Bill Wrobel's DVD - Film Score Rundowns

74. Wally’s Show - Heindorf “ “ :17
[dvd 1:17:00]
75. Wally’s Show “ :15
76. A Very Precious Love 1:35
[dvd 1:21:44. The music starts off with the Precious Love theme but at 1:22:18
is a nice “looking” end segment as Marjorie looks for Noel. But I think the seque to this
section actually belongs to # 76 below since that segment lasts only 12 seconds, as
indicated…]
76. Still Looking - Steiner/Heindorf :12
[dvd 1:22:18. See immediately above. I really like this short sequence,
unfortunately the full score to it was missing. However, I delineated what I could in Blog
# 27]
Etc.
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-Signs (2002) *** 1/2 [music ****]
http://www.amazon.com/Signs-Vista-Mel-Gibson/dp/B00005JL3T
This is a pretty entertaining alien movie by M. Night Shyamalan, although not as
scary and paranoia-inducing as Carpenter’s The Thing made 20 years earlier. It has a very
satisfying conclusion that makes everything complete and finalized. The Thing had a far
different type of ending that nevertheless fit the theme of the movie (again, paranoia).
Like that movie, Signs has a great ensemble of stars. I really liked Joaquin Phoenix in his
role as Graham Hess’s (Mel Gibson) brother, Merrill. He had the choice part of being the
hero at the end of movie beating the crap out of that gangly alien with his baseball bat
(“Swing away!”)! Mel Gibson did an admirable performance as well. This obviously was
before he started going off the deep end with his inappropriate behavior that news shows
and Larry King and entertainment shows would feature in the last few years. Now
Charlie Sheen in the headline maker in that area! And I really enjoyed that segment
starting at 00:25:40 in the Army recruitment office that Merrill visited. That little
monolog by SFC Cunningham (acted perfectly by Ted Sutton!) was just terrifically
entertaining. He start off with, “I got it figured….” and then discussed how people
approached him about strangers in the area, in the shadows, covert-like, probing and
evaluating the level of danger, assessing the situation before it is clear for the “rest of
them.” That to me was a showstopper in the movie. Sutton briefly stole the scene, so to
speak. Perfect casting! Too bad he hasn’t done much that I could see from imdb.com.
The music score by James Newton Howard is quite excellent, in my opinion.
Normally I do not gravitate to the current crowd of composers. The last “new” guy I liked
who I thought had a lot of promise was James Horner back in the early Eighties (before
he started going downhill, in my opinion)! I was first aware of Howard’s music way back
in 1986 with Nobody’s Fool (Paul Newman vehicle)—one of my wife’s favorite movies.
I did not think much about the understated music, but it was “ok” or fitting. I saw
Outbreak and The Fugitive and other intervening movies before The Sixth Sense but they
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