Ever since the beginning of message boards, there have been film music threads about SPARTACUS. With every new announcement of upcoming CDs, someone would invariably (and idiotically) say, “I bet it’s SPARTACUS!” The holy grail of a complete SPARTACUS remained maddeningly elusive for years. But with Alex North’s 100th birthday celebration this year and the 50th [...]

Film is the ideal medium to showcase the visual arts. The lives and work of Frida Kallo (FRIDA), Van Gogh (LUST FOR LIFE) and Jackson Pollock (POLLOCK) have all had varying success in film. While not every painter’s life is necessarily worth exploring, there is something indefinable and inspirational about the visual creation of a [...]

All good things come to those who wait. Fifty years after the release of Stanley Kubrik’s epic film, we finally have the ultimate release of Alex North‘s monumental score for SPARTACUS! Varese Sarabande is releasing an astonishing box set–six CDs featuring all the remaining stereo tracks, the original soundtrack LP rearranged in film order, the entire [...]

A dragon of a very different color is on display in Alex North‘s 1981 score for DRAGONSLAYER. Peter MacNicol stars as young sorcerer’s apprentice Galen, who must slay the dragon Vermithrax in order to save Valerian (Caitlin Clarke) and her village from extinction. This Paramount-Disney co-production didn’t exactly set the box office on fire (pardon [...]

Originally, this month’s “9 on the 9th” post was going to be dedicated to romantic film scores as a precursor to that evil holiday–Valentine’s Day. Then I realized most of what I had on the list was film music that made me cry. Since I had already visited that topic recently, I didn’t want to [...]

I’LL CRY TOMORROW contains one of Susan Hayward’s best performances as singer Lillian Roth (1910-1980). Once dubbed “Broadway’s Youngest Star,” Roth suffered through failed marriages, alcoholism, homelessness, and a suicide attempt. With the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, Roth bounced back in 1953 with television appearance on This Is Your Life, detailing the sordid moments in [...]

Wah-wah… With those two notes, Alex North’s groundbreaking score for A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) ushered jazz elements into the world of dramatic film music. Jazz was no longer content to serve as mere source cues, and audiences didn’t know what to make of this new sound coming from the screen. Tennessee Williams’s psychological drama of [...]

With its bleak vision of an alcoholic British diplomat in Mexico, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 semi-autobiographical novel, UNDER THE VOLCANO, was considered unfilmmable for nearly forty years. Director John Huston returned to his beloved Mexico to film the picture in 1982. When the film was released in June 1984, audiences preferred escapist fare like Indiana Jones [...]

The Music of A Streetcar Named Desire Published in Film Score Monthly Online May 2006 To step aboard A Streetcar Named Desire is to take an emotional and musical journey. Tennessee Williams’ poetic dialogue is music to the ears. And he set his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama in the New Orleans French Quarter, the sounds of [...]

Back in his days with Bay Cities and Fynsworth Alley, Bruce Kimmel produced albums that no one else would touch, many of which probably didn’t sell worth a damn. Two of my favorites include the complete spoken word album of Michael Frayn’s superb Tony Award-winning play Copenhagen and the notorious 1982 musical flop, A Doll’s [...]