Film score nerds are suckers for good orchestral music in films, TV shows, videogames and, well, maybe not as frequently, commercials. That’s why this particular ad, showcasing Canadian Olympic athlete achievements at the recently closed 2010 Vancouver Winter games from Canuck telephone/TV/internet monolith Bell is so stunning. It features the actual orchestra players who recorded the piece for the ad emoting and performing gorgeous original music by Canadian composer Darren Fung (Just Buried – released by Moviescore Media).

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp as Elijah Wood The Mad Hatter begins pissing off prickly Lewis Carroll purists on March 5, 2010 in theaters everywhere in eye-popping 3D. Lending musical support is Burton’s constant composer Danny Elfman, AKA film music’s most awesome red head.

Threaded throughout the score is an original song penned by Elfman, called “Alice’s Theme”, and it opens up the Disney Records score album due in stores on March 2 (obligatory Amazon link). Here’s a sneak peek at the song’s lyrics (thanks to the supremely talented LD for these)…

“Alice’s Theme”
Music and Lyrics by Danny Elfman

Oh, Alice, dear where have you been?
So near, so far or in between?
What have you heard what have you seen?
Alice, Alice, please, Alice!

Oh, tell us are you big or small
To try this one or try them all
It’s such a long, long way to fall
Alice, Alice, oh, Alice

How can you know this way not that?
You choose the door you choose the path
Perhaps you should be coming back
Another day, another day

And nothing is quite what is seems
You’re dreaming are you dreaming, oh, Alice?
(Oh, how will you find your way? Oh, how will you find your way?)
(There’s not time for tears today. There’s no time for tears today.)

So many doors – how did you choose
So much to gain so much to lose
So many things got in your way
No time today, no time today
Be careful not to lose your head
Just think of what the doormouse said…Alice!

Did someone pull you by the hand?
How many miles to Wonderland?
Please tell us so we’ll understand
Alice…Alice…Oh, Alice

(Oh how will you find you way? … Oh, how will you find you way?)

Sing along!

According to Wilkinson, Goldsmith did not include him on the cue sheets for original music he composed the film Man’s Best Friend. Wilkinson says after he hired an attorney to attempt to get his name properly recorded on the cue sheets for the film, Goldsmith put WIlkinson’s name on the cue sheets and paid Wilkinson retroactive royalties for past broadcasts of the film.

More: filmmusicmagazine.com.

World Premiere release of the score to the 1990/1991 Warner Bros./DC Comics television series The Flash, starring John Wesley Shipp and Amanda Pays. Building off of Danny Elfman’s rousing theme, acclaimed composer Shirley Walker composes and conducts an exhilarating orchestral super-hero score that chronicles the thrilling adventures of one of DC Comics’ most beloved superheroes, The Flash. Produced by Ford A. Thaxton and mastered by James Nelson, this two-disc release features over 2HRS of astounding music and includes in-depth liner notes by Randall D. Larson. This is a limited edition of 3000 Units.

Ordering info and soundclips: lalalandrecords.com.

Geoff Boucher: You’ve worked with Tim Burton on more than a dozen film projects, including some of his signature films — the two “Batman” films, “Beetlejuice,” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Edward Scissorhands” — and I’m curious how your collaboration has changed through the years? Either in rhythm or approach?

Danny Elfman: The joy of working with Tim is and always has been his unpredictability. I never know how he is going to react to something. People say, “Oh, you’ve worked with him so long, you must know when you write something that he will love it.” It’s quite the contrary. I’ve never found the secret, magic key. He started unpredictable and he is extremely unpredictable for me still. In that is also the joy. Over the years, his favorite stuff has often been the stuff I played for him as an afterthought. He gravitates to the areas that others directors do not allow. Like the character Edward Scissorhands having a theme which is almost Eastern European Jewish. A lot of directors would have said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, Edward’s not Jewish and he’s not from Europe.” Tim doesn’t ask these types of questions. He responds completely viscerally to everything and immediately likes it or doesn’t like it. I have to figure out why. Honestly, after 25 years I can’t say that he is any easier for me to work with or any more predictable, and that actually is what I look forward to the most in our collaboration.

Read the full interview at latimes.com.

Photo Credit: Danny Elfman at his home in Hancock Park in 2003. (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the 2010 Academy Awards way too frigging early this morning.  Here then are the nominees for the music categories (i.e. the only ones you give a damn about).

Music (Original Score)

Avatar – James Horner
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Alexandre Desplat
The Hurt Locker – Marco Beltrami & Buck Sanders
Sherlock Holmes – Hans Zimmer
Up – Michael Giacchino

Music (Original Song)

The Princess and The Frog, “Almost There” – Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
The Princess and The Frog, “Down In New Orleans” – Music and Lyric by Randy Newman
Paris 36, “Loin de Paname” – Music by Reinhardt Wagner, Lyric by Frank Thomas
Nine, “Take It All” – Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston
Crazy Heart, “The Weary Kind” – Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

My apologies to Buck Sanders, who was nominated with Marco Beltrami, for not appearing in my nominated composer graphic above. Buck, there are no pictures of you on the internet.

While considerably less star-studded than the Grammys (there is no film music equivalent to Lady Gaga), the International Film Music Critics Association has piled on the Giacchino love, having recently announced their nominations for the best in film, television and videogame music in 2009. Michael leads with 9 nominations (including multiple nods for Up, Star Trek, a nod for the doc Earth Days, and for Composer of The Year).

Full disclosure: I am a voting member of this association, but am not easily influenced by expensive gifts and baubles. However, I do appreciate the Avatar-branded iPad from James Horner’s publicist (now I can browse Cinemusic from the toilet!). Further disclosure, I did not cast a single vote to nominate Alexandre Desplat’s musical ode to barbiturates Twilight: New Moon. My top pick for Sci-Fi/Fantasy score, Danny Elfman’s bone-crushing Terminator Salvation, didn’t even make the five nominees. Son of a bitch!

The International Film Music Critics will announce the winners of its Sixth Annual Awards on February 26, 2010.

Check out the full list of nominees at filmmusiccritics.org.

Film Score Monthly founder and soundtrack label overseer Lukas Kendall has revealed that FSM will release a 2-CD set of Jerry Goldsmith’s monster classic (and Oscar-nominated, oooh), 1983 chiller-score Poltergeist.

Originally available on a 38-minute LP presentation, Rhino Records re-issued an expanded CD in 1997.  That release, albeit more representative of the score, has been criticized for sound quality issues and had gone “into the light” (see: out-of-print) very quickly after it was released. Often pricey on the secondary market, watch for copies of the Rhino Poltergeist to start popping up on eBay like muddy corpses in an unfinished swimming pool.

According to Kendall:

Mike Matessino [FSM's Superman boxed set] is going back to the source elements to improve upon the Rhino edition and also add a second disc of alternates and the LP program.

FSM’s Poltergeist is expected sometime in mid-to-late 2010.

FSM tipping their hat this early is considered a rare move by a specialty soundtrack label. (Friendly?) competition between a handful of soundtrack producers has meant details on upcoming releases are heavily guarded.

Danny Elfman

Updated 1/22/10! In November I brought you the news about Danny Elfman and his unceremonious booting from Universal Pix’s The Wolf Man, a film so thoroughly manhandled by the studio that it laid waste to an unknown number of marketing interns, required an assembly of editors, composers and wholesale replacement of Rick Baker’s make-up effects with bulging CGI.

In a move no doubt meant to downplay the grandiose heritage of the legendary Wolf Man character (because old is crap, right?), after a disastrous suburban test screening, the filmmakers swapped Elfman for Paul Haslinger, whose atmospheric, pulsing electronic scores for the first and third, color-drained Underworld films was no doubt what the marketing department and studio honcho geniuses thought would be a notch up on the wicked awesome scale from Elfman’s decidedly old-fashioned approach.

Now, if you thought that was the end of it, well you’d be wrong, as there is one final (is there such a thing as “final” in the Wolf Man world?) twist in this story, and that is that some if not most of Elfman’s music is back in the film. Which means Haslinger is out and additional composers have been brought back in to stitch it all together using ideas from Elfman’s material. One name is Conrad Pope, a gifted and accomplished composer (his score for the obscure drama Pavillion of Women garnered much praise back in 2001), who has also worked extensively as an orchestrator for Danny Elfman (Sleepy Hollow), John Williams (Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone), Alexandre Desplat (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Alan Silvestri (A Christmas Carol) and others. Pope, and a team of other composers will contribute about 25-30 minutes of additional music.

Update 1/22/10: Only Conrad Pope has contributed additional music to the film. No other composers are on the project.

Elfman, meanwhile, is busy recording his score for Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, and therefore unavailable to write additional music and or revise cues (you have to wonder if he’d be willing at this point).

Stay tuned, because at this moment it is not yet February 12, 2010, which is when The Wolf Man is finally unleashed into theaters. Or will it?

Hans Zimmer continues his exhaustive press tour for Sherlock Holmes, this time talking with David Poland of DP/30, who has the entire exchange on video, which was shot in Hans’ crimson, velvety studio in Santa Monica. Yes, that is a skull at the base of a lamp over Hans’ shoulder (no word if Hans ripped it straight from Klaus’ still twitching body after Curse of The Black Pearl). Warning: mammoth proprietary-Apple file format load time is longer than even “Psychological Recovery… 6 Months” from Zimmer’s Sherlock Holmes album, so bring your patience.