{"id":135,"date":"2010-10-02T12:28:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T16:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?page_id=135"},"modified":"2012-01-28T19:03:25","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T00:03:25","slug":"mftm-march-2008-online-edition","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?page_id=135","title":{"rendered":"MFTM: March, 2008 (Online Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>: \u00a0Home<\/a> \/\u00a0DVD Music Column (Music from the Movies<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

MARCH 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

Made two years before Toru Takemitsu\u2019s untimely death in 1996,\u00a0Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu<\/strong> is the final volume in the quartet of composer documentaries produced in the 1990s and released on DVD in the fall of 2007 by Kultur, and alongside the previously reviewed\u00a0Bernard Herrmann<\/a> doc, Charlotte Zwerin\u2019s film is the most concise yet personable portrait of a genuine artist whose career easily could\u2019ve continued for many more years in the concert and film worlds.<\/p>\n

Takemitsu wasn\u2019t prolific, and that\u2019s perhaps partly due to his devoting time to concert works, and his very picky nature in choosing a film: it simply had to move him in some way.<\/p>\n

Whether it was for the rare project outside of Japan or another score for one of several filmmakers with which he enjoyed long if not fruitful associations \u2013 Akira Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda, and Hiroshi Teshigahara \u2013 Takemitsu could recognize from an early screening of coarse rushes whether a project was worth the effort.<\/p>\n

He never seemed to be an artist who took film work for extra income; a quick scan of his fairly modest filmography reveals films that were frequently strong social commentaries on Japanese issues rarely depicted or addressed in movies.<\/p>\n

Zwerin\u2019s direction is very simple and concise, and in her past work she\u2019s focused her camera lens on subjects in very personable moments of reflection \u2013 qualities redolent of her association with Albert and David Maysles as co-director on\u00a0Salesman<\/strong> (1968),\u00a0Gimme Shelter<\/strong> (1970),Running Fence<\/strong> (1978), or as their editor on the brothers\u2019 early shorts,\u00a0A Visit with Truman Capote<\/strong> and the infamous\u00a0Meet Marlon Brando<\/strong> (both 1966).<\/p>\n

Her final work, which included\u00a0Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser<\/strong>(1988) and\u00a0Ella Fitzgerald: Something to Live For<\/strong> (1999) dealt with musicians and composers, and in both films Zwerin drew from archival sources and current interviews and distilled the bare essentials of what made each subject unique within his\/her idiom.<\/p>\n

Takemitsu<\/strong> deals exclusively with the composer\u2019s film work, and contains many film clips that address his peculiar obsession to create natural sounds using a musician\u2019s performance techniques, engineering tweaks, and sometimes focusing only on specific sound effects performed, recorded, and edited into sharp musical statements. \u201cEvery single sound can be film music,\u201d says the composer, and he describes his approach as being evocative of the design for the circular, spiraling pathways within a Japanese garden: it\u2019s a journey that emphasizes the sound, images, and textures of natural living things, which in film dramas include the performances and emotions and themes of some very obsessive directors.<\/p>\n

The film extracts span seminal works within Japan\u2019s New Wave movement \u2013Woman of the Dunes<\/strong> (1964) figures most prominently, as do other works by Teshigahara \u2013 and they illustrate how Takemitsu scored power struggles, paranoia, and fractured family relations, plus the two big subjects that often dominate his work: murder and suicide.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s admits to being baffled as to how he got pigeon-holed as one of the primary composers for these heavy, dour subjects, but Takemitsu also confesses an attraction to the eroticism that can be portrayed in films.Woman of the Dunes<\/strong> is erotic, but Takemitsu\u2019s music is the farthest approach to such subject matter when compared to the standard Hollywood style.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Takemitsu feels he may have been the first composer to feature Japanese instruments and musical concepts from his culture when many Japanese film composers emulated the western style of American and European composers. One gets a sense this remained an ongoing battle, as his original pitch to score Kurosawa\u2019s\u00a0Ran<\/strong> with human voices was ultimately nixed in favour of Mahler (which he regards, years later, as a good choice, but less risky and appropriate than the vocal approach originally vetted by the director).<\/p>\n

In addition to many interviews with renowned Japanese film directors, there\u2019s two short interviews with historian Donald Ritchie, and some rare vintage clips of the composer with his fellow New Wave filmmakers from the sixties, a clips of Takemitsu on the\u00a0Ran<\/strong> set, and the composer recording some of his score for Philip Kaufman\u2019s wonky\u00a0Rising Sun<\/strong> \u2013 arguably the film that brought the composer some western attention when Fox released the super-short score on CD.<\/p>\n

Japanese composer\/rock star Ryuishi Sakamoto still remains a bit of a reclusive enigma in that he\u2019s granted few interviews regarding his film composing, so Criterion\u2019s massive 4-disc set for Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s\u00a0The Last Emperor<\/strong> is unique for some rare on-camera interviews, albeit mostly from archival sources.<\/p>\n

Co-composer David Byrne fares much better in the set \u2013 he was interviewed in November of 2007, and is featured in an edited 25 min. piece on Disc 4 \u2013 but his background as a rock star also puts Sakamoto into perspective, since both composers shared similar rock backgrounds and were both assembled by director Bertolucci to score a period Chinese film \u2013 probably the most atypical film for anyone whose main performance venue rested in front of massive youth audiences.<\/p>\n

Interpolated between Byrne\u2019s detailed comments are extracts from the composer\u2019s synth demo sketches set against specific scenes, and music samples that Byrne struggled to distill into the kind of sounds he could use in his cues without delving into Chinoiserie, a clich\u00e9d Western use of Chinese imagery larded into European art.<\/p>\n

The most engaging aspect is how Byrne explains his efforts to evoke Chinese culture without being \u201cinsulting\u201d and be faithful without being \u201cauthentic.\u201d Also of note is his take on Bertolucci\u2019s musical preference \u2013 themes, variations, practical application \u2013 and his comments on a few specific cues, which really shows how the film\u2019s overall score was a rare, successful integration of material by three composers (Sakamoto, Byrne, and Con Su), and not just one with minor supportive cues.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s certainly the impression the original soundtrack album gives, since it favours Sakamoto\u2019s exquisite symphonic material which are more classical and western, whereas Byrne\u2019s material is more evocative of period Chinese music \u2013 something even Byrne notes in the closing minutes of the interview.<\/p>\n

This is also illustrated within a 13 min. chunk of Paolo Brunatto\u2019s 1986 onset documentary,\u00a0Bernardo Bertolucci\u2019s Chinese Adventure<\/strong>, basically a making-of doc, that contains shots of Sakamoto recording his main themes at Abbey Road Studios, Byrne (seen in black & white film) at his recording session, and each composer reflecting on their dual careers as artists, performing live versus on a recording stage, and Bertolucci\u2019s influence (\u201cIn Bertolucci, I saw what an artist should be like,\u201d says Byrne).<\/p>\n

Criterion\u2019s 4-disc set, due out Tuesday February 26th, 2008, includes the original theatrical cut, the longer TV cut, and several hour-long documentaries (some archival, others more recent) covering the film\u2019s production.<\/p>\n

Lastly, although released a few weeks prior to the Oscar telecast,\u00a0Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection \u2013 15 Winners, 26 Nominees<\/strong>, available as a 3- and scaled-down 2-disc\u00a015 Winners<\/strong> edition, includes several short cartoons with isolated music-only tracks, much like their annual\u00a0Golden Age of Looney Tunes<\/strong> sets, although here the breadth of material also mines the MGM cartoon library, too (with Tom and Jerry plus Droopy shorts).<\/p>\n

In the 3-disc set, Disc 1 has \u201cSpeedy Gonzales\u201d and Eugene Poddany\u2019s music for \u201cThe Dot and the Line,\u201d whereas Disc 2 has only commentary tracks.<\/p>\n

Disc 3 has the best of the lot, and contains \u201cLittle Johnny Jet,\u201d the stereo tracks of Scott Bradley score for the CinemaScope Tom and Jerry short \u201cTouch\u00e9, Pussy Cat!\u201d plus archival vocal outtakes (with bridge commentary) for the Christmas short \u201cGood Will to Men,\u201d giggle-heavy recording session outtakes for \u201cTabasco Road,\u201d and the score for \u201cOne Droopy Night.\u201d Some of the outtake material was discovered when TCM and FSM was prepping their Scott Bradley 2-CDc set, of which material is featured on\u00a0Tom and Jerry & Tex Avery Too! Vol. 1: The 1950s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan (2008)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: \u00a0Home \/\u00a0DVD Music Column (Music from the Movies) . MARCH 2008 Made two years before Toru Takemitsu\u2019s untimely death in 1996,\u00a0Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu is the final volume in the quartet of composer documentaries produced in the 1990s and released on DVD in the fall of 2007 by Kultur, and alongside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":121,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8nuyW-2b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions\/1467"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}