Nobody says "Huh?" like Denzel

This is the second of 12 or 13 blog posts that are being posted on a monthly basis from January 2017 until this blog's final post in December 2017.

Once upon a time, I ran an Internet radio station that streamed film and TV score music. I don't really miss running it. The audience for it dwindled over the years, and even though Live365, the Bay Area company that powered the station before the end of the Webcaster Settlement Act led to Live365's demise early last year, is being resuscitated, I don't have any plans to bring back the station.

But I've kept the station alive on Mixcloud, where I've archived a few hours of old station content and posted lots of new one-to-two-hour mixes of music from original scores. The most popular of those mixes has been a mix of Kyle Dixon/Michael Stein score cues from the first season of Netflix's unexpectedly popular Stranger Things. It's called "Where's Barb?"

Late last year, the score albums for the Magnificent Seven remake and the film version of Fences, which both star Denzel Washington, were sent to my inbox, and that made me want to edit together an entire mix of score cues from Denzel movies. Denzel has been one of my favorite actors, ever since he stole the 1989 white savior movie Glory (and won an Oscar for stealing it) in the same way Don Cheadle would later steal Devil in a Blue Dress from Denzel. In Glory, he was basically the Toshiro Mifune character from Seven Samurai: the shit-talking troublemaker and outsider who learns to channel his anger and penchant for self-destruction into a worthy cause and then (SPOILER!) dies a hero.

The late James Horner's score from that 1989 Civil War movie, Terence Blanchard's 1992 Malcolm X score and Hans Zimmer's 1995 Crimson Tide score are a trifecta of Denzel-related instrumental badassery. Put those three scores together in either a mix or an hour of radio programming, and that hour of music is automatically going to sound as rousing and badass as a Denzel speech. Procrastinating on a writing project or that load of laundry? Put on the badass "Fruit of Islam" from Malcolm X's classic hospital march sequence. Immediately after hearing "Fruit of Islam," shit is going to be done. Laundry is going to be washed.

This month is the perfect time to post a mix of score cues from Denzel flicks. Several of Denzel's most highly regarded movies are frequently recommended during Black History Month by the likes of film critics and librarians, and Fences, Denzel's third big-screen directorial effort, is up for a few Oscars this weekend. Viola Davis, who reprised a role she had alongside Denzel in one of the various stage versions of Fences, is the frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress trophy.

Throughout the Mixcloud mixes, I like to drop audio clips from the movies or TV shows that I've selected for score cue airplay. For this Denzel mix, I could have gone with audio from Denzel speeches as the connective tissue between each Denzel movie score cue, but I decided to go with something even more brash as connective tissue: clips from the very funny Earwolf podcast Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period, hosted by stand-ups W. Kamau Bell, the host of the CNN documentary series United Shades of America, and Kevin Avery, a writer for Last Week Tonight.

Bell, Avery and a special guest Denzealot, whether it's another comedian, a black filmmaker or one of Denzel's previous co-stars, dissect the work of their favorite charismatic actor, with lots of humor and occasional jabs at things like Virtuosity (the poorly received 1995 Denzel cyber-thriller that pitted 'Zel against a murderous A.I. played by a pre-L.A. Confidential Russell Crowe) and Denzel's visible discomfort during Much Ado About Nothing's frolicking scenes. Denzel himself is aware of the podcast's existence. But I highly doubt he's ever going to be a guest on this podcast that both celebrates his many triumphs as an actor (as well as a director of both episodic TV and small-scale feature films) and dredges up Virtuosity-esque career missteps, and Denzel's recent Fences press junket comment about not wanting to live in the past confirmed it. The podcast doesn't just live in Denzel's big-screen (and small-screen) past. It raises kids and builds a whole garden of gladioli in his past.

The Wolf of Pop Street: Paul Scheer's new pop culture-themed podcast network introduces a pair of movie talk shows that are worth your time

Midroll Media's Wolfpop is a new sister network to the Earwolf podcast network, and its aim is to bring both plenty of production polish and big names (from the worlds of comedy, publishing and entertainment reporting) to a type of podcast format that's been around since podcasting's not-so-polished-sounding beginnings: pop culture talk. On November 4, Wolfpop--which is being curated by Paul Scheer, star of The League and co-host of his own movie talk podcast, Earwolf's How Did This Get Made?--launched 563,000 different pop culture podcasts. Even though I'm unemployed, I don't have time to listen to all 563,000 of them, but there are two Wolfpop shows that immediately caught my attention because of both the talent involved and the intriguing film-related subjects of their shows.

Maltin on Movies pairs up Leonard Maltin with comedian Baron Vaughn and gives the duo a different film-related topic to discuss each week (for example, episode 2 was about the unexpected rise of the McConaissance). Meanwhile, former Totally Biased host W. Kamau Bell and his fellow Totally Biased staff writer (and old Bay Area roommate) Kevin Avery make a case for why Denzel Washington is the illest on the succinctly titled Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period.

Vaughn, Bell and Avery are terrific choices for Wolfpop show hosts. Besides the conversational skills they've honed as hosts of previous podcasts (Vaughn hosted the All Things Comedy network's Deep Shit, while Bell did a podcast with Living Colour's Vernon Reid and had another movie talk podcast with Avery, Siskel & Negro, before they reteamed for the new Wolfpop show), it's also always wonderful to hear comedians of color hosting weekly podcasts. Sure, there's also Aisha Tyler (Girl on Guy), Margaret Cho (Monsters of Talk) and Kumail Nanjiani (The Indoor Kids, The X-Files Files), but, um, that's about it. The L.A. comedy podcast community is so lily-white it pours mayo into its tacos. It's so white it thinks Dilla was that lady who used to always tell jokes about her husband Fang on Carson. It's so white it has sex to Mumford & Sons. It's so white...

As an animation historian and an expert on older periods of film, Maltin is phenomenal. When I was a kid, I loved leafing through Of Mice and Magic, Maltin's thick tome about the history of American animation, so much that I would repeatedly renew it at the public library. But as a reviewer of live-action American films, the former Entertainment Tonight film critic isn't exactly one of my favorites. He gave only two (or two and a half) stars to Taxi Driver, The Long Goodbye, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Miller's Crossing, all movies I love. As long as Maltin doesn't talk about either Taxi Driver, The Long Goodbye, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid or Miller's Crossing on this new podcast, Maltin on Movies is worth a listen each week.

Despite some of his tastes in live-action films, Maltin is--like he's always been during his appearances on other podcasts--likable and level-headed in many of the same ways that the late Roger Ebert was. He may not agree with you about an unconventional indie flick you might adore, but at least he's not going to be a dick about it. He's never going to say something racist about your Korean friend like Rex Reed would do, and he's never going to boo you off the stage like Armond White rudely does to actors and directors he incomprehensibly dislikes.

Maltin's friendliness and approachability ("The friendliest film critic I know," says DVD Savant author Glenn Erickson) must have been why Joe Dante let bygones be bygones after he was disappointed with Maltin's negative review of his first Gremlins movie, and he got Maltin to appear during Gremlins 2: The New Batch in a cameo as himself--delivering that same negative review of Gremlins. It's also why the L.A. comedy community likes to hang out with Maltin. Sarah Silverman memorably got him to pretend to be her date in the audience during her parody of award show acceptance speeches on Comedy Central's Night of Too Many Stars autism telethon ("Richard Roeper cannot hold a candle to you as a film critic or as an oral lover"), and Doug Benson frequently has Maltin on as a guest on Doug Loves Movies, which uses the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide app on Benson's phone to run the show's Leonard Maltin Game.

But does that same congeniality make for lively and entertaining discussions about film like the frequently contentious pairing of Siskel and Ebert did? Not very often. So this is where Baron Vaughn--who's actually as knowledgeable about modern-day cinema as Maltin but isn't quite as familiar with older periods of film like him--comes in. Vaughn's light banter with Maltin and his ability to keep their conversations engaging are why he's an ideal partner for Maltin. They're not contentious like the Sneak Previews and At the Movies hosts used to be, but fortunately, Vaughn and Maltin's congruent opinions about the three films they select for discussion each week (the first film is one they highly recommend, the second film is one they agree is an artistic failure and the third is a lesser-known title that they both wish had received more shine) haven't resulted in boring talk.

For the first time in his long career as a reviewer (and host of various film talk shows where, unlike in podcasts, the conversations have to be much shorter and snappier and completely edited down), Maltin is as interesting a conversationalist as either Siskel or Ebert, thanks to Vaughn. He's brought out some great stories from Maltin, like his recollection of the first time he taped a press-junket interview with the late Robin Williams, a famously energetic and laugh-inducing interviewee, for Entertainment Tonight.

Denzel Washington Is the Greatest is a less serious movie talk show than Maltin on Movies, but it's equally worthwhile. I was a fan of W. Kamau Bell's late, lamented Totally Biased and its progressive brand of humor about race (Totally Biased was as close as we got to a weekly TV version of one of my all-time favorite humor books, ego trip's Big Book of Racism!), so it's comforting to have a piece of that show back, even if it's just in the form of a podcast about Denzel movies starring two of its writers.

"Denzealots" Bell and Kevin Avery intend to analyze a different Denzel movie each week--I can't wait until they reach either Crimson Tide or Malcolm X, which are neck and neck as my favorite Denzel movie--and rate it in terms of "Denzelishness," like how often "Denzel does that thing with his lip." Because Washington has starred in so many movies since his big-screen debut in Carbon Copy, a 1981 comedy where George Segal co-starred as his newly discovered biological father, the size of his filmography is making me wonder if the run of Bell and Avery's new podcast will be as long as the decade-long run that's been estimated for Mission Log, the Roddenberry Entertainment podcast that's been reviewing every single episode of each screen incarnation of Star Trek in chronological order.

Whatever the case, I'm excited about where this Denzel podcast is going to go, especially because Bell says he wants to have guests on the show. I can't think of a more ideal guest than either Slate's Aisha Harris, who wrote a good piece about Washington's recent Liam Neeson-style career turns as a "geriaction" hero; stand-up comic Reggie Reg, who does the best Denzel impression anywhere; or Bronson Pinchot, who once said he hated working with Washington during the filming of Courage Under Fire--and due to Avery's current stint as a writer for the incredible Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, that has me crossing my fingers for Oliver himself to show up one day on Washington Is the Greatest. (That's mainly because Washington played a British military vet in 1988's For Queen & Country, and I want to hear Oliver evaluate Washington's accent in that film.)

Bell and Avery's entertaining podcast has also made me look back on the huge amount of terrific soundtracks or original scores in Washington's filmography, from Terence Blanchard's rousing Malcolm X score to Elmer Bernstein's work on Devil in a Blue Dress. Speaking of which, Bernstein's "Theme from Devil in a Blue Dress" and the Branford Marsalis Quartet's "Mo' Better Blues" can currently be enjoyed during "The Whitest Block Ever" on AFOS, while Hans Zimmer's "Roll Tide" from Crimson Tide and selections from Blanchard's Malcolm X score can be heard during "AFOS Prime." "Chaiyya Chaiyya," A.R. Rahman's classic tune from the 1998 Hindi film Dil Se, which is also part of "AFOS Prime" rotation, wasn't written for Inside Man, but that Spike Lee/Denzel collabo is the first place where most American moviegoers like myself vibed out to it (although in a slightly modified form with added trumpet riffs by Blanchard and newly recorded guest verses by Panjabi MC).

Best of all, Bell and Avery's discussions of why black people often leave movie screenings so early (Bell points out that it's most likely because they have to pick up their kids from school) or why Bell considers historical dramas like A Soldier's Story (Avery refers to the 1984 movie as "the thing that red-alerted a lot of black women to Denzel Washington") and Glory to be "black people homework" are imbued with the same insight and hilarious observations about life as a person of color that made Totally Biased such a keeper during its short life span. Here's hoping Wolfpop doesn't front on Washington Is the Greatest and abruptly put an end to it like FXX did to Totally Biased.

What happens when you mix DJ Snake & Lil Jon with motion-stabilized Star Trek? (You win the Internet.)

One reason why I used to like glimpsing behind-the-scenes footage of Star Trek: The Next Generation on entertainment news shows in the '90s was because I got to see--from the news cameraman's point of view--what the actors looked like when they shook themselves around on the Enterprise-D bridge or shuttlecraft sets for scenes where the ship was under attack. Without the dramatic camera tilts, the actors looked goofier than Justin Bieber in an oversized baseball cap he stole from Pharrell's hat shop. All that flailing around (without the aid of those massive hydraulic gimbals that the crews of The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide were able to afford in order to believably simulate submarine motion) is a huge part of Star Trek acting, which Brent Spiner once described during one of those entertainment news shows as "a cross between Shakespeare and flying around the house with a towel around your neck."

Nowadays, there's motion stabilization software that can take the final versions of Star Trek battle scenes, remove the camera tilts and make those scenes look just like those old behind-the-scenes EPK clips of Star Trek actors shimmying around like crazy-looking white people in a B-52's video. The results of Star Trek getting motion-stabilized are being posted on a subreddit called Star Trek Stabilized. Somebody on YouTube must have noticed that the Star Trek actors' movements without the camera-shaking closely resemble the slo-mo'd thrashing around and twerking during the insane video for the DJ Snake/Lil Jon trap hit "Turn Down for What," which was directed by the Daniels (a.k.a. directors Daniel Kwan, the dancer whose crotch has a life of its own in the video, and Daniel Scheinert).



Now that anonymous somebody has taken Star Trek Stabilized .gifs and mashed them up with "Turn Down for What." The shit is perfect.



All that's missing from "Turn Down for Spock" is the sight of Data yelling "Yeaaah!" and "What!" Lil Jon is the black Jerry Lewis (I keep expecting to hear him yell out "Flavin!" in the middle of a track), and Holodeck Joe Piscopo once taught Data how to do a Jerry Lewis impression, so Data would be Lil Jon/Jerry Lewis in this situation. (Of course, like a lot of soundtrack album collectors, a lot of Star Trek heads are musically narrow-minded, "get off my Salam grass lawn" types who don't understand either trap or the "Turn Down for Spock" video's references to the Daniels' video, so they leave annoying YouTube comments under the "Turn Down for Spock" video like "Music ruined it for me" and "Great compilation, but the soundtrack is crap.")

One of the .gifs in "Turn Down for Spock" is a clip from a Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan battle scene. The title of the classic James Horner score cue during that particular battle scene is "Surprise Attack."



"Surprise Attack" isn't currently in rotation on "AFOS Prime" and "Hall H" on AFOS. But a bunch of other Star Trek II score cues are part of those AFOS blocks, including an alternate version of the Star Trek II epilogue cue that contains neither music Horner had to add at the last minute because of reshoots nor audio of Leonard Nimoy's voiceover (of what is now stupidly known as the Captain's Oath), and that alternate version is worthy of Spock's favorite adjective of "fascinating."

Nothing but net: Favorite basketball movie scores

Basketball fans are currently swept up in NBA Finals Fever, so it's the perfect time to look back at how film and TV composers have musically interpreted the game in three of the best basketball movie scores.

Hoosiers (Jerry Goldsmith)

I'm waiting for Superbad soundtrack musicians Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Clyde Stubblefield, John "Jab'o" Starks and Phelps "Catfish" Collins to reunite for that great funktastic basketball comedy score that hasn't been written yet. I doubt the funk legends will collaborate again for a movie score, but if this dream team did so for my dream basketball flick score, the result would probably end up going neck-and-neck with Jerry Goldsmith's beloved work from 1986's Hoosiers for the spot of greatest b'ball score.

Goldsmith preferred to approach period pieces like Hoosiers (known as Best Shot outside America), Chinatown and L.A. Confidential as if they were contemporary. On paper, a partially synthesized, anachronistic score for a movie set in the early '50s reads like an epic fail. Somehow, Goldsmith made it work. His musical vision of basketball-as-Americana, which combined a full orchestra with drum machines, doesn't sound dated.

(On the other hand, the completely synthesized "Theme from Hoosiers" concert arrangement that Goldsmith and his son Joel created specially for the soundtrack album is on the dated side. When I first heard that track several years ago, I thought it sounded like theme music for a huffing and puffing T.J. Hooker in an LCPD gym, attempting to block a shot with his beer gut.)

I always dug how Goldsmith's percussion, like in "The Coach Stays" and the Aaron Copland-esque "The Pivot," imitated the sound of a basketball being dribbled.

Goldsmith and Hoosiers director David Anspaugh later reteamed for Rudy, another rousing sports flick that turns grown men into teary-eyed Oprah's Favorite Things audience members. The Goldsmith/Anspaugh partnership produced two powerful and rich scores that even someone who's not a sports fan can appreciate.

Back to that unwritten funkdafied basketball flick score. If I composed it, it would probably sound like "Sportscaster," which Freaks and Geeks and Donnie Darko composer Michael Andrews (a.k.a. Elgin Park) wrote for his band, the Greyboy Allstars.

Cornbread, Earl and Me (Donald Byrd)

Below CBSSports.com's Movie Madness list of Top 10 Basketball Movies, a commenter says the early Laurence Fishburne movie Cornbread, Earl and Me belongs on the list simply because of the Blackbyrds theme song ("He's a man with the plan/He's got a basketball in his hand!").

Cornbread contains the only film score written by jazz-funk legend Donald Byrd. The Blaxploitation.com review of the Cornbread soundtrack says "it's not up to the standard of their early studio LPs," but I'll take the Byrd & the Blackbyrds sound any day over a James Horner interpretation of the drama both on and off the court.

Glory Road (Trevor Rabin featuring Alicia Keys)

The only Bruckheimer movie scores I've liked are from Beverly Hills Cop (Harold Faltermeyer), Bad Boys (Mark Mancina), Crimson Tide (Hans Zimmer), The Rock (the Media Ventures Mafia) and Remember the Titans (Trevor Rabin). The score from Bruckheimer's basketball flick about the first integrated NCAA team, the 1965-66 Texas Western Miners, which unites Titans' Rabin with Alicia Keys, isn't too shabby either.

The former Yes-man was no stranger to the sport. He wrote both the NBA on TNT theme and the Coach Carter score.



Other noteworthy basketball movie scores: Hoop Dreams (Ben Sidran), White Men Can't Jump (Bennie Wallace), Love & Basketball (Terence Blanchard), Coach Carter (Rabin), Inside Moves (John Barry), The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (Thom Bell) and Fast Break (David Shire and James Di Pasquale).

He Got Game doesn't count because other than a theme tune performed by Public Enemy, there's no original music during the movie. Spike Lee used Copland pieces for the score to reflect his Goldsmith-like vision of hoops-as-Americana.

(Is Theodore Shapiro's Semi-Pro score any good? I haven't watched Semi-Pro yet.)

On the small screen, inner-city high school basketball served as the backdrop for The White Shadow, which featured a theme from Rockford Files and A-Team composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter at the height of their partnership.

No discussion of basketball-related original score music would be complete without the most famous tune of them all, "Roundball Rock," the now-retired NBA on NBC theme. Forget the Gatorade "Be Like Mike" jingle that's synonymous with Michael Jordan. "Roundball Rock" is the theme for His Airness. It was composed by New Age musician and frequent Late Night with Conan O'Brien punching bag John Tesh, who didn't have access to a piano at the time he wrote it, so he had to sing it into his own answering machine.

Related links:
Hoosiers score CD review and release history [Filmtracks]
"THE 'REEL' DREAM TEAM" [High Socks Legend]
"That Guy Salute: The Coach in Teen Wolf" [Intensities in Ten Suburbs]