered at the temple.

Welcome the year 5784, with musical reflections of the High Holidays, and then some, on “Totally Awesome,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon.

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 23, 2023
Hemingway on the Big Screen Movie Music’s Picture Perfect

Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette. He lit a match and watched it burn and as it burned he thought of boxers and marlins and the Spanish Civil War. The stories were brave and strong and good. He ordered a mojito and prepared to face the music.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus is on Ernest Hemingway.

Seemingly at odds with Hemingway’s minimalist, “iceberg” style, big screen adaptations of the writer’s work show what the stories don’t tell. In the case of 1946’s “The Killers,” the screenwriters unapologetically just made stuff up, an entire back story explaining the motivations for the hit of boxer “Swede” Anderson. Fortunately, those screenwriters happened to include an uncredited John Huston, who virtually codified noir with “The Maltese Falcon.”

“The Killers” provided Burt Lancaster with his break-out role. It also features a knock-out score by Miklós Rózsa, in which he uses the dum-dee-dum-dum motto later made famous by the television series “Dragnet.”

In 1977, George C. Scott reunited with his “Patton” director, Franklin J. Schaffner, for an adaptation of Hemingway’s posthumously published novel, “Islands in the Stream.” Scott gives one of his best performances as a Hemingway-like figure living on a Caribbean island. “Patton” composer Jerry Goldsmith wrote the music. Goldsmith spoke of it often as his favorite score.

Hemingway himself handpicked the leads for the 1943 adaptation of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman falling in love against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. The music was by the prolific and versatile Victor Young.

And finally, Spencer Tracy is the whole show, as he faces off against a large marlin, in the 1958 version of “The Old Man and the Sea.” Dimitri Tiomkin’s music earned him his fourth Academy Award.

Join me for an hour of laconic grace and stoic manliness on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 15, 2023

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