Contemplation Music for Sad Days

Choir Concerto - Alfred Schnittke
Coptic Light - Morton Feldman
You Are (Variations) - Steve Reich
Requiem - Herbert Howells

By the way...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, Festivus, Chanukkah, New Year, Kwanzaa...whatever.

I would also like to contribute the following:

We made it. It was tough and not a little grueling but it's over. It's like the elephant in the room and nobody seems prepared to discuss it. You know what I'm talking about.

The Mozart Anniversary Year

Congratulations, everybody. I think we managed to go the entire year in the call center listening to virtually none of Wolfgang's works. I understand that the concert season isn't over yet so there's still some to endure, but the technicality is the thing and the year is officially done.

And since the demise of our "Mozart Anniversary Year Countdown" clock you will (hopefully) notice that it has been replaced with a new clock that is simultaneously depressing and hopeful.

Happy New Year!

Wintry Mix

It's the last day of work before our little holiday break.

Christmas Cocktails - Various Columbia Artists
Christmas Carols and Hymns - Robert Shaw Chamber Singers
When My Heart Finds Christmas - Harry Connick, Jr.
Une Cantate de Noel - Arthur Honegger
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Good. Music.

To get through a quiet day at the office:

Steve Reich: Drumming, Tehillim
Harrison Birtwistle: Earth Dances
Sibelius: Symphony no. 6
Wayne Siegel: Devil's Golf Course
Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra
Joonas Kokkonen: Requiem
Rautavaara: Book of Visions

Happy Thanksgiving

And happy birthday!

In Memorium

Jerry Fischer was a friend of mine in grad school. He had just begun composition studies in my second year at Truman State. Jerry was a non-trad. He had made his living in software sales of a system that he had devised that took him all over the world. He was an organ player who rarely missed mass. Most of all he was a family man who cared deeply for his wife, children and elderly mother. He had decided, though, that it was time to return to school and study composition. So he drove to Kirksville, Missouri from Quincy, Illinois every Friday for his lessons and the composers master class. He was quiet, thoughtful, kind and always thoroughly engaged. I didn't really get to know Jerry as well as I would have liked. But the person I was able to get to know was an extraordinarily good human being.

On this date three years ago Jerry was gunned down in his driveway by his business partner over a business disagreement. Later that school year we programmed on one of our composers concerts the only piece he completed as a student; a breezy set for flute and piano written about his three cats. It was an extremely emotional day as his family was there, too. And one I'll never forget.

Once again, you're remembered Jerry.

I Can't Handel It Anymore

It's Saturday afternoon and I'm at work.

Selling Messiah tickets.

The Community of Christ Church (formerly RLDS) sponsored an annual performance of the Messiah that dates back 90 years. After the performance 2 years ago the church announced they were letting it go after the 2005 performance. Well in swoops our E.D. (read about him here and/or here) and "saves the day" by taking over the performance. Great. Now we get to sell 2 performances of the Messiah. As if o1 isn't bad enough.

I first heard Messiah complete when I was a junior in high school.
I heard it again 2 years ago. The only reason I went was because Jaques was performing the alto solo (not too shabby; actually he was pretty awesome!).

That makes it 10 years between performances. I guess that's okay.

I think perhaps we should use Messiah as a yardstick of good taste. If you ask a person if they like Messiah you can probably deduce that they have little in the way of good taste.

Perhaps we should use Sir Thomas Beecham's orchestration next year!

It's Sir William Herschel's Birthday...

...He discovered Uranus (1738).

A Sad Film Score Friday

Basil Poledouris died two days ago of cancer. This week's Film Score Friday will honor his memory with the following:

Big Wednesday
Conan the Barbarian
Flesh and Blood
Robocop
The Hunt for Red October
Lonesome Dove
Quigley Down Under
Starship Troopers
Les Miserables

Reich at 70

On October 25th the Warrior Bard and I made the trek (in the rain) to St. Louis for the symphony which, in conjunction with Synergy Vocals, gave a concert celebrating Steve Reich's 70th birthday.

The concert was, for the most part, great. I'm not going to nitpick too much simply because I don't get to hear this kind of programming closer to home that often. It never struck me until the downbeat of the concert just how difficult Reich's music is to actually perform. I take it for granted because the recordings are all pristine and flawless yet still magical. Anyway, you could tell David Robertson and the performers were without a doubt committed to the performance even if it wasn't perfect.

The Program:

Proverb
City Life
New York Counterpoint
You Are (Variations)

I could go on and on about how great most of this music is, but that would be redundant.

It was a great show.

Thank God That's Over

Die Frau and I sing in the Saint Joseph Community Chorus.

"But Herr Vogler, you and die Frau live in KC. Why do you drive an hour every week for this chorus? Surely there must be one closer," you ask. True. We first started dating as members of this chorus so we have kind of a sentimental connection to it. Additionally it's directed by the choir director from our undergraduate college for whom we both have a great deal of respect.

A week ago Sunday (10/29) we had a concert. It was one of those pull out all the stops concerts where we had an organ (the concert was in a church with a really nice organ; actually it was the church at which I was paid to sing for 4 of my 6 undergraduate years) and an orchestra. Luckily there were no dancers.

Now a little background. Early this summer an anonymous donor gave a large sum of money to the chorus to present this concert. So somewhere along the line someone heard a new cantata by Mark Hayes and said, "HEY! I'VE GOT A GREAT IDEA! LET'S PERFORM THIS!". But wait, there's more. They also decided that we should do more-or-less an entire concert dedicated to his...uh...music. And "HEY! WE CAN HAVE HIM COME UP HERE AND PLAY PIANO, TOO!!! THAT'LL BE GREAT!!!"

For those of you that don't know who Mark Hayes is, consider yourselves lucky. His music is supposed to be liturgical but is in reality awful schlock that tries to be spiritually deep where really it's just trite and pedantic (and annoying to those of us that feel it's merely superficial and pandering). We performed several of his anthems and a new cantata, a Te Deum (or tedium if you prefer). Basically it was enough to make my head feel like a tomato in a microwave. To make matters worse, all I heard during the Te Deum was warmed-over John Rutter and even a snippet of "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera. There's nothing spiritual about it. It is merely self-serving and says, "Listen to how pretty I am". There's no glorification of the Creator of the Universe anywhere in this music, just glorification in the creator of the music. All things being equal I'd rather have performed some Rutter.

Anyway, I feel very strongly about the programming and there just doesn't seem to be enough new or interesting music being presented. For example, we also performed Randall Thompson's Frostiana set for chorus with piano, orchestra or band this past weekend. It's a nice series of Robert Frost settings (a couple of them are completely uninteresting, but others are good), but I've performed with this group six out of the last eight years and this was the third time(!) we'd performed it (though only the first time with orchestra).

Anyway, for more than just artistic reasons die Frau and I feel as though our time with this group has run its course. We just don't have the time or the resources (not only are we expending fuel, we have to pay dues, too!) to devote to it anymore. In a way it's sad, but we all have to move on sometime and this seems to be the time. So after Carmina Burana in the spring that'll be it.

That's A Winner!

Yay! The Cardinals are World Series Champs!!!

Cards Win! Cards Win!

Being the devout baseball man that I am (a man has to get his religion somewhere) I just thought that I'd throw that out there.

I believe I requested a Cardinals/Tigers World Series?

Excellent.

Instant Steve Reich Collection, Just Add Water (and a Negligible Amount of Cash)

It pains me to admit it but I have very little of Steve Reich's music in my CD collection...until now.

Die Frau and I were in one of the local Barnes and Noble stores this past weekend when this lovely box of wonderful music attracted my attention. This 5-disc set immediately got my attention because it's basically a "best of" collection (though you could probably include anything by the man in such a thing) and was astoundingly priced at $35.

This retrospective is absolutely fantastic and even includes the recent works You Are (Variations), premiered by Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale a few years back, which costs $20 all by itself. If that's not enough, you get basically all the seminal works of this most influential American musician. Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Proverb, Different Trains, Eight Lines, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, and Drumming (and then some) are all included. The only drawback for me is a lack of extensive liner notes. But even that isn't a major concern because you can find all that online at the Boosey and Hawkes website.

Anyway, it's a great set. If you like Reich's music and don't have much or are just plain interested check it out. It's awesome.

Composers in Community

This past weekend die Frau and I made the long, long (looooooong) trek to Orange City, Iowa. For those of you that don't know where this is, it's a half hour east of South Dakota and a half hour south of Minnesota. For those of you that do know where this is...why?!?! Why did we go to such a place, you ask? I'll tell you.

I had a piece programmed on a new music festival that was a joint effort of the Iowa Composers Forum and the Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers and hosted by Northwestern College in Orange City. It was my first festival selection which made it all the more exciting. Well that's not entirely true. I've been programmed on 4 conferences/festivals, but they were all at Truman State so I think those kind of tipped the scales in my favour in those instances.

Anyway, the piece was my Two Movements for Flute which is an unaccompanied solo which also has the distinction of being my first 12-tone work. It's also a quite difficult work, full of complex rhythmic ideas and wide intervallic leaps. And if that's not enough there are little surface features that really function as background features that unify the piece on a long-range scale. Ugh, can you tell I had been studying Schenker at the time I wrote this piece, too? The soloist, whom I met the morning of the performance, performed the piece very well. She managed to bring out some of the aforementioned "long-range" elements of the piece rather than focus primarily on its gestural nature. I was pleased. Everyone seemed very complimentary especially with the knowledge that this was indeed my first 12-tone work.

The whole conference was pretty amazing. 1 day, 4 concerts (long concerts), 2 paper sessions and seemingly endless variety. It was incredible to hear all this music by so many composers and so much of it was different from everything else that was heard. In addition everyone seemed genuinely supportive of each other's work. Many and constant congratulations abounded throughout the day in the halls, during concerts and during meals. Another nice aspect of the conference was getting to see Dr. Gooch again. It was, afterall, his suggestion that I join the Forum. His Monodies for cello and piano were performed right before my piece.

One of the most difficult aspects of being a composer in a situation such as this is trying to find the balance between enjoying what you're listening to and listening on a more analytical level. I found myself trying to find this at many points throughout each of the concerts and would say that, in my own opinion at least, was fairly successful. If you do nothing but listen analytically you might miss the point. If you do nothing but listen for enjoyment (though there's nothing wrong with this from time to time) you might also miss a larger point. Balance is key, Daniel-san.

Overall the experience was really great. One I look forward to again soon.

Gonna Fly Now

Maynard Ferguson died Thursday night at the age of 78.

For those that don't know Ferguson was one of the greatest jazz trumpet players who ever lived. He could play ridiculous high notes. He quit school at 15 to start his own big band and played with a lot of other big bands in the '50s. He gave the Stan Kenton Orchestra its signature sound (screaming high, screaming loud).

He scored a big hit in the 1970s with his cover of Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky and almost instantly made the big band a viable art form again only this time fusing rock, jazz, bop and anything else that caught his fancy (like Indian classical music).

I got to see him in concert once.

It was the end of my freshman year and he and his band, Big Bop Nouveau, came to play at a church in Kansas City. 2 others and I made the trek from Saint Joseph to south Kansas City for the concert. One of the guys, Kevin, was also a bop trumpet player (an extraordinarily talented one with an ego to match) who had heard Maynard play so many times that the road manager recognised him and he eventually earned a tour jacket...which you couldn't actually buy. We got to the church and I realised I was about $15 short. Kevin paid for my ticket for which I will be eternally grateful.

Move over, Gabriel, you're playing second trumpet now.

The Cue Sheet

So the Pikey threw down and I have accepted the challenge. It's hard to wittle 450 film score recordings down to your 10 favourite cues. Unlike the Pikey, though, mine are in no particular order as the aforementioned task was difficult enough. Miklos Rozsa got kicked off the island for crying out loud!

Anyway, here's my list, some thoughts on each and some of the runners-up.

The Big Rescue – Superman (John Williams) – This is the moment that would make or break this film. The entire cue (fugue and all) is captivating and brilliantly paced with a near-perfect dramatic shape.

The White Tree - The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Howard Shore) - First of all, let's call it what it really is, the Lighting of the Beacons. I nearly wet myself when I first saw this scene in the theatre. Is there really anything that has to be said here? It's one of the most beautiful blends of music and picture ever run through a projector.

Journey to the Line - The Thin Red Line (Hans Zimmer) - As has been discussed before, I'm no huge fan of Zimmer. I care for this movie even less (don't say I don't get it, either, unless you really want me to pounce). But it is necessary to give credit where it's due. If you were to tell me that I had 10 seconds to come up with the single greatest cue Hans has ever written I would only need 2 and this would be it. All comparisons to Barber's Adagio for Strings aside this is probably one of the most subtle, detached (therefore emotionally heightened) and gorgeous pieces Hans has ever written.

The Hand of Fate, Part II - Signs (James Newton Howard) - This won't be the last one the Pikey and I have in common. This is a perfect complement to the climax of the film. Few directors think about their films the way Shyamalan does. He eschews convention. Even in this instance he chooses not to use the opening stinger in the film because it's "obvious" and a cheap scare tactic. One of the things I think is so brilliant in this particular cue is the way it more-or-less encapsulates the camera movements in the film. For much of the film Shyamalan ignores fancy camerawork and quick editing and let's his film breathe through the performances of its actors. The first real sense of motion in the music is reflected in the first real motion of film where there's that beautiful, swooping crane shot that covers Graham and the kids and moves into the house with Merrill and the alien. Can you tell this is one of my absolute favourite films?

Overture (Main title) - North by Northwest (Bernard Herrmann) - I know the accepted attitude is that Vertigo is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece and that there are few greater marriages of music and film in the history of cinema than the scene d'amour when Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) finally makes over Madeleine (Kim Novak). That being said, North by Northwest is my favourite Hitchcock/Herrmann collaboration. The suits at MGM originally wanted something jazzy and "Gershwinesque" for the opening title sequence (by the perennially brilliant Saul Bass). Instead Herrmann incorporates South American dance rhythms into the overall substance of the score. Somehow it works brilliantly.

Riding the Fire Mares - Krull (James Horner) - This is one of the standout cues of the score. In it Horner demonstrates his full powers as a master of variation technique and orchestral colour. It was a bit of a toss-up between this and The Widow's Web from the same score with its cascading arpeggios and Herrmannesque orchestral crashes but ultimately this won out. I know that Krull is bad. Really bad. It's one of my absolute favourite bad movies. It is, though, my absolute favourite Horner score. Nowhere in his entire output is he as melodically inventive and full of orchestral colour as he is here. Also there seems to be some sort of internal logic that holds the score together very nicely where it seems to have a feeling of inevitability at every climax point. I have done no analysis to back my claims up, though. It's more of a feeling.

Valhalla/Viking Victory - The 13th Warrior (Jerry Goldsmith) - Again the standout cue of the score despite the fact that Crichton had Goldsmith rescore the actual battle music in favour of a more atmospheric, electronically-dominated approach. Don't get me wrong, I love the battle music here, but it's actually the music that bookends the battle that really does it for me. The prayer sequence in particular demonstrates Goldsmith's mastery of building tension. So much so that Ridley Scott would dump the very good cue that Harry Gregson-Williams wrote ('Rise a Knight') in a similar scene in Kingdom of Heaven and use Goldsmith's music.

Toccata and Dreamscapes - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Elliot Goldenthal) - I think that if I were asked to cite my favourite example of modernist film music that could instead have been written for the concert hall this would be it. I know the Pikey chose the 'Adagio and Transfiguration' but that's because he likes Richard Strauss.

The Demise of Mrs. Baylock - The Omen (Jerry Goldsmith) - This is sheer choral and orchestral terror. 2 minutes and 42 seconds of it. I can't imagine how much fun it must have been to write this piece and just unleash all hell's fury.

The Battle of Hoth/The Asteroid Field - The Empire Strikes Back (John Williams) - I'm with the Pikey on this one. They may be separate cues, but it's essentially one continuous cue. And it's a (thematic!) 20-minute orchestral tour-de-force (pun intended). I'd just like to see one of the Zimmer boys attempt to come up with something like this! And just to be clear it's 6(!) cues on the 1994 boxed set strung together as one forming a coherent, unified and dramatic whole.

Runners up, or, Those that I could live without but would be grumpier to do so:

The Mission - The Sum of All Fears (Jerry Goldsmith) - Easily the highlight of this score and wretched film performed by up-and-coming soprano Shana Blake Hill.

Theology/Civilization, Wifeing - Conan the Barbarian (Basil Poledouris) - Because there should be pretty tunes somewhere on one of these lists. I guess. If I have to.

Prelude/Outer Space/Radar - The Day the Earth Stood Still (Herrmann) - This is simply brilliant and one of the most amazing orchestral combinations you'll ever encounter anywhere. Electric violin and bass, high and low theremins, four pianos, four harps and 30 or so brass make up the orchestra. The energetic, propulsive staccato piano figures capture the foreboding and the mystery of what is to come.

Ontological Shock - The Matrix (Don Davis) - Everything about this cue feels right. It did absolutely what it had to do in capturing the inevitability of this moment. Using wonderful modern techniques I might add.

Desert Chase - Raiders of the Lost Ark (John Williams) - Perfectly (and entertainly) photographed and edited in nearly every way, this isn't a chase, it's an 8-minute ballet.

The Flying Circus - The Rocketeer (James Horner) - Another wonderful cue that demonstrates Horner's mastery of variation technique and orchestral colour.

Those We Don't Speak Of - The Village (James Newton Howard) - Tense, gutwrenching and, ultimately, one of the most gorgeous pieces in the entire score.

Tournament Speech - Shrek (Harry Gregson-Williams/John Powell) - This cue makes me laugh every...single...time...I listen to it. Why? Two words: falling brass.

Main Title - The Great Train Robbery (Jerry Goldsmith) - A fun-filled and entertaining romp through Victorian England. Goldsmith perfectly captures (as usual) the charm of Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland's characters and clearly as a good time with the score. It's amazing that he wrote this score in the same year as Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture simply because their diversity.

Battle in the Mutara Nebula - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (James Horner) - Once again Horner creates an early splash before his ideas (those that were actually his) became tired and worn. This cue, though, captures everything this movie is about and sounds like an epic seafaring adventure that just happens to be set in outer space adventure (Horatio Hornblower in outer space is how Nicholas Meyer described it).

Exiled - The 13th Warrior (Goldsmith) - Two from The 13th Warrior?!? He must be off his rocker for sure now. Listen to it. Behold the glory that is 8 French Horns playing in unison! Not to mention it's rousing as all hell.

O, for a Muse of fire!

About this time every year the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival presents their outdoor production of Shakespeare in the Park. This year's production is one of my personal favourites, Henry V (the honors for my favourite belong to Macbeth).

Die Frau and I went out twice. Once about two weeks ago and again Friday night. When you're watching a good production of the Bard you get pulled in, almost forgetting it's theatre. Wait a minute. Isn't that the point?!? There are, however, fewer things more agonising than watching bad Shakespeare (or worse, being forced to listen to your high school classmates read it aloud in the most boring possible!).

The production was quite good. The acting, for the most part, was terrific. Except the Dauphin. I told J (as in J and C, J who still doesn't have a blog, hi J) that he acts like he wants to be Harry Lennix when he grows up. He was good. Just a little tooooo melodramatic. The costuming and set design were fantastic. Though I wouldn't have wanted to wear one of those costumes Friday night as it was still around 85 degrees and humid as hell an hour after sundown! There was music. Some of it played as underscore but it mostly played during scene changes. I'm not sure what the attempted effect was but it seemed a bit distracting to me. The "Royal Music" sounded a bit too "Welcome to 79th Academy Awards!" and the "Peasant Music" was a little too Titanic, but I suppose it did it's job.

I'm convinced that there are fewer speeches written in any language that, when done well, can make you want to take up arms quite like the St. Crispin's Day speech.

Goosebumps.

Twice.

Oh sure, the speech that precedes the battle of Sterling in Braveheart is good. That is, it's good until you understand that it's modeled entirely after the St. Crispin's Day speech. Way to go Randall Wallace.

The other plus of the festival is that, since there is no charge for admission, you can BYOB. Which we did. And food. Good wine, good food, good friends, good Shakespeare. Good grief! That's what I call a good night.

Swash Me Buckles!

It's Film Score Friday kids!

Today's list takes us swashbuckling through the high seas and across the stars!

1. Pirates of the Caribbean (duh)
2. The Sea Hawk
3. Cutthroat Island
4. Treasure Planet
5. 7th Voyage of Sinbad
6. The 13th Warrior
7. Hook
8. Jason and the Argonauts
9. Krull
10. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
11. Waterworld

Blogging Superman

I was originally going to post my thoughts on Superman Returns last Wednesday morning after Tuesday night’s premiere. But then I decided to give it a few days in order to mull it over a little more.

Before writing anything else I have to back up. The original Superman films (I & II, we’ll pretend like III and IV never happened) hold a special place in my adolescence and awareness of film in general. Superman was the first film I truly fell in love with as a kid. To this day it's still one of my very favourite films. It was the first film with which I became cognizant of music in film and its ability to tell a story. For my tenth birthday my grandfather gave me a VHS copy of the film. I think I wore out the first 5 ½ minutes of the tape watching the opening titles over and over and over. The old soundtrack album was one of the first compact discs I ever bought. I think I might even have more copies of the score than The Pikey. For me, few moments in cinema/music are greater than the moment during the helicopter sequence of Superman: The Movie in which Christopher Reeve pulls his shirt open to reveal the “S” to the accompaniment of John Williams’ theme in the home key of C major. It just tells you musically from the outset that everything is going to be okay. Rarely since have I encountered moments in film that were so perfect, so inevitable. The Lighting of the Beacons in The Return of the King springs to mind as one of those moments of perfect melding of music and picture.

With that in mind one can hopefully gain a greater grasp of what this new film means to me.

My initial reaction to Superman Returns was one of awe and joy. I hadn’t experienced that much excitement and energy from an audience in a movie theatre since the Special Edition of A New Hope in 1997. Also since I’d never seen any of the original films in the theatre I’d waited 28 of my nearly 29 years to see that title sequence and hear that music on the big screen. WOW!!!

I think that Brandon Routh was cast well enough. Obviously they went out of their way to find someone that looked like Chris Reeve. I think he was a little uneven at times but we should cut the kid a little slack. He’s got big boots to fill and it’s his first film. I think that Kevin Spacey makes quite a good Lex Luthor. I think he gets to explore the darker side of the character in a way that Gene Hackman never really got to. That’s not a slight against Hackman, either. We all know how terrific he can be in those roles. James Marsden is, as always, quietly terrific and has what is probably the most sympathetic role in the film. I think that the weakest performances in the film are in the female roles. Parker Posey, who I think is terrific in Christopher Guest’s films, is flat-out boring here. It seems like she more-or-less phoned it in. This may be a result of direction, too. I don’t know. While Posey was a yawn I think Kate Bosworth was a downright poor casting decision. I think this part would have been better suited for someone like Miranda Otto who we all know can be tough and vulnerable rather than flat and bad. I think that perhaps the strongest casting choice was Frank Langella as Perry White. I enjoyed the fact that he wasn’t high-strung and barking orders like Jackie Cooper in the original films or J.K. Simmons in Spiderman. Cool, calm and collected=good.

As far as the film itself is concerned it’s obvious that it was made with a lot of love. They served up enough trivial minutiae that those of us who know the originals well were able to get all geeked up about certain aspects of it (like the piece of kryptonite that was found in Addis Ababa in the third film that Lex and Co. stole from the Museum of Natural History). Production values are tremendous. The special effects are wonderful and the airplane sequence is downright breathtaking.

As far as the music goes, John Ottman proved that he actually can write a warm melodic score when given the chance. I think his incorporation of the original themes are well done. It's just that, too. An incorporation. It's not like the sequels where there's little or no new music, just the original cut-and-pasted. My biggest problem with the score is actually in the performance of the main title itself. I realise it's *a march* and that it's not supposed to be about subtlety. It is, however, supposed to be about musicality and the Hollywood Studio Symphony's performance isn't shaped nearly as well as the LSO's performance from the original recording (this could also be a mixing issue). I suppose that my other quibble musically is how Ottman hit us over the head with the theme when Superman first appears. There's no inevitability about it. John Williams' build-up to the theme during the helicopter sequence of the original is textbook for building tension. With Williams we have to wait until 3 minutes into a sequence that is almost 6 minutes before we get the first true statement of the theme! But when we get to it, it sounds perfectly natural and even inevitable.

The shortcomings of the film are things inherent to the genre. The characters are all ultimately 2-dimensional; the female sidekick to the bad guy always has a change of heart; the story is pretty thin. Just like the first film it’s basically a land grab by Lex that drives the plot. I understand that writing a good story for a comic book film is a difficult thing to do; too simple and you wind up with the mess that is Batman and Robin; too weird and you get The Avengers (okay, technically not a comic book film, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway) too complex or convoluted and you get the unintelligible The Hulk; non-existent and you get Spawn. You get the idea. I do also wonder where they are planning to go with their little subplot. It could ultimately become a serious story liability in the sense that they have written themselves into a corner with it.

There was one story element that I had a serious problem with. When Lex is in the Fortress of Solitude it appears that the hologram of Jor-El doesn’t recognize Luthor and just assumes that it’s Kal-El. There’s a scene on the DVD of the original that’s not in the theatrical prints (and I’m pretty sure was never in any of the television versions either) in which Superman is clearly interacting with the hologram (or whatever; it just seems easiest to use this term) and that it’s not pre-programmed with every possible response. Also, in Superman II he pretty clearly interacts with his mother to the extent that she appears to take physical form. I realize that Marlon Brando is dead, but that problem has been digitally circumvented before with Oliver Reed in Gladiator and Sir Laurence Olivier in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Come to think of it Olivier has been resurrected twice. There’s a scene that was reinserted into the DVD of Spartacus in which the audio had degraded beyond the point of usage and they had Anthony Hopkins come in and do his best Laurence Olivier impression (bet you didn’t know that, did you?). But I digress.

Ultimately I loved the film. It is not as good as the first or second film in the series but I saw it as a continuation of those stories. A lot of critics have kind of showed their dissatisfaction with the fact that Routh is too much like Reeve, there is too much incorporation of the original music and there are too many little hommages to the original films in the series. I tend to see it quite the opposite. I think that, for those of us that were raised with the originals, it doesn't matter who you put in the suit, we're going to see Chris Reeve. And as far as the music goes, why not incorporate it? Is anyone actually going to write music that captures the spirit of the character better than John Williams? I don't think so. I think Bryan Singer and the writers were just tipping their hats to the originals and knew that they were creating a story that should feel like a natural extension of the originals. This does, however, give them the freedom now to explore new territory in the sequels.