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 Post subject: Thank you for a nice...
PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 7:40 pm 
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Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2005 3:48 pm
Posts: 2773
1/10/12

Thank you for a nice response to our Michael Kamen double-header. The start of the new year is monkeying with our scheduling... or, rather our manufacturing plant is. Ok, it's even possible (albeit unlikely) we're making a mess of it ourselves. Whichever it may be, thank you for your understanding while we get things back into our normally reliable every-two-weeks routine. In fact, it appears Road House will arrive just a day or two ahead of the next two new releases, slated for January 24. Plenty of stuff to choose from.

THE SAND PEBBLES. As in, I can't get enough of it lately. I'm pumped up enough to want to share an observation with you folks that probably isn't obvious to most people. It's a part of the musical architecture, and it's an amazing little device! Thanks to new restoration work done by Mike Matessino and Nick Redman, you should notice improved stereo separation, especially with the violins on the left, violas in the center and celli on the right. Also, percussion tracks are balanced more in keeping with the actual multi-channel film presentation than the old two-track mixes made back in '66. Anyway, so what you might not have noticed. Of course, it may be small potatoes to you, but it's really cool to me. Bear with me. Julie Kirgo touches on this in her notes, so I'm just elaborating. Hopefully it'll bring you new depth to this amazing, multi-layered score.

Check out the "Main Title". You'll hear strings in the minor, playing notes and sliding down a half-step, landing on chords, sliding back up, slowly forming what amounts to a four-note motif. It's there all the way through the piece. No main theme, no love theme, no San Pablo theme, no Chinese love theme. Nope. Nada. Just the sliding minor key idea growing louder and louder. So why does Jerry Goldsmith avoid his tunes and create his all-important main title from such a seemingly unimportant idea? Here's what gets me excited.

This idea disappears completely after those opening credits, all the way until the famous "Death Of A Thousand Cuts" sequence. With the killing of a central character who was close to Jake Holman (Steve McQueen), this sliding motif finally returns here... linking Holman permanently to the death of his friend, and the crisis of conscience he now begins to undergo. The death troubles him deeply, the motif reminds us of where the score truly began. Then the idea goes away again, for a long long time. With absolute genius, Goldsmith brings it back for just a brief moment when, late in the movie as the final battle approaches, Holman stares through the sights of his Browning Automatic Rifle, only to immediately recall the tragic death of his friend earlier, courtesy that same rifle. He puts the weapon down a moment, the sliding motif again goes away. But his conscience still grinds. And, in another musical stroke of genius, the idea enters yet briefly again when Holman becomes responsible for another tragic death, this time of a young student. Finally, when the picture is over, and this crisis of conscience has found closure, Goldsmith says a final farewell to the idea. Wow! For a score with so much thematic material, so much to work with, only an utter genius like Goldsmith would find the entire emotional core of a mammoth picture like this and then write to it with such a tiny motif so judiciously placed. So, again. Wow!


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