When Peter Jackson's stunning redo of King Kong came out, an IMDb user (who liked the movie, mind) said that he/she wished that the movie could have included the theme song from the Rankin/Bass cartoon at the end. Presumably this wasn't done in the movie on the grounds of it being a stupid and out-of-place notion, although the show's theme song is actually pretty good.
But still not as stupid and out-of-place as this.
Thanks to BBC Radio 1's Rob da Bank, BBC Four viewers have the chance to listen to an alternative soundtrack for the classic 1933 film King Kong when it is shown on the channel over Christmas.
King Kong airs on BBC Four on Saturday 27 December at 11.30pm and viewers can press the Red button to hear Rob da Bank's personal choice of tracks to go alongside the film.
Rob has dug through his crates to put together a tracklisting of weird and wonderful gems from Sigur Ros, Flaming Lips, Radiohead, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Black Sabbath and Portishead to The Ho'Op'I Brothers, Harry Connick Junior, Bon Iver, Laurie Anderson and Tunng.
The music for the opening and closing credits will be Hudson Mohawke's "Star Crackout" and Pixies' "Monkey Gone To Heaven" respectively.
The score will also be broadcast on the Rob da Bank and Friends show on Radio 1, Sunday 21 December, from 2.00 to 4.00am.
The complete press release and tracklisting can be found here. The point of chucking a whole load of anachronistic material onto a movie which already has a perfectly fine score cannot be found anywhere - writing music to accompany silent movies is one thing, but this smacks of clever-clever arrogance. Or thickness.
Rumours that Max Steiner is digging his way out of his grave with murder in mind are unconfirmed at press time - I nearly took Edith Bowman off staff for suggesting that this (Mr. Bank's "rescoring," not Max Steiner coming back to life) is a good idea... at least when James Newton Howard replaced Howard Shore's music Jackson kept Shore's cameo in the movie. He's the bloke conducting the pit orchestra in New York, if you were wondering.
Anyway, YouTube seems to lack videos featuring Steiner's original music but luckily Radio 1 DJs have been kept far away from the other two versions. So here is SoundtrackGeek's preview video of John Barry's score from the version with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange:
And one of my favourite cues from Howard's replacement score for the newest one, "Tooth And Claw":
1 comment:
...my initial reaction is pretty much, "the hell?"
Post a Comment