HOT TRACKS LISA ROBINSON

FANFAIR

Not even the best magician in the world can produce a rabbit out of a hat if there is not already a rabbit in the hat.

—Impresario Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes.

When it comes to movie music, the magicians of yesteryear—Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini—have too often been replaced by gratuitous song placement, aural wallpaper, and the “eclectic” record collections of irritating show-offs. Herewith, some noteworthy exceptions from this season’s soundtracks.

No one is making better music for movies than the multi-talented musician, producer, and composer Jon Brion, whose Grammy-nominated score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is by far the best thing about the film; the CD includes songs from E.L.O. and the Polyphonic Spree, Beck's great cover of Korgis’s “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime,” and tunes from Brion himself. In addition, Brion’s score for I Huckabees is filled with his circus-like instrumental motifs as well as five of his own romantic numbers.

Lightning in a Bottle, the live recording of producer Martin Scorsese’s 2003 all-star blues concert, has contributions from Angelique Kidjo, Mavis Staples, James "Blood" Ulmer, Solomon Burke, Chuck D, Mos Def, David Johansen, and others on a CD that could stand alone even without the accompanying magnificent, Antoine Fuquadirected film. The remake of the original 1966 Michael Caine movie Alfie has come and gone, but the soundtrack lives on with some good songs done by Sir Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart in a much-praised collaboration. Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou features offbeat renditions of David Bowie songs by Brazilian singer/actor Seu Jorge. The soundtrack for Hotel Rwanda includes material from Wydef Jean, Jerry "Wonder" Duplessis, and Andrea Guerra. Former Shudder to Think guitarist Nathan Larson wrote the scores for both The Woodsman and A Love Song for Bobby Long—which features songs from Grayson Capps. The best thing about the Aviator soundtrack is the Leadbelly gem “Howard Hughes,” unearthed from the Alan Lomax archives.

David Holmes, who scored Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and Oceans Eleven, is back for the jazzy Oceans Twelve. (For a better version of this sort of thing, go back and check out John Lurie’s score for Get Shorty.) Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, and Natalie Cole do a respectable job of singing Cole Porter in the otherwise leaden De-Lovely. (For better Cole Porter, get CDs by Mabel Mercer, Bobby Short, or Sarah Vaughan.) Tupac: Resurrection is outstanding as a movie and a CD, and forthcoming music-documentary DVDs worth waiting for are End of the Century (the Ramones), Dig! (the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre), and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Massive Attack—who can’t seem to finish their own next CD—did the dreamy instrumental score for Danny the Dog. The Stooges, Funkadelic, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Tommy James and the Shondells liven up Coffee and Cigarettes. The melancholy music in Closer is from Bebel Gilberto and Damien Rice. The soundtrack for Ray has 17 classic Ray Charles songs all sung by the Genius of Soul himself. No such luck in Beyond the Sea, the Kevin Spacey vanity project that proves passion and finger snapping are just not enough; actor/director/writer/ producer Spacey only adequately sings Bobby Darin’s songs himself (Get Rhino’s four-CD Bobby Darin boxed set to hear the swinger who some considered the pretender to Frank Sinatra’s throne.)

No one understands a life like Frank’s.