Several years ago I began to compile a VHS tape of my favourite opening movie title sequences. My methodology generally consisted of grabbing a movie "off air" and redubbing it to a final VHS at my place of employment. Not for a moment did it become an important project but I did manage to assemble a few over the course of a couple of years. With Youtube, for instance, there is no longer any need to do this. The time expended is immense when you do it the old way; now just key in a given movie's title into the search window and viola... I mean, voila. (Accent missing.)
Having said that, I have never seen Howard Hawk's 1970 picture Rio Lobo (starring John Wayne and a pre-executive Sherry Lansing).
Here is Rio Lobo's opening title seqence scored by my favourite film composer, Jerry Goldsmith (he never ceases to amaze me, even five years after his passing)...
3 comments:
Very nice!
It is, isn't it? Goldsmith was a certifiable genius: In a biz where the word is thrown around way too often, a guy like him deserved the label.
Being a film composer requires that you produce music that "fits" a scene or sequence; whether you imitate a pre-existing piece of music or sound, or you dial up something that is a little bit original. With Goldsmith, you generally got a personality in the music. His scores for "Patton", "Seconds", and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" sounded like nothing else.
The late film composer Elmer Bernstein said years ago during an interview where he spoke of his fellow film scorers, that Jerry Goldsmith 'would be the composer he would automatically hire if he (Bernstein) were a film's producer'.
Coming from Elmer Bernstein, that comment says something since he was no slouch himself: Scorer of "The Man With the Golden Arm", "The Ten Commandments", "The Great Escape", and "Heavy Metal"; all outstanding examples of the form.
As a film though, Rio Lobo is a disappointment. Howard Hawks was surely no stranger to remaking his own movies (Ball of Fire into A Song To Remember; Bringing Up Baby into Man's Favourite Sport and so on...), but this retread of Rio Bravo, already capably remade as El Dorado, is muddled and uninspired. Still, time defines the worth of everything, and who is to say that it might not improve with another viewing after all these years?
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