In the Swedish movie Nightmare
(Nattmara, 1958) , which credits
Per Wahlöö as one of the writers, star Ulla Jacobsson
goes to see The Ipcress File in one scene,
thus giving us glimpses of the Swedish poster
and lobby cards.
Nattmara looks like an interesting movie but I haven't
actually watched it yet.
2018 August 13 • Monday
There's a new Mission: Impossible movie in theatres
right now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary
of the first "new" Mission: Impossible.
The first disc of the set presents Schifrin compositions and the second
music by Jones (with a few cues by other people).
Updating the music for 1988 is done subtly, just by adding
synthesizers and Electronic Wind Instruments to the orchestra. Most of what you hear is variations on and developments of
either the famous main theme or the crucial cue "The Plot",
which pretty much goes with anything. While Schifrin exploits the strings and more linear figures,
Jones is more about the bottom end, using bass and percussion
to move things forward and creating atmospheres. They get to relax once in a while, such as with
Schifrin's very loungey "Usher's Rhumba" or Jones's tender
and delicate reworking of Mission: Impossible motifs for
"When I Grow Up". The two discs make great companions and contrasts. I don't know
how good the actual show was, but the music is brilliant.
2018 August 10 • Friday
New on the Intakt label is Now You Hear Me, a superb studio recording
of Joey Baron and Robyn Schulkowsky.
This comes fifteen years after Dinosaur Dances, their
first drums and percussion duo recording.
In between releases they've been playing together a lot,
in duos, trios and other ensembles. Now You Hear Me pretty much defies description.
Any word or phrase only gets at part of it. It's intense, deep,
often maybe minimalist, the pieces mostly on the long side with
the shortest, "Just Listen" (also the name of a Joey Baron CD),
clocking in at six minutes and the longest, "Passage" running
to almost thirty-three minutes. The music has an organic quality, nothing ever rushed or
overdone, everything unfolding patiently, inexorably and
precisely, yet flowing and breezing, almost always
elemental in some way, nearly always a groove or pulse
felt if not explicitly stated. It was a long wait for this but well worth it. I flew to Germany
to see them perform one time. You can just buy the CD and stay home!
2018 August 08 • Wednesday
The poster for
Stakeout on Dope Street (1958) promises to reveal
"what happens when kids get their hands on dope!".
As someone with an interest in mid-twentieth century pop culture
that involves adolescence and juvenile delinquency, I was
curious to know what this movie says would happen.
They meet up with this guy who appears to be their town's
only junkie for some advice and then they start trying
to get rich by selling the stuff. It's not a great movie but it has nice black and white photography,
much of it shot on location, and a decent west coast jazz score by
Richard Markowitz.
There's also a surprisingly intense cold turkey withdrawal scene.
2018 August 06 • Monday
The 529th Soundtrack of the Week
is Claude Bolling's score for
Le Magnifique.
The movie is presumably a whimsical, post-Bond action/adventure outing
with Jean-Paul Belmondo as a macho hero breezing through the world's
glamor spots and casually excelling at sex and violence.
Going by the titles of the cues, he spends time in Mexico,
specifically Acapulc: "Arrivée à Acapulco", the main title
and "La Mort de Rodriguez" are all exercises in Mexican
folk music idioms. There's also a standard "middle eastern" cue for "Bob Saint-Clar à Bagdad". Despite the familiarity of these pieces, satisfying conventions of the
genre as much as I expect the writing, costumes, sets and everything else
did, they're all very well done. Speaking of expected conventional elements, there's even
the extremely familiar Paris musette piece played by accordion.
It's called "Paris Musette". But things do get interesting, though. The combination of
fuzz guitar and percussion in "Dans Les Griffes De Karpoff", for example;
the slinky and syncopated jazziness of "Informateur à l'aéroport" (which
bursts into percussion ensemble unexpectedly at the end);
the lounge anthem "Paradise".
"Bain de Sang" is a short but powerful fusion of
rock, jazz, non-European percussion and orchestral music. "Balade en Hélicoptèr" is also a terrific love theme. There's also a great, extremely laidback shake number, "Charron
Dance". The first part sounds a bit like "Tequila" but the B
section turns into a minor key. It's pretty awesome. It would
be great for a scene in which tranquilized mermaids
go-go dance underwater. Less enervated without being fully awake is "Pop Mod",
an electric piano-driven slab of grooviness. This release has the original soundtrack on one CD and the
album presentation on another, which is a lot of music,
but that's a good thing!
2018 August 03 • Friday
This new collection of Weegee photographs, Extra! Weegee,
might be the best one ever.
There are two reasons that this book is essential.
First, it makes use of a previously unknown collection of Weegee photographs
that were stored in an archive in Cleveland, OH. That's 359 pictures of which
many have never been published prior to this volume. Second, the book reproduces Weegee's own typewritten captions
to his photographs, which I don't think I've ever seen before,
even in the Weegee exhibit at the International Center of Photography.
(As far as I can remember.) This collection is done right, with handsome reproductions and
what appears to be good quality paper stock. The photographs
are divided into thematic sections like Fire, Crime, Dead,
Strikes, Crash etc. It's hard to put into words how fascinating and valuable
this book is. Suffice it to say that if you have even the
slightest interest in this kind of thing, you want this book.
2018 August 01 • Wednesday
The Angry Red Planet (1959) doesn't have great reviews but I
really enjoyed it.
The special effects were created at least in part by a process
called CineMagic, which apparently didn't work the way it was supposed to.
The crew of four astronauts encounter some cool monsters on the planet.
First up is this giant carnivorous plant.
Then there's this rat bat spider monster.
A giant amoeba monster that comes out of a Martian lake.
And I think this is an actual Martian, as in the dominant species.
We get a look at it from inside the ship as well, without the red saturation.
The four astronauts track quite closely with the four astronauts
who became the Fantastic Four. From left to right this could be Reed
Richards, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm and Susan Storm.
Here's the Martian city they see only from a distance.
There are some interesting things happening behind the camera also.
Paul Dunlap's music is subtle and atmospheric throughout and unexpectely
comes out swinging and jazzy for the end credits.
And I would guess that part of the reason the movie looks so
good is because the great Stanley Cortez is credited with shooting it.
As far as product placement goes, all of the equipment in the rocket
is made by the Burroughs corporation, still around but known as
Unisys now, and the same Burroughs family that includes writer William S.
Burroughs.
If you like this kind of thing I imagine you'd like The Angry
Red Planet, though it certainly has its flaws.
