Please Release Me (let me go) - Part 2

A few more scores that could do with a little more of them legitimately available on disc:


Starship Troopers - Basil Poledouris

I'm sure Basil Poledouris would be thrilled to see the continued interest in his music since his untimely death a few years ago; the re-recording of Conan is a measure of the esteem in which his music is held. Great though the re-recording is, it's something of a shame the composer wasn't around to wield the baton himself. It's passed into film music folklore than the original release of Starship Troopers almost sent Varese Sarabande broke due to the enormous re-use fees on the score which was (I believe) recorded by two different LA orchestras. Of course, collectors still bitched. Typical. With the far more sane re-use fee arrangements of recent years an expanded disc seems a far more realistic prospect, plus sci-fi scores always do well. Here's hoping.


The Disney scores of Alan Menken & Hans Zimmer

It's never going to happen, Disney are far too precious about their properties to let some small minority group have their way when they can re-re-re-re-release their classic soundtrack albums with yet another shit pop arrangement of the spin off pop song. However, longer versions of Beauty and the Beast, Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Lion King would be rather splendid. The latter two, in particular, are missing considerable amounts from their official CD releases. Zimmer's music for The Lion King got him an Oscar (not that it really counts for much; looking at you Gustavo Santaolalla) but Zimmer only gets a miserly handful of cuts on disc. With any lucky we'll get a re-re-re-release with 46 new versions of the Elton John songs too. On second thoughts...


A Bug's Life - Randy Newman

An unlikely entry, I'm sure you're thinking, but some of the most delightful cues were missed off the official album. One reason (a hunch) is that they were dropped because of the choir (notably Building the Bird and the finale, All is Well which are both marvellous) and Disney didn't want to pay extra for those tracks. In any event, it stands as Newman's finest score for Pixar to date, a terrific, intricate, thematically rich, pseudo-western which deserves to be heard in its entirity.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Danny Elfman

Another unlikely candidate. The obscenely expensive Elfman/Burton boxed set (which I should hopefully be getting in February 2011) contains extra tracks but is sold out and hardly a realistic prospect for the average fan. The existing release is beautifully presented, but a few more underscore tracks to give balance to the above average number of songs would be most welcome. Might be fun to have a bonus disc of orchestra-only versions of the songs too (same applies to the Menken scores too). Here's hoping.

Scrooged - Danny Elfman

OK, OK, I've never seen the film (but have it on my DVD rental list) but the suite on Music for a Darkened Theatre is a delight and it's probably the most high profile thing by Elfman never properly released. Indeed, it's quite possibly the only studio score he's done that's never had a proper release.

Tangled - Alan Menken

I have, it must be said, been listening to a lot of musical theatre of late. However, for all the Sondheim I've devoured, I still come back to Alan Menken's classic efforts for Disney more often than not, notably Beauty and the Beast which is still his high water mark. However, fairytales have been too subverted in the intervening years (Shrek, Enchanted and all that) for the kids of 2010 to take them in quite the same way (although my friend's 3 year old loves the classic Disney films as much as contemporary Pixar films, mainly through not being old enough to get Shrek etc) but Disney's CGI division have had another stab at a fairytale with Rapunzel. Sorry, Tangled. It's all about the hair...

As a stunningly unbiased fan, I couldn't wait to hear Menken's music for Tangled but... ugh... but. Hmmm. It's not that it's bad, as such, just, it's missing something. Whether it's expectations (i.e. I want another Belle or Be Our Guest or Something There) or simply that the producers didn't want the songs to dominate, the entries here are somewhat insubstantial and the tunes surprisingly unmemorable. Be Our Guest is memorable enough to drive you to drink, but only I've Got a Dream comes close to ingratiating itself, but it's the humorous lyrics of Glenn Slater that are most memorable. The other major song players, When Will My Life Begin and Mother Knows Best, suffer from never really taking flight. Mother Knows Best sounds far too much like Ursula from The Little Mermaid and When Will My Life Begin is too fragmented (two reprises, no less) to have the necessary impact.

I See the Light is a lovely ballad, and probably a shoe in for an Oscar nomination, but it's no Whole New World or Beauty and the Beast. Menken's underscore is perhaps the best of the album being typically well wrought with some delightful daring do in Flynn Wanted and the requisite romance and some folksy dance music in Kingdom Dance. It is almost a shame he doesn't score more non-musical films, his melodic sense (even in something like this where the tunes aren't as memorable as his best) wins out, plus he's not ashamed to score it a bit more like a cartoon. There's nothing wrong doing it like that, especially when the musical twists and turns are so expertly handled. Sometimes it's nice to have some Korngoldian intricacy instead of a modern, broad brush approach.

One reviewer of the film commented that Disney seem to feel obligated to make "princess" movies (compared to Pixar who go off in all sorts of interesting directions) and so are continuing this with Tangled. However, they want the knowing aspects of contemporary animated films in there too and it feels like they wanted songs, but nothing that will intrude too much; "if the songs are brief enough, the kids might not notice," kinda thing. They don't have to do much more than be pit stops for the characters to tell them a bit about themselves, rather than actually carry the story along. Yes, I'll blame the filmmakers for Menken coming up a little short on this occasion, but as with all the finest composers working today, Menken's less than top rate is still plenty above most composer's best efforts and still worthy of a recommendation.


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