Bill Wrobel’s DVD Collection, Review & Music Analysis A man is often known by the company he keeps. I suppose this applies not only to people routinely around him but also to the specific kinds of music and dvds he purchases as a personal collection to enjoy. As John Burroughs wrote in his poem, Waiting : “My own shall come to me.” This is the law of attraction (like attracts like). Now: Food for the soul to me includes music. Music for most people is obviously a pleasure, refined or not, ridiculous or sublime. Music can calm ones nerves in the stresses of life; reminds you of the heavenly; reminds you of beauty while sometimes involved in the ugliness or drudgery of daily life; helps you feel better when life gets you down, and restores harmony and peace (if only temporarily). I happen to love Golden Age and Silver Age music (music that I grew up with), and of course this includes Romantic era classical music especially (Tchaikovsky, Delibes, Wagner, etc.). As most people who read my site already know, my top favorite film composers are Bernard Herrmann and Max Steiner. Then I like Jerry Goldsmith in most cases, Miklos Rozsa, Dimitri Tiomkin, John Barry, and so forth. So obviously I will buy dvds (and cds) that contain their music. I tend to buy more dvds than cds because the music was intended to be paired with the images on the screen. I enjoy both mediums but music married with film is the best or most effective expression since it was meant for that particular art medium. Of course music by composers who tend to specialize in the “Mood Music” school (such as Herrmann) may tend to more successfully translate onto a cd release because it seems to be more abstract music per se than a “mickey-mouse” approach that really needs the film to appreciate its effectiveness. The following list (and reviews with many delineations of the music therein) constitutes my current dvd collection. It will not be organized alphabetically. If you wish to see if I have a certain title you can simply type it in the “Find” under the Edit function of Word if you convert the pdf. This dvd list of mine is not completely reflective of my current tastes because there are now many dvds I can easily toss away. Some I received as gifts. Others I got because the price was really inexpensive and I took advantage of the opportunity. Some movies I thought would be great but, because of the internalized fff sounding--faulty fondness factor (false or inaccurate nostalgia because I hadn’t seen the movie in so many years)--I find out that the movies are actually rather lousy! Other times the movie itself is pretty bad but I buy the dvd simply because I am interested specifically in the music. This happened, for example, with that Tchaikovsky motion picture that Tiomkin composed for. Another example is the horrid and UGLY (the worst four-letter word!) Starship Troopers 2 movie--I believe my only minus or negative rating (below zero!). I only got it to listen to Stromberg’s music for this terrible turkey (read my devastating review of it within the text below somewhere). Other times the movie itself is quite interesting but the score is rather forgettable (such as Horner’s The Perfect Storm). Other times both the movie and the music are top-rated enjoyments (such as Herrmann’s North by Northwest and Journey to the Center of the Earth, Tiomkin’s Guns of Navarone, Steiner’s Helen of Troy and Lion & the Horse, Searle’s The Haunting, etc.). 1 I believe in my review of Starship Troopers (the original) I discussed various “drawers” of composers; for instance, top drawer (A list) would include Herrmann of course, Steiner, Rozsa, Korngold, and perhaps Tiomkin. Second-drawer level composers would include Goldsmith, Williams, and so forth. This does not mean one composer is necessarily above the others or “best” because a so-called lower-drawer composer in comparison may come out with a stunningly beautiful specific score that would rate as a “top-drawer” music composition. Also, a particular composer may hold a “special place in your heart” but this does not necessarily mean his work is objectively “great” (mature, rhythmically complex, harmonically interesting, rich in variation and thematic development, etc.). For example, die-hard fans of John Barry simply feel he is the greatest. That is a valid opinion. I personally quite enjoy his music. Barry’s music resonates quite strongly with such fans. He often delivers the goods in terms of enjoyable music of a mass-market type (James Bond scores, etc.) that is immediately likeable, popular, and so on. This does not mean his music is objectively “top-tier” or “top- drawer” compared to others (such as Korngold, Steiner, Herrmann, Rozsa). Barry’s music is rather simple in comparison, not harmonically complex or varied. Also this list is not completely reflective of my tastes because there are many dvds I would like in my collection but I never got around to buying them! After all, my discretionary money is a bit limited despite my good federal job because I have other priorities like a mortgage and bills to pay, and I tend to want to find a deal before I fork over my hard-earned money. For instance, I usually don’t buy anything from the excellent Warner Archive site (except for what I consider a rare Must-Have-Now item) during the winter-spring-summer months. I wait until Thanksgiving because that is when their dvds are half-off for that Thanksgiving weekend (5 for $50 or 10 for $100). So there are a lot of dvds I would like to have (especially if they include terrific Special Features and commentaries). They include, as examples, I Know Where I’m Going (1945, Wendy Hiller), 12 Angry Men, Psycho, Godfather, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Third Man, The Wizard of Oz, The Shadow –great Goldsmith music-- and so forth. One dvd I will definitely buy was the one my wife & I watched today (Saturday, June 04, 2011) at Regal Theaters, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. It’s excellent. MY last enjoyable Allen movie was Mighty Aphrodite but especially Manhattan Murder Mystery. My favorite Allen movie is Love & Death that I have on old vhs-video instead of dvd (so I probably will not review it here). I also have many other vhs-videos of movies (such as many Max Steiner-scored films) that I cannot or never did get in dvd format, so I probably won’t review them either! Since this is a “Film Score Blog” I will as often as I can provide detailed information regarding the film music. This includes cue sheets information, delineations of the written cues, and whatever else of interest I can offer. Of course many movies I have nothing to offer regarding details of the written music since I never researched them. So I will simply provide a simple review of the movie and the music. Of course any reviewer can do that (provide opinions), so that is why I want to make this long paper a special review project since I had studied many of the scores and can give music score details that all or most other reviewers cannot provide. Some movie and scores I do not 2 need to spend time on since I had already provided online papers on those specific titles (including many Herrmann-scored motion pictures) that the reader can access freely. There will also be dvds that I will not review at all or very sparsely. There are just too many items in this ambitious project and my time is limited! But this paper will serve as a handy vehicle to delineate information on scores that I did not spend much time on (scores that I would not do an “official” separate paper rundown on my site since I don’t have information on most of the cues). This includes Barry’s My Life, Howard’s Vertical Limit, Tiomkin’s High & the Mighty, Goldsmith’s Hollow Man, and so on. Now: My star-ratings below can use even more synonyms! For instance, a minus rating is waste (if you know what I mean). Call it “garbage” if you wish. A four-star rating is generally a “classic” film more or less, but a five-star rating means a “masterpiece.” (not too many of those!). There may be masterpiece movies and scores out there that I did not review here, by the way, simply because I do not own the dvd. A three-star rating is overall average but entertaining. Let’s face it, since this is the mean or average, most movies listed here are going to be three-star pictures (give or take a half rating). That’s partially why I want up to a five-star rating since three is the medium (not including the rare minus rating). I believe I only have one minus rating in this 402-page review. That’s because I instinctively know what is going to be really, really bad (!) or I’ve already seen the movie (or a portion of it) on cable so I refuse to purchase the dvd. At any rate, my star-ratings are as follows: -(minus) Terrible/Worst/Disaster/UGLY Stinker/Repellant/Pathetic 1 *Bad/Lousy/Inferior/Shoddy/Groaner/Turkey/Waste of Time 2 ** Poor/Below Average/Mediocre/Third Class/Some Merits 3 *** Fair/Good/OK/Average/Second Class/Commonplace 4 **** Excellent/Classic/First Class/Superior/High Merit 5 ***** Outstanding/Masterpiece/Extraordinary/Best ******************************* -The Giant Behemoth (1959).