Bill Wrobel's DVD - Film Score Rundowns

Incidentally, you can see Young being interviewed on the Dimitri Tiomkin special
feature in Disc Two of the Making of the High & the Mighty in, of course, the two dvd
set of The High & the Mighty. Hmmm, he looks familiar to me. He looks a bit like John
Morgan, and the same mannerisms of speaking to some extent.
I particularly liked the space shuttle cue that starts dvd 00:10:58. Aaron Eckhart is
the lead star playing Doctor John Keyes, a geophysicist, who discovers that the earth’s
core has stopped rotating. He’s the star of the hot movie playing now (not the lukewarm
Core in the box office) titled Battle: Los Angeles (another sci-fi film). I like Stanley
Tucci too, though he was in a bar better role in the terrific The Big Night. Hilary Swank is
fine too. I also really liked seeing Bruce Greenwood here as the shuttle commander,
Iverson.
I was fond of the creative opening credits showing the familiar Paramount
mountain logo and how the camera moves towards it and down into it (into the earth’s
core!). Clever and fun touch. The watch stopping on that corporate guy who soon dies on
a boardroom glass table was interesting. Around seven minutes into the movie was the
scene in London when the birds panic and fly blind everywhere. Of course it reminds
most people of Hitchcock’s The Birds. The music effect at the end of this sequence when
the birds depart into the high sky (dvd 00:09:12 thru 00:09:23 is effective. Maybe Young
used low � tones but I do not know since I don’t have the score recipe! BY the way,
listen to the director’s commentary. Jon Amiel gives a good one here, very informative,
with lots of interesting side comments such as steady cam shots (dvd 00:21:00); about
using a motion control camera at half speed to create double speed effect (dvd 00:40:16);
about an alternate space shuttle landing in the original script (for LAX) that was
abandoned because of the refusal of authorities to shoot there since 9/11. He comments
glowingly on the music twice—once at the space shuttle introduction scene, and next at
about 1 hour and 57 minutes into the movie and referred to Bernard Herrmann!
There is several of what I call freeze-frame shots—picturesque scenes that you
take out and enjoy artistically or whatever. Of course Forbidden Planet had a multitude
of such frames! Compared to Journey to the Center of the Earth, of course The Core is
nowhere as imaginative and visually captivating, but it has its moments. I liked the
amethyst-colored huge crystals set and special effects (see dvd 1:07:04 and 1:07:28).
Some of the destruction scenes are interesting but they can be a bit too much (overdone).
-The Birds (1963) **** [no official music score] [music (Wrobel) *****] : )
http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Collectors-Rod-
Taylor/dp/0783240236/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1292899291&sr=1-1
I consider this an excellent Hitchcock movie, better than the upcoming Marnie
and Torn Curtain. I am a Rod Taylor fan, and since this is one of his better movies, I
particularly like this movie! One major omission regarding this movie: There is no
Bernard Herrmann score. Bad move, a sad decision, Benny!
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