Gutbrain Records

Sunday, 27 April 2008

Bernard Herrmann's score to Blue Denim, which Film Score Monthly released on CD a while back, had never been one of my favorites to listen to. Now that I've just watched the movie, though, I like it quite a bit.

Black-and-white CinemaScope from the '50s, and subject matter that seems wrong for Herrmann's music, a teenage soap opera with sex, pregnancy, abortion, drinking, gambling, drugs, violence, out-of-touch parents, etc., it's actually a really good movie if a bit stagey — it's based on a play — and occasionally pat. Herrmann's music gives it a gravity and urgency that it needs. As is always the case with a Herrmann score, I find it practically impossible to imagine any other music, certainly impossible to imagine better music.

I watched it on Hulu where it's interrupted seven times by Intel ads, sometimes in the middle of a line. "Mom, leave me—" "Intel Inside." "—alone!"