Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Five favorite expanded score albums or box sets of 2008

In this age of the cell phone, Metropolis no longer has phone booths that can double as changing rooms, so Superman is fucked.
5. Superman: The Music (Film Score Monthly)
This staggering eight-disc set compiles the scores from all four Christopher Reeve Superman movies and contains a beautifully designed mini-book filled with exhaustive liner notes. The expanded discs of the Ken Thorne scores from Supermans II and III were probably the main reason why Superman completists dove into savings that they otherwise reserve for their mortgage payments for their Luthor-owned condos in order to pay for this pricey set ($120!). I never liked Thorne's scores (the orchestra budget in II and III was clearly slashed, so Thorne's rearrangements of John Williams' music sounded tinny and undernourished). For me, the real previously unreleased gem of the set was the disc containing Ron Jones' energetic and underrated music from Ruby-Spears' decent '80s Superman animated series. Jones' Superman cues sound like the cues he later wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Best of Both Worlds" two-parter, which TNG showrunner Rick Berman reportedly disliked because he preferred the music on his show to sound boring.

Extraterrestrial ad agencies are so boring when it comes to ad design. They need someone like Salvatore from Mad Men to jazz up their shit.
4. They Live: 20th Anniversary Edition (AHI)
Obey. Consume. This expanded release of the bluesy score from John Carpenter's sharpest and cleverest post-Thing flick is your God.

This is black cowboy music right here, baby!
3. Blazing Saddles (La-La Land)
The only previous times any of the music from Blazing Saddles was made available were when Elektra/Asylum included three songs from Saddles on the 1978 High Anxiety soundtrack LP and when "I'm Tired" made its CD debut on Rhino's 1998 Warner Bros.: 75 Years of Film Music box set. The release of the cues from John Morris' short but fantastic score to the Mel Brooks classic--another one of my favorite movies--was long overdue. All the major cues are on there, including the Count Basie Orchestra's performance of "April in Paris," which is to black cowboy music what Jay-Z's "Roc Boys (and the Winner Is)..." is to black superhero music.

Shaft's Big Score car chase
2. Shaft Anthology: His Big Score and More! (Film Score Monthly)
FSM's Shaft set marked a couple of milestones: the first-ever release of the film versions of Isaac Hayes and J.J. Johnson's score cues from the first Shaft installment (the 1971 Enterprise/Stax soundtrack album was a re-recording) and the CD debut of Gordon Parks' Shaft's Big Score soundtrack. Though the release was actually sent to the pressing plant for manufacturing three weeks before Hayes' death, it ended up being the illest way to honor his memory.

Harley Quinn introduced millions of young Saturday morning viewers to the kid-friendly concept of Stockholm syndrome.
1. Batman: The Animated Series (La-La Land)
Unlike previous superhero cartoon shows, B:TAS didn't recycle the same four or five score cues or repurpose creaky old library music. Shirley Walker, one of the few female composers in the business, and her B:TAS team composed an original score for every episode. Their use of a full orchestra made other animated action shows look like that pathetic El Mariachi musician character who prefers a synthesizer over bandmates. Sadly, Walker didn't live to see the release of her lovingly crafted music from B:TAS (before her death in 2006, only her score from the Mask of the Phantasm spinoff movie was released). She would have been thrilled about La-La Land's two-disc set, which is dedicated to her and compiles scores from 10 B:TAS eps, including Harley Quinn's debut ep, "Joker's Favor" (pictured above). I've been a fan of B:TAS since its 1992 premiere, so I've waited 16 years for a release like this. I never said thank you, La-La Land. And then La-La Land will probably say the following in that Batrasp that sounds like a cross between a whitened-up Keak da Sneak and a Muppet: "And you'll never have to."

20 favorite TV moments of 2008

Happy New Year. These favorite moments of mine are all from scripted or non-reality TV. Screw reality TV.

(Warning: some spoilers ahead.)

20. Conan, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert try to kick each other's asses to the tune of "Brianstorm" by the Arctic Monkeys (Late Night with Conan O'Brien).

Clash of the titans

19. Barney, Ted and Lily rock "the Naked Man" (How I Met Your Mother).

18. Rob Riggle gives Code Pink enough rope to hang themselves (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart).

17. Walt blows up Tuco's office (Breaking Bad).

16. Brock battles a French assassin who's obsessed with Silver Age comic books (The Venture Bros.).

15. Michael goes undercover as a wimpy chemist (Burn Notice).

14. "She must prove she loves America, as opposed to Republicans, who everyone knows love America. They just hate half the people living in it" (The Daily Show).

13. The island is visited by the freighties, who include Daniel, a heroic science nerd, and Miles, a wiseass "ghostbuster" and the most interesting and least clichéd Asian American male character to hit network TV in years (Lost).

12. Patterson punches Encino Man (Generation Kill).

11. "Hey John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?" (Late Show with David Letterman).

10. Stephen tries--and fails--to hide actual tears during Barack Obama's historic victory (Indecision 2008: America's Choice).

9. Wendy emerges from the water in Ursula Andress' Dr. No bikini (The Middleman).


8. Don tells Peggy to get out of the hospital and move forward (Mad Men).

7. The survivors find Earth (Battlestar Galactica).

6. Katie Couric (Amy Poehler) interviews Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) (Saturday Night Live).

5. Jack crashes Liz's high school reunion (30 Rock).

4. Bubbles is finally invited to the dinner table (The Wire).

3. Vic confesses (The Shield).

2. Joe Biden (Jason Sudeikis) and Sarah Palin (Fey) go head to head (SNL).

1. Iceman's team sings "Teenage Dirtbag" (Generation Kill).

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Runners-up:
- The Bawlmer cops sing "The Body of an American" for the final time (The Wire).
- Desmond looks for his constant (Lost).
- "A guaranteed disaster. Like eating a burrito before sex" (30 Rock).
- Samantha Bee tries to get Republican delegates to say the word "choice" (The Daily Show).
- BET fires everyone who can read (The Boondocks).
- 6H turns into Amadeus (30 Rock).
- John Legend sings "The Girl Is Mine" with Stephen (The Colbert Report).
- Will Arnett does his last sex tape (Human Giant).
- Sayid sells his soul (Lost).

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008)

The first time I ever encountered 'Red Clay' was through a cover version by the Solsonics. Years later, I discovered the Freddie Hubbard original in my campus radio station library and dug that version even more.
The badass and slinky 12-minute jam "Red Clay" was the very first tune I played when I was a college radio DJ.

Undercover Black Man has posted some musical highlights from the veteran trumpeter's career.

AFOS: "Dance Into the Fire" playlist

Quantum of Solace opening title sequence by MK12 at www.mk12.com

1. John Barry & Orchestra, "James Bond Theme" (from Dr. No), The Best of Bond... James Bond, Capitol
2. John Barry, "Opening Titles," From Russia with Love, EMI
3. Shirley Bassey, "Main Title--Goldfinger," Goldfinger, EMI
4. Tom Jones, "Thunderball--Main Title," Thunderball, EMI/Capitol
5. Nancy Sinatra, "You Only Live Twice--Title Song," You Only Live Twice, EMI/Capitol
6. John Barry, "Main Theme--On Her Majesty's Secret Service," On Her Majesty's Secret Service, EMI/Capitol
7. Shirley Bassey, "Diamonds Are Forever (Main Title)," Diamonds Are Forever, EMI/Capitol
8. Paul McCartney & Wings, "Live and Let Die," The Best of Bond... James Bond, Capitol
9. Lulu, "Main Title--The Man with the Golden Gun," The Man with the Golden Gun, EMI/Capitol
10. Carly Simon, "Nobody Does It Better" (from The Spy Who Loved Me), The Best of James Bond 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
11. Shirley Bassey, "Moonraker," The Best of Bond... James Bond, Capitol
12. Sheena Easton, "For Your Eyes Only," The Best of James Bond 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
13. Rita Coolidge, "All Time High," Octopussy, Rykodisc
14. Duran Duran, "A View to a Kill," The Best of James Bond 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
15. a-ha, "The Living Daylights," The Living Daylights, Rykodisc
16. Gladys Knight, "Licence to Kill," Licence to Kill, MCA
17. Tina Turner, "GoldenEye," The Best of Bond... James Bond, Capitol
18. Sheryl Crow, "Tomorrow Never Dies," Tomorrow Never Dies: Music from the Motion Picture, A&M
19. Garbage, "The World Is Not Enough," The World Is Not Enough, Radioactive/MCA
20. Madonna, "Die Another Day," Die Another Day, Warner Bros.
21. Chris Cornell, "You Know My Name" (from Casino Royale), Carry On, Interscope
22. Jack White & Alicia Keys, "Another Way to Die," Quantum of Solace, J
23. k.d. lang, "Surrender," Tomorrow Never Dies: Music from the Motion Picture, A&M

*****

These bloggers have found the time to review each of the 22 official Bond opening title themes. They have way too much time on their hands:

Total Music Geek
Culture Kills
I Expect You to Die!

On a related note, here's one of my favorite '80s SNL sketches, a classic spoof starring Steve Martin as a cheapskate 007.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

New AFOS episode: "Dance Into the Fire"

'But he thinks that the fight is worth it all/So he strikes like Thunderbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall!'
The 100th and final Fistful of Soundtracks episode in the current format is a d00Zy: all 22 official 007 opening title themes in chronological order, from the Dr. No instrumental theme to Quantum of Solace's "Another Way to Die."

Quick--what's the only 007 main title theme in which the singer almost fainted in the recording booth after hitting a high note at the end of the theme? The answer's in the photo.

"Dance Into the Fire"--a special extra-length episode--begins streaming late Monday night at midnight and repeats Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Eartha Kitt (1927-2008): She was an awful good girl

Eartha Kitt (1927-2008)
Sheldon: That poster of Halle Berry is a little unnerving.

Howard: So don't look at it.

Sheldon: She's like my fourth favorite Catwoman.

Howard: No kidding.

Sheldon: Yeah, Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eartha Kitt and then her.

Howard: What about Lee Meriwether?

Sheldon: Oh, I forgot about Lee Meriwether.

Howard: Well I'm glad that is settled.

Sheldon: That makes Halle Berry my fifth favorite Catwoman. It's Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether...

Howard: Please, I'm begging you. Go to sleep.

Sheldon: I'm trying. I'm counting Catwomen.

--The Big Bang Theory

Sheldon also forgot about Adrienne Barbeau (the voice of Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series) and Gina Gershon (she assumed the role in 2004 on the imaginatively titled animated series The Batman). Sheldon's third favorite Catwoman, legendary "Santa Baby" singer Eartha Kitt, has died at 81 from colon cancer on the holiday that was the subject of her signature song.

Without Eartha Kitt, there'd be no Conan O'Brien.
Kitt was the purrrrrfect replacement for Julie Newmar when the statuesque dancer/actress was unable to continue playing Batman's most formidable female foe on the '60s series because she was busy filming MacKenna's Gold. No other Catwoman could purrrrr or grrrrrowl like Kitt did. How fitting that the role was assumed by someone named Kitt.

Who can forget when Kitt purred one of the greatest lines in an Eddie Murphy movie that weren't spoken by Murphy ("Marcus, darling... I don't have any panties on...")?

Kitt led an amazing life. She was a civil rights activist who was blacklisted for criticizing the Vietnam War and its negative effect on minorities and more recently, she expressed her joy over Senator Obama's rise as a presidential candidate ("It's one of the most wonderful things that can happen to this country") and supported her countless gay fans on the issue of same-sex marriage.
She goes on to say that the gay marriage issue is similar to what African-Americans experienced during the time of the Civil-Rights Movement. "We were not allowed to go through certain doors because of our race, our color," she says intensely. "It was so stupid that we were not able to sit at the counter of a restaurant because it was only for Anglo-Saxons. It's stupid when this country says it was born on "freedom for all," but it's "freedom for some"!
This Christmas is a bittersweet one due to the news of her passing on the day when she suggestively invited Kringle to "come and trim my Christmas tree." I usually get creeped out by songs that try to sex up Santa like he's the hero of a Judd Apatow movie, but Kitt's rendition of the frequently covered "Santa Baby" is awesome. Her version was the first version and it's still the sultriest.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

My three favorite holiday traditions return tonight

Screw the overrated It's a Wonderful Life. At least Letterman's Christmas show never gets old.
For me, Christmas ain't Christmas without three things: 1) Paul Shaffer doing his hysterical impression of Cher singing "O Holy Night," 2) Jay Thomas telling an anecdote about an encounter with Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore, followed by Thomas trying to knock a giant meatball off the top of a Christmas tree with a football, and 3) Darlene Love performing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."

One of the suckiest things about the writer's strike was that it led to Late Show with David Letterman not being able to do its annual Christmas edition last year. Tonight, Cher and her muff, Thomas and Love are back.

Monday, December 22, 2008

An Oakland Raider busts out the Carlton Dance

I'm not a fan of the Silver and Black, but the highlight of yesterday's Raiders/Texans game amused me: Raiders wide receiver Johnnie Lee Higgins* celebrated a touchdown by doing the illest shout-out to a sitcom I grew up watching. His choice for an end-zone dance was the hilarious Carlton Dance from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (photo by Brant Ward of the San Francisco Chronk).

Photo of Johnnie Lee Higgins channeling Carlton Banks, by Brant Ward / San Francisco Chronicle

Before he played Carlton, Alfonso Ribeiro was best known for his slick dance moves on Broadway and in commercials with Michael Jackson back when he was black, so it's funny that Ribeiro's most famous dance move today is a much less slick-looking move in which he had to pretend to be a less skilled dancer. The Carlton Dance is a parody of what has to be the whitest-looking dance ever. Every rhythmically challenged white person in the '80s did it, from Bruce Springsteen and Courteney Cox in the "Dancing in the Dark" video to the clubgoers at the Tech Noir in the original Terminator.

Carlton's now a game show host (Catch 21 on GSN).Whenever Ribeiro would bust out the Carlton Dance, everyone in the studio audience would lose their minds. Twelve years after the last time Carlton shook his ass back and forth to Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" on NBC, that dorky dance still makes crowds lose their minds, judging from yesterday's reactions from the Raider Nation, the TV sports reporters and the blogosphere.

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* When Higgins scored another TD, he bust out what SacBee blogger Jason Jones (not the soon-to-be-ex-Daily Show correspondent) called "one of Big Daddy Kane's patented dance moves." After the game, JLH identified this second dance as the "Hooka Hooka." He also did the Humpty Dance for a TV sports reporter in the locker room. The guy's got quite an arsenal of end-zone dances. A hater said on a message board that JLH's "idiotic dances need to be penalized." Looks like Reverend Shaw wants to expand his anti-dancing crusade from Bomont to the NFL.

Misidentified White Person of the Week

Wow, I didn't know Richard Mulligan, a.k.a. Burt Campbell from Soap, died twice.

From the News tab on Yahoo!'s front page tonight:

Mulligan stew
It's Robert Mulligan, not his brother Richard, Yahoochies.

Confused? You won't be, after this acoustic performance of the theme from Soap.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

AFOS: "Yule Log" playlist

Happy holidays.

This week, I'm streaming the 2005 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Yule Log" (WEB71), which consists of music from holiday-related movies and Christmas TV specials.

This is a reedited version of "Yule Log." I removed from the episode a Crash score cue by Mark Isham and a Family Stone score cue by Michael Giacchino and replaced them with Shirley Walker's cues from Batman: The Animated Series' "Christmas with the Joker" episode. The "Christmas with the Joker" tracks are part of La-La Land Records' new two-CD B:TAS set, the perfect Christmas present for anyone who's a B:TAS fan.

Ep WEB71 airs Monday and Wednesday at midnight, Tuesday and Christmas Day Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

'It's my way or the highway, this Christmas at my bar/I'll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch my car!'

1. Danny Elfman, "What's This?," The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney
2. Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Christmas Time Is Here (vocal)," A Charlie Brown Christmas, Fantasy
3. Cowboy Timmy, "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo," Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, American/Columbia
4. Joel, Crow and Tom Servo, "(Let's Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas," Clowns In The Sky Vol. 1, Best Brains, Inc.
5. Paul Reubens, Catherine O'Hara and Danny Elfman, "Kidnap the Sandy Claws," The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney
6. Michael Cohen, "The Hebrew Hammer Theme" (from The Hebrew Hammer), thehebrewhammer.com
7. Danny Elfman, "Introduction (Titles)," Edward Scissorhands, MCA
8. Badly Drawn Boy, "I Love NYE," About a Boy, ARTISTdirect/Twisted Nerve/XL/BMG
9. John Ottman, "The Fair/Main Titles," Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, La-La Land
10. Michael Kamen, "Gruber's Arrival" (from Die Hard), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, Varèse Sarabande
11. Thurl Ravenscroft, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas), How the Grinch Stole Christmas & Horton Hears a Who!, Turner Classic Movies Music/Rhino Movie Music
12. Dick Shawn, "Snow Miser" (from The Year Without a Santa Claus), A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, Nick at Nite/Sony 550 Music/Sony Wonder
13. George S. Irving, "Heat Miser" (from The Year Without a Santa Claus), A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, Nick at Nite/Sony 550 Music/Sony Wonder
14. Shirley Walker/Lolita Ritmanis/Michael McCuistion, "Nutcracker Suite Medley" (from "Christmas with the Joker"), Batman: The Animated Series, La-La Land
15. Shirley Walker/Lolita Ritmanis/Michael McCuistion, "Pie in Batman's Face/Dangling Hostages Saved/Deck the Halls" (from "Christmas with the Joker"), Batman: The Animated Series, La-La Land
16. Badly Drawn Boy, "Donna and Blitzen," About a Boy, ARTISTdirect/Twisted Nerve/XL/BMG
17. Mick Jagger and Joss Stone, "Lonely Without You (This Christmas)," Alfie, Virgin
18. Leon Redbone & Zooey Deschanel, "Baby It's Cold Outside," Elf: Music from the Major Motion Picture, New Line

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Batman: The Animated Series soundtrack: A Walker to remember

Batman fires his grappling hook and pisses off the Five-0 in the Batman: The Animated Series pilot episode 'On Leather Wings.'
As a fan of Batman: The Animated Series, I've waited 15 years for the score cues from the groundbreaking show to be released on an album. Now the wait is finally over, thanks to La-La Land Records' Batman: The Animated Series score compilation, which the label released as a limited edition two-CD set on Tuesday (a week after Warner Bros. Records double-dipped the Dark Knight soundtrack with additional score cues). I'll be adding some of the music from La-La Land's release to rotation on A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Assorted Fistful" block.

Modeled in tone after Tim Burton's somber-looking, dark-humored Batman films but much more faithful to the comics, Bruce Timm's B:TAS was the first American superhero cartoon show that felt cinematic. B:TAS writer/producer Paul Dini, who scripted the landmark, Emmy-winning Mr. Freeze revamp "Heart of Ice," says in the soundtrack liner notes that the show's crew constructed each episode like a mini-movie.

The B:TAS crew must have heard Peter Bogdanovich's anecdotes about how Samuel Fuller mentored him during the making of the low-budget 1968 thriller Targets ("Never think about limitations! Only think about what you want!") because like Fuller, they clearly didn't let a TV budget stop them from doing what they wanted. They brought a cinematic approach to everything, from the way they paced the dialogue--B:TAS' minimal and terse dialogue was different from other superhero cartoons, especially the '90s Marvel shows, like Saban's X-Men and Marvel Films Animation's Spider-Man, which had nonstop, hurriedly delivered, Speed Racer-ish dialogue--to the original score music. Unlike past superhero cartoons, B:TAS didn't recycle the same four or five score cues or repurpose creaky old library music. Shirley Walker and her team of B:TAS composers, which included Lolita Ritmanis and Michael McCuistion, composed an original score for every ep and used a full orchestra at a time when most other animated action shows relied on chintzy-sounding, cost-saving synthesizer music.

Danny Elfman's B:TAS main title theme, a reworking of his own brooding and dashing-sounding main theme from the Batman movies, set the tone for the show's "dark swashbuckler" sound. Walker, who conducted Elfman's 1989 Batman score and worked for him as an orchestrator, wrote a new eight-note theme for the Batman character that sounds equally thrilling and kickass. It eventually supplanted Elfman's theme in the opening titles when Warner Bros. Animation made B:TAS into a feature film (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm) and then brought the show back to the airwaves under a new title, The Adventures of Batman & Robin.

Walker and her composers crafted a different motif for each villain. Mr. Freeze was accompanied by a mournful waltz (which can be heard during the 14-minute "Gotham City Overture," track 1 on the first disc), Two-Face was represented by an eerie soprano recorder melody ("Harvey's Nightmare/Dent's Soap Box" and "Bruce Wayne's Nightmare/Two-Face Remembers"), and the Penguin received a lumbering brass theme to match his bluster ("Birds of a Feather").

The Joker is such a beloved adversary that Walker gave him not just one but two motifs, a carnival-style melody and a secondary "Fanfare for Rocky"-style crime spree theme that was used only during the "Last Laugh" ep. The liner notes refer to the Joker's "Last Laugh" crime spree theme as "a hip-hop jazz theme," but it doesn't really sound like hip-hop. It's a middle-aged white person's idea of what they think a hip-hop beat sounds like. As an FSM Board poster says, it's more rock/funk than hip-hop. Still, Walker's "Last Laugh" theme is a lot of fun, and like all the other cues, I'm jazzed to finally have it on disc.

La-La Land Records' Batman: The Animated Series soundtrack coverAfter a solid film and TV score career that saw her alternating between the Timmverse and James Wong/Glen Morgan productions (Space: Above and Beyond, Final Destination), Walker died in 2006 and didn't live to see her B:TAS material get the kind of release that La-La Land has devoted to it. Though this release is loaded with over two hours of music, it's missing Walker's memorable Catwoman theme from "The Cat and the Claw, Part I," the first B:TAS ep that ever aired, Carl Johnson's lively score from the excellent "Beware the Gray Ghost" ep with special guest voice Adam West, and McCuistion's Lawrence of Arabia-style epic score from the "Demon's Quest" two-parter, which gives me hope about a Volume 2 from La-La Land.

The final track on the La-La Land album is a fitting tribute to Walker, in which she gets to finally speak, via an archival recording of her explaining her eight-note Batman theme and playing it in different variations on the piano. The subtle differences between each variation--like when Walker alternates between a somberly played second half of the theme and a more uplifting second half--are incredible. They show how much care was put into the music and the show itself.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

AFOS: "Spirit of '99" playlist

'Look at those frail and fragile boys/It really gets me down/The world is such a rotten place/And city life's a complete disgrace/That's why I moved to this redneck meshugana quiet mountain tooooooooown.'

1. Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, Sharon Marsh and Sheila Broflovski, "Mountain Town," South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Atlantic
2. Michael Kamen, "The Eye of the Storm," The Iron Giant, Varèse Sarabande
3. David Newman, "Prologue: Galaxy Quest Clip," Galaxy Quest, Super Tracks Music Group
4. Randy Newman, "Zurg's Planet," Toy Story 2, Walt Disney
5. Rolfe Kent, "Election," Election, Sire
6. Canibus with Biz Markie, "Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee," Office Space, Interscope
7. The Dust Brothers, "Stealing Fat," Fight Club, Restless
8. Thomas Newman, "Still Dead," American Beauty: Original Motion Picture Score, DreamWorks
9. Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke, "Liquid Moon," The Insider, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax
10. Angelo Badalamenti, "Country Waltz," The Straight Story, Windham Hill
11. Carter Burwell, "Subcon Chase," Being John Malkovich, Astralwerks
12. Bill Conti, "Glider Pt. 1," The Thomas Crown Affair: Music from the MGM Motion Picture, Ark21/Pangaea
13. Danny Elfman, "End Credits," Sleepy Hollow, Hollywood
14. Don Davis, "Main Title/Trinity Infinity" (from The Matrix), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, Varèse Sarabande
15. James Newton Howard, "Malcolm Is Dead," The Sixth Sense, Varèse Sarabande
16. The People of South Park, "Mountain Town (Reprise)," South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Atlantic

Monday, December 15, 2008

New AFOS episode: "Spirit of '99"

'Back up in yo' ass with the resurrection...'
Because this is episode WEB99, the show will consist of selections from scores to the most noteworthy and inventive films of the year 1999, including Office Space, Election, Fight Club and a film I like a little less than the other three but Laurence Fishburne was such a badass in it: The Matrix. John Frizzell's score for Office Space was never released, so Office Space will be represented here by Canibus and Biz Markie's closing credits shout-out to Johnny Paycheck, "Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee."

"Spirit of '99" begins streaming tonight at midnight and repeats tomorrow and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

You've been living in a dream world, Neo-Con. Bush ducks shoes Matrix-style, by Christian Science Monitor illustrator Jake Turcotte.

WEB100 will be the last AFOS episode in the current format

The chairman of the bored.

I've decided to end A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series after producing and hosting 100 episodes for the AFOS channel since January 2003.

Yep, I'm cancelling my own show rather than letting the bastards who run... Oh, wait a minute, I'm the bastard who runs the channel. All by myself. Never mind.

This doesn't mean I'm going away for good. It just means I'll no longer be doing shows under the AFOS: The Series title and format. My voice will still be heard on the channel and I'll continue to be "announcing song titles and making cracks, even if [it] is pre-recorded!," as one listener said to me about my voice in an e-mail a few years ago. (I'll still stream the earlier eps too. Ep WEB63, which is called "Feel the City Breakin'," is the earliest ep that doesn't make me cringe when I play it back.)

The time has come to switch to a new format for my on-air self, like the less constricting and more new releases-oriented "AFOS A-Go-Go" format I experimented with in September and November. I should have given the program a name change a long time ago. Having both the program and the channel share the same A Fistful of Soundtracks name confuses listeners who appear to be under the assumption that AFOS is a 24-hour program as opposed to a 24-hour channel. (I originally conceived AFOS as an audio archive of continuously looped episodes from my program's terrestrial radio years. But I found myself going in another direction, and that was to diversify the programming--without veering too far off from the channel's film/TV music format--and make AFOS sound more like an actual radio station, hence my interspersing of themed blocks like "The F Zone" and "Soda and Pie" with newly recorded eps of AFOS: The Series.)

In each AFOS ep, all the film or TV score tracks are connected by a certain theme, like most recently, Batman villains or monster movies. I've gotten tired of doing that one-theme-per-ep format. Writing the copy for each of these themed eps takes me forever to do. I often get hit with writer's block. Writing copy for a show in which the tracks don't have a unifying theme--like during "A-Go-Go"--is much easier for me.

Plus I'm not a creature of habit. I get bored with routine after awhile. I became bored with my last job after a couple of years (but I stayed with it for a few more years because the money was good). As for my job before that one, I got bored with it after about half a year (plus having to type your newspaper articles inside an office building that lacks air conditioning kind of puts a damper on your morale).

In the case of AFOS: The Series, which was a way for me to continue doing the same program I used to do on terrestrial radio in the late '90s and early '00s, you could tell when my interest in it started to taper off--when the program went from weekly to monthly to bimonthly to whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it-ly.

I've lately been listening to the kickass Scion Radio channels programmed by L.A.'s Root Down club and KCRW's Garth Trinidad. For his channel, GT records about two and a half hours of content and then has them looped over and over again for the entire month.

I'm thinking of switching to a format like the Root Down crew's or GT's, except instead of recording new segments once every month like they do, I'll do it probably every other week or whenever I can find time to get on the mic or whenever I have any space left on my hard drive. Morning Becomes Dyspeptic and the DJ-less "Assorted Fistful," "Soda and Pie," "Chai Noon" and "F Zone" blocks will remain on the AFOS schedule so that listeners won't have to hear so much of my annoying voice (listeners have told me they don't mind my voice, like the person in that aforementioned e-mail, who said, "I've *gasp* ventured into other soundtrack stations. They aren't as fun to listen to as Fistful though... There's something nice about having someone announcing song titles...").

Here's what coming up on AFOS: The Series: Ep WEB99 will flash back to the year 1999 and stream selections from scores to the most memorable films that were released during that standout year for cinema. And then like 100 Bullets, I'm ending it at 100. The final ep under the AFOS: The Series title and format will be a doozy: all 22 official Bond opening title themes in chronological order.

If you frequently listen to the channel, thanks for choosing AFOS.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Movie soundtrack iPod shuffle meme

It's the original cover of the 'Crockett's Theme' single, pal!
I got a kick out of this meme in which I got to be the music supervisor for the movie about my own life ("If your life were a movie, what would the soundtrack be?").

1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.

Opening credits:
Jan Hammer, "Crockett's Theme" (from Miami Vice)

Waking up:
Devo, "Freedom of Choice"

Average day:
Los Amigos Invisibles, "Pipi"

First date:
The Clash, "Charlie Don't Surf"

Falling in love:
Herbie Hancock, "Bring Down the Birds" (from Blow-Up)*

* Deee-Lite sampled the bass line from this track in "Groove Is in the Heart."

Love scene:
The Reverend Horton Heat, "In Your Wildest Dreams"

Fight scene:
Blondie, "Heart of Glass"

Breaking up:
Living Colour, "Love Rears Its Ugly Head"

Getting back together:
The X-Ecutioners, "Play That Beat (Lo-Fidelity All-Stars Remix)"

Secret love:
Eminem feat. Jay-Z, "Renegade"

Life's okay:
Tangerine Dream, "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)" (from Risky Business)

Mental breakdown:
Maxine Nightingale, "Right Back Where We Started From"

Learning a lesson:
Trick Daddy, "Let's Go"

Deep thought:
The Who, "Bargain"

Flashback:
Madvillain, "Figaro"

Partying:
Elvis Costello, "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (live)"

Happy dance:
Magazine 60, "Don Quichotte"

Regretting:
Los Straitjackets, "Espionage"

Long night alone:
De La Soul, "Supa Emcees"

Death scene:
Portishead, "Glory Box"

Closing credits:
Sonny Rollins, "He's Younger Than You Are" (from Alfie)

---------------

Hear the Slap Shot theme "Right Back Where We Started From" and "Don Quichotte" (a memorable part of the Northern Exposure episode "Jules et Joel") during the "F Zone" block, which airs Mondays at 4am, 9am and 3pm, Wednesdays at noon and Fridays at 5am, 9am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks. "The F Zone" streams kickass existing songs that have been used in films and shows.

"Crockett's Theme" and "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)" can be heard during both the "Assorted Fistful" block and the "Soda and Pie" '80s block, which airs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at noon on AFOS.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Have you played The Venture Bros. today?

The Venture Bros. Season 3 and Wave Twisters DVD coversThe Venture Bros. Season 3 DVD and Blu-ray packaging's '80s Atari video game cartridge box-style design rocks. It reminds me of the Activision-style design for the 2002 DVD cover of DJ Qbert's Wave Twisters.

The box sets' street date is March 24. Why do I have to wait so damn long until I can finally delete last season's Venture Bros. episodes from my DVR?
Arriving at retail as a two-disc box set on both platforms for the suggested retail prices of $29.98 and $44.98, respectively, The Venture Bros. Season 3 features all 13 uncensored episodes from the show's highly popular third season and bonus material including deleted scenes and commentary. Additionally, the Blu-ray disc box set will be packaged with an exclusive CD which includes 20 tracks that comprise the full musical score from the television series' third season.
[Via TVShowsOnDVD.com]

Thursday, December 11, 2008

The five greatest fake names from TV

'This new generation with the names.'
These overly fake-sounding names for imaginary personas always end up being used either by bands (there's a British metal band that's actually called Cletus Van Damme) or message board posters (on the Film Score Monthly boards, I post under a fake name from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). They're all easier to pronounce than Blagojevich, a name that must be giving late night talk show hosts anxiety attacks.

1. Fuzzy Dunlop
Herc's fake CI on The Wire. Sometimes The Wire is funnier than most sitcoms.

2. Shecky Shabazz
A stage name the Fresh Prince creates at the last minute for his wack stand-up act.

3. Rafael De La Ghetto
A legendary street poet made up by the Fresh Prince to impress the shawties, with some help from Geoffrey the butler: "Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them, volley'd and thunder'd!"

4. Cletus Van Damme
One of The Shield's few running gags: an alias only Shane would come up with.

5. Santos L. Halper
The credit card account name Bart Simpson winds up with after he applies for a card as Santa's Little Helper.

Friday, December 5, 2008

De La Hoya/Pacquiao 24/7: "Filipinos, they're a very clingy people"

'Manny Pacquiao, you just knocked out Erik Morales. What are you going to do next?' 'I'm going to Jollibee, beaches!'

Well, my mom and some of my relatives are clingy. Not me. I'm a Pinoy who craves his me time. So I guess that makes me more like Manny Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, who said the above funny quote about Pac-Man's huge entourage in De La Hoya/Pacquiao 24/7.

The four-episode HBO series about the advent of De La Hoya/Pacquiao Fight Night is my current favorite docu-show. Maybe it's because I'm Filipino, but seeing Filipinos get this much non-Basco brother airtime on American TV is awesome, despite the overabundance of footage of the poorest Filipino areas, as the PinoyLife blog(*) has noted with snarkiness ("Please... film some Pinoys in Manila that are near some offices, universities, and malls"). (During the weight challenge sequence with Pacquiao's entourage, I loved how I could overhear an entourage member saying, "Excited ko!" That's a line I don't hear everyday on HBO. The only Tagalog that's uttered on HBO is during Return of the Jedi, for Christ's sake.)

There's some terrific documentary filmmaking on display in De La Hoya/Pacquiao 24/7 too. The sequence about Pacquiao's Catholic upbringing and his charity work was masterfully shot and edited. The cutaway from Pacquiao's mother to the People's Champ finishing his prayer in the gym was beautifully done. I haven't enjoyed a boxing doc this much since When We Were Kings.

A Slate.com reviewer wrote that De La Hoya/Mayweather 24/7 lacked "what When We Were Kings had in spades: historical importance to match the spectacle... the stakes of the fight are much lower than the promotional bluster would lead you to believe."

But the stakes are incredibly high with this fight, for both the 35-year-old, over-the-hill De La Hoya and his younger, shorter and faster opponent, whom I'm rooting for and whose triumphs in the ring have uplifted "an entire anguished nation," to borrow Geologic's words from his review of the docu-show. If Pac-Man wins this fight, it will uplift us even more. Filipinos everywhere will not show up for work on Monday. If you run a hospital, you can forget about those bedpans being emptied on Monday because your nurses will be out celebrating.

(*) Funniest line from the PinoyLife recap: "Buboy, Buboy, Buboy. You have the wackest name in the history of Filipino athletics. I'm sure that Manny appreciates all you do being his confidant, his friend, and cornerman. To most of the Filipino Americans reading this site, you're kinda like Too Big MC with Manny being MC Hammer."

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Minority Militant header sketches

Below are my sketches for a header I designed for the Minority Militant, a Laotian American blogger and activist from Chi-Town whose posts I've enjoyed reading. He riffs on Asian American-related topics ranging from the ugly racism that's often on display on reality TV to President-Elect Obama's Asian staffers.

Props to TMM for giving me my first job--even though it was a small one--after I lost my regular job earlier this year. TMM has been digging my black-and-white webcomic, The Palace, which I created to keep myself busy (I've been posting the comic here on A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog), so he asked me to draw a new header for his blog.

The sketch of the Asian brother in the hoodie emblazoned with "TMM" is the final version of the image on the header, which can be seen on TMM's blog in all its fully inked, cleaned-up and Paint Shop Pro-and-Photoshop-enhanced glory.

Minority Militant header sketches by Jimmy Aquino

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Somebody's been watching too many Ratt videos on VH1 Classic

Separated at birth?*

Separated at birth?
The Guitar star Saffron Burrows... and that chick at the end of Ratt's "Way Cool Jr." video?

---------------

* "Thanks for driving us back to town."

"No problem, we was headed there anyway to pick up the new
Spy magazine."

"I'm sorry, they don't publish that anymore."

"The world I grew up in is gone."

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

A funny, (somewhat) Thanksgiving-related post

This Thanksgiving dinner looks so good this family's gonna be letting out a bunch of Paul Falsones afterward.
Every time I pass some gas (silently) after Thanksgiving dinner, I'm reminded of the 1998 TeeVee.net blog post "When Bad Actors Happen to Good Shows" by Philip Michaels, which unfortunately disappeared from TeeVee.net's archives. (The post can be seen in its entirety here. Good lookin' out, Wayback Machine.)

So I'm posting excerpts from this scathing TeeVee.net jab at both the writing during the later seasons of one of my favorite '90s shows, Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-99), and Jon Seda, who was in his element as a cast member on Taye Diggs' too-short-lived legal drama Kevin Hill (2004-05) but was a terrible, out-of-place addition to the Homicide cast.

When Bad Actors Happen To Good Shows
by Philip Michaels - March 27, 1998

It happens every Thanksgiving or Easter or Christmas. All the relatives get together at my parents' humble little cottage for a big old family dinner. My mom spends 12 hours in the kitchen. We all put on our Sunday finery. And then, once the potatoes have been mashed and the corn has been buttered and the cranberries have been lovingly removed from the can and stirred up to make them look like they were fresh, we all sit down as a family to have a civilized, pleasant meal.

And we give it our best, just like Frasier's David Hyde Pierce exhorts us to do in those "The More You Know" commercials on NBC. The fine china sparkles. The conversation is spirited. The ham is succulent. And love -- honest-to-goodness family love -- is heavy in the air.

Which is about when, towards the end of the meal, my dad lets out an eardrum-busting, picture-rattling fart.

And that's the cue for everything to go to Hell. My sister starts crying and my brother-in-law just sadly shakes his head and my mother screams at my father and then demands to know why I haven't gotten married before she hastily adds that she'll still love me even if I move to West Hollywood with a hair stylist named Brad, which is about the time that she runs from the room bawling about how nobody has any time for her.

Which is my dad's cue to fart again.

My point -- other than the fact that any psychologist out there who just read those last few paragraphs is probably thinking, "Hello, grant money!" -- is that it only takes one small mishap to take something wonderfully sublime and absent-mindedly flush it down the crapper. That's true of anything, whether we're talking about disaster-plagued family get-togethers or once-phenomenal television programs.

And that brings me to Homicide...

Because this post is about the declining years of Homicide, this shot is taken from the opening titles from those later years. The awesome original titles for Homicide were created by Arlington Road director Mark Pellington. The shot of a barking dog behind a chain-link fence brilliantly established the inner-city Balto setting. In season 5, NBC replaced Pellington's titles with a flashier, X-Files-inspired opening by Imaginary Forces. The overproduced titles helped usher in the show's decline.
... Jon Seda is the fart at my Thanksgiving dinner.

Seda's Falsone embodies every tough-as-nails-cop-with-a-heart-of-gold cliche that's ever graced the boob tube, right down to his Mott Street accent and emphatic hand gestures. It's almost as if Falsone was airlifted into Homicide straight out of NYPD Blue or Brooklyn South. You expect to see Nicholas Turturro burst on to the Homicide set, demanding that Jon Seda give him his identity back...

Bad enough that the Falsone character is trite. But stack him up against the other cops on Homicide with all their quirks and complexities, and Falsone assumes all the full-bodied richness of a cardboard cutout. Braugher's Pembleton visibly wrestles with his demons and doubts every week. Secor's Bayliss has spent each of the show's six seasons struggling to find happiness that always seems to be out of reach. Even Munch's sarcastic veneer is just his way of shielding himself from the unending horror of poking over one dead body after another.

And Falsone? Well, Falsone keeps muttering about how much he loves his kid...

Falsone the showkiller.
Bad Actors have doomed Good Shows in the past, they're laying waste to them in the present, and they will continue to wreak their havoc in the future unless America's couch potatoes stay eternally vigilant. Even now, in the seedy back offices of Hollywood, powerful producers and dissolute agents are conspiring in secret to ruin your favorite TV programs. Jamie Farr as an FBI agent on X-Files. William Shatner as a brilliant Army defense attorney on JAG. Shannen Doherty as Rachel's long-lost sister on Friends.

And do you really want to be responsible for that?

Act now. Make angry phone calls to TV producers. Write long, polemical letters to corpulent network executives. March down to their offices and give long-winded speeches until building security guards are forced to break out the pepper spray. Whatever you do, let the TV Powers That Be know you won't tolerate Bad Actors lousing up Good Shows, no matter how much Jamie Farr needs the work.

Otherwise, when my old man farts at your Thanksgiving dinner, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

New trailer proves movie version of '70s cartoon show Star Trek doesn't look promising

The original Star Trek's opening title card.

By special guest blogger Sonny Gautier

One of my favorite TV shows is the Saturday morning cartoon Star Trek, which NBC first broadcast in 1973. It aired right after Hanna-Barbera's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids cartoon and followed the adventures of Captain Kirk and the crew of a "starship" called the U.S.S. Enterprise. Their mission was to explore outer space. Along the way, the crew would butt heads with evil Klingon commanders, Orion pirates and dangerous energy cloud monsters.

Captain Kirk tussles with an Orion pirate.
The captain was bad. I dug that episode when he fought that turkey from the Orion pirate ship over a shipment of medicine for a sick Mr. Spock, his pointy-eared first officer from the planet Vulcan.

Spock, Kid Spock and a tiger about to go tiger.
The Vulcan soul brother was an even badder dude than Kirk. He could read minds and he was always calm and cool like another hero of mine, John Shaft. When Spock traveled back in time to his childhood on his homeworld, he took down a wild Vulcan tiger by pinching it in the neck, which was some sort of mystical Vulcan ass-whupping move. That was bad. With moves like that, Spock will never die!

Lt. Uhura, holdin' it down on the switchboard.
I also dug how the ship had a black crewmember manning the switchboard. I especially liked when Lt. Uhura got to be captain for a whole story because all the men from the Enterprise were captured by an all-female planet. Black folks don't often get such high positions of power on TV like Uhura did in that Star Trek episode.

Lt. Uhura, holdin' it down as landing party leader.
So because I'm a fan of this forgotten cartoon, I was ecstatic about Paramount Pictures' upcoming major motion picture based on Star Trek.

That is until I saw the preview for it.

The movie doesn't look quite right. It doesn't look like the Star Trek I remember.

Kid Spock.
First of all, who cares about what Kirk and Spock were like as kids? The cartoon already showed us that Spock had a hard life as a mutt on Vulcan. His mama was human, his dad was Vulcan and the other Vulcan kids wanted to beat his ass. Why do we have to be told again how Spock came up? What else do we need to know, man? Can we just cut to the chase and see what the title says they're supposed to be doing, which is exploring space?

New Kirk.
Kirk looks too young to be captain. He looks more like a cadet. And what the hell happened to his Orange Kool-Aid-colored hair?

Jimmy told me that there's this TV show called Pimp My Ride, in which a bunch of people soup up your rickety old car. Looks like they've pimped Kirk's ride.
The new Enterprise is too fast a ship now! In the animated show, the Enterprise was never that fast! This will take some getting used to.

Spock loses his shit.
Why is Spock trying to pimp-slap Kirk? He never pimp-slapped anybody in the cartoon.

Damn, Uhura!
One thing I dig about the preview is Uhura. She looks outta sight! Uhura was the finest sister on Saturday morning TV since Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Because Star Trek was a Saturday morning cartoon, I never got to see her in a bra. Now I finally get to. Right on!

Another thing they never allowed on the NBC cartoon: intense ship-to-ship warfare.
Another thing I like is the brief footage of starships at war. The cartoon was never that intense and it never had so many things blow up. Man, I never saw so many ships attack each other like that!

This week's special guest director on Star Trek: Ingmar Bergman. Note: I wrote this alt tag--Jimmy A.
There's not a lot of face-to-face dialogue in the preview. In the cartoon, everyone talked to each other all the time and did it real close to the camera. Real close. And only their eyes and mouths moved.

Arex and M'Ress, two characters from the original show who got bamboozled by this J.J. Abrams guy.
Where's the orange skinny dude with three arms? Where's the alien cat lady? Where are those forcefield belts that the Enterprise crew wore whenever they walked out into space? It's not Star Trek without them.

C'mon, J.J. Abrams! How could you forget the forcefield belts? That's as important to Star Trek as the transporter room or the Enterprise. Without the Enterprise, Star Trek ain't nothing.
Often, a preview isn't really helpful in telling you if the flick is any good or not (that Superfly T.N.T. preview didn't prepare me for how much of a letdown that movie was), so I guess I'll reserve judgment until I see the entire Star Trek movie, which comes out this May. I hope it lives up to the cartoon.

----------

Me again, Sonny Gautier.Sonny Gautier is a new Fistful of Soundtracks listener from Bed-Stuy and he offered to review the new Star Trek trailer for my blog. Due to brain damage caused by exposure to too many Sid and Marty Krofft shows, a then-adolescent Sonny lapsed into a coma in 1974 and didn't wake up until last month, which means he missed the 10 Star Trek feature films and four Trek live-action spinoff shows that followed the cartoon. Because Sonny's only taste of Trek was the Saturday morning version before he slipped into his coma, he didn't know Trek originated as a live-action show until I pointed it out to him via e-mail a couple of hours ago. Because he doesn't want to be laughed at for his mistakes, Sonny has demanded that I remove his post. Yeah right, like I'm gonna remove it. This shit's too funny.

J.J. Abrams, don't let me down.