Ntuple Indemnity

Of all the Golden Globe victories that were announced yesterday, the one I find to be the most curious is Howard Shore’s music in The Aviator being handed the Original Score prize. Now, let’s get a few things straight: for reasons that I have yet to publish here because they are far too numerous, The Aviator is one of the best films I have seen in this year (and by movie terms, we are still in 2004). It’s increasingly obvious that it’s going to take home the top prize at the Oscars this year, and I wouldn’t be one to complain. Howard Shore, on the other hand, is the man who delivered what is probably the most monumental triumph of a film score in the past decade – indeed, one of the all-time pinnacles of film music composition – The Lord of the Rings. As should be evident, I have nothing less than a tremendous degree of respect for his work.

That said, the score to The Aviator is one of the less remarkable things about the picture. Mostly, it is notable for its swelling orchestral moments in the style of the Baroque concerto, cues that would not be out of place in a documentary snapshot of the Palace of Versailles, and are by no means out of place in the early scenes when Hughes is shooting Hell’s Angels from his own rickety cockpit. It reflects the grandeur and scale of Hughes’ ambitious imagination (not to mention Scorsese’s own), and sticks out as a noticeable abandoning of the early twentieth-century American texture that one would expect of such a big period film, but a justified one.

Like Tarantino’s Kill Bill, though, the laudable musical qualities underscoring the film are less attributable to the original compositions than to the prodigious deployment of popular tracks in all the right places. In The Aviator, this selection comes primarily from the swing era, and one would be hard-pressed to find a more delicate use of classic Benny Goodman arrangements anywhere. The best example of this is when Goodman’s recording of “Moonglow” brings us to the wonderful little scene where Hughes takes Kate Hepburn flying over Hollywood by night, and the Lionel Hampton vibe solos by which that track is instantly identifiable capture every sparkle of ambience there is to capture about the mood of the moment. Shore’s music, for all its qualities, sums to a footnote in comparison.

As I never tire of repeating, 2004 delivered two scores that stand above the rest when it comes to thematic resonance, integration into their respective films and overall timelessness: Michael Giacchino’s work in The Incredibles and John Williams’ exuberant charms in the film that everyone forgot, The Terminal. Neither were nominated for a Globe, and we’ll be lucky to see one of them pop up at the Oscars. I am, however, eager to hear Clint Eastwood’s compositions for his $30 million-dollar baby, Million Dollar Baby. He’s no slouch as a musician; if you think back to Lennie Niehaus’ score to Unforgiven, the part that everyone remembers is “Claudia’s Theme”, the sombre guitar melody that bookends the movie. Well, that was actually written by Eastwood himself, though he went uncredited; a Man With No Name, perhaps?

Now, on a completely different note regarding what’s happening in Movieland nowadays: Jean Reno has been cast in The Da Vinci Code. Indeed, is it possible to put an actor in a more self-parodying role than to have the quintessential tough-guy Frenchman play an angry French police inspector named Fache?

I like the direction that they’re going with this project, from the little I’ve heard (i.e. Tom Hanks, Jean Reno, Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman). The correct approach is to admit that the source material is the World’s Bestselling Ball of Cheese, pick it up, and run with it. Good show, gentlemen, good show.

As far as the ever-consistent Goldsman’s screenwriting duties go, here’s a point of reference for what he is capable of: A Beautiful Mind. Here’s another: Batman & Robin. And we all know what happened to his last literary adaptation, I, Robot. In short, The Da Vinci Code is the movie he was born for.

This is less a marriage of music and mathematics than a summer fling of sorts, but I’ll let the pi10k experiment speak for itself:

This experiment attempts to convert the first 10,000 digits of pi into a musical sequence.

Select ten notes, and your corresponding selection translates into an integer. The first note you select will equal “1”, the second “2”, and so on. As your computer cycles through the digits of pi, the corresponding notes will “play.”

Those of you who can make heads or tails of a basic keyboard layout should try it out.

A few comments: First of all, I think the experiment would be on the whole far more interesting if you introduced a number of other factors. The first is that this would be a whole lot more interesting if prior to iterating over the digits of pi, you first converted everybody’s favourite transcendental circumference-diameter ratio into base 12 (0 through 9, A and B), and proceeded to assign notes from there covering the entire twelve-note octave. It would make for some variety, to say the least. Perhaps it would produce the same brand of atonality as what one would expect from, say, Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique.

The next thing I did was plug in a C blues scale to see what kind of a jazz-me-up solo you can do with pi. This reminded me of two things: first, sitting on the same chord and the same key for more than a few bars at a time is boring. Maybe if it was automatically transposed up to F and G blues scales in accordance with the prototypical twelve-bar progression, it would be a whole lot more interesting. Second, pi (as it is implemented in that particular experiment) could do with some rhythm. Maybe if each of the digits were assigned a relative rhythmic value, the band would be swingin’.

This got me thinking about the iterability of musical sequences, and whether or not there is a systematic way to generate traditional consonance-dissonance tensions by formula without having to resort to an atonal result like the one we have here. Let’s go back to fundamentals here, and examine the circle of fifths. It occurred to me that if you cycle through these, as you do in the traditional vi-ii-V-I cadence back to the tonic, you begin to see that this particular foundation of music theory is a cyclic algebraic group of order 12. (Consider the V-I to be the “operation” in question, thus making the IV-I the “inverse.”)

Now that you have the roots of the chord progression in place, what remains is to map it to a harmonic pattern – your basic major, minor and diminished triads, or the more interesting texture you get when you add a major or minor seventh up top. If you look at the bridge to Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” – in B-flat rhythm changes, it goes D7-G7-C7-F7 – the iteration is done entirely over the dominant seventh. This is by itself not very interesting until you add some substitutions, say an alternation with changes every two beats instead of four: Am7-D7-Dm7-G7-Gm7-C7-Cm7-F7. Maybe throw in some tritone substitutions to boot, inverting the third and the seventh of the dominant chords, which is a common substitution trick that translates into some fancy bass lines.

But what does such a series have to do with something as random as pi? How can you generate tonality out of that randomness?

Well, the answer to that is, take advantage of the fact that pi isn’t all that random, and use a numerical approximation algorithm. Euler’s isn’t of much use here, unless you figure out a way to assign arctangents to chords, but if you take something simpler like Newton’s recursive expansion, you’re in business.

In fact, you can try something like this with any infinite series – geometric, Taylor, MacLaurin, what have you. All it takes is to find an analogous operation that moves from chord to chord or note to note (or better yet, manipulates the push-and-pull of time in a systematic rubato) and assign it to the operations the series uses to generate each successive term.

I’ll end with a fun fact that hardly anybody knows (until now): back in high school, I won $25 in a St. Patrick’s Day limerick contest, wherein I did a few stanzas on pi. I had to take a bit of a liberty in rhyming “Euler” with “ruler” (it’s actually pronounced “Oiler,” as in that local hockey franchise), but nobody noticed.

As anybody who has experienced the marvel and joy of Almost Famous would know, the song in question is Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”. This is also the song that Josh Groban played and sang as an encore at his concert at Rexall Place last night. He is a remarkable vocalist, and his reputation – not to mention his legion of fans – is well deserved.

Curiously enough, my first introduction to Josh Groban was not through my mother, who has been to six of his concerts (four of them in the past week), something I have no right to make fun of in any case given what I do for every new Star Wars film. Back in 2001, apparently long before he became all the rage, he sang a duet with Lara Fabian (“For Always”) on the theme of John Williams’ score to one of the most underrated movies in recent years, A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Williams’ compositions for that movie are, I find, the best work he has done in perhaps the past decade, with odd exceptions like “Across The Stars” from Attack of the Clones. The jovial return to his jazzier roots in Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal are in a category of their own, and he was certainly in top form with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but A.I.‘s haunting piano melodies remind one of the similarly acronymic E.T. in its more sombre moments.

The Fabian/Groban duet at the end of the movie was itself only heard by few, most of them movie soundtrack buffs such as myself, and surprisingly many Groban fans have not wound the clock back and discovered it. I prefer it to “Remember” from Troy, but primarily for compositional reasons.

Yesterday’s event was not even the first time I’d seen Groban live – he had previously been featured in one of Sarah Brightman‘s tours, which I caught when it passed through Calgary. (That was, however, the first time I had seen the former Mrs. Lloyd Webber perform, being too young to have seen her in her signature role as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera.)

Since then, his rise as a solo artist has been astronomical enough that many a major publication has covered it more extensively than I will on this humble web page. For our purposes here, let us be satisfied with describing last night’s concert as a display of incredible vocal talent. You really do need to see Josh Groban live to get a sense of how powerful his voice is, as his recordings do not impress on quite the same level.

There was also that bit at the end where he put on the Oilers jersey, but being a Calgarian – albeit one who respects the Gretzky dynasty – I remained strictly indifferent.

We hear a lot today about how Canada is somehow in danger of cultural assimilation on the part of our southern neighbours, hence the need for arcane and increasingly unenforceable satellite TV regulations on the part of the CRTC, among other things. What is actually best for both consumer choice and the promotion of Canadian artists is a discussion for another day, as is whether or not this purpoted cultural assimilation exists when Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for Governor on a platform of putting a cork in Hollywood’s Vancouver-ward drainage, but I will point out a little something that may seem contradictory from an ideological point of view: I like the CBC. I like them a lot.

Taking a consistent stand on the extent to which government protectionism should apply to the arts is, again, nothing but blind ideology. A more pragmatic stance is to look at the merit of entertainment regulations and providers on a case-by-case basis, instead of blanket statements about bolstering or gutting the CRTC and CBC. The naive argument is that if consumers want Canadian content on their television sets, they will pump their money into it by their own will, only they won’t, because Canadian television sucks – when currently, all television sucks, except for – note the country of origin – Hockey Night in Canada (along with a number of odd exceptions I omit to preserve and emphasize my point). But as for the inferiority of television – that, too, is an entirely different matter.

Chuck the satellite regulations, but a well-funded CBC stays. The proof: CBC Radio Two – specifically, After Hours, the best jazz show in the whole country, period, no ifs and no buts. After Hours, which plays on Radio Two weeknights from 10pm to midnight, did nothing less than teach me everything I know about jazz. Mind you, filling domestic content quotas is a heck of a lot easier when your country can lay claim to the likes of Oscar Peterson, Moe Koffman, Regina Carter, Lenny Breau and Diana Krall. An anecdote: hree years ago, back when the legendary Ross Porter was still hosting the show – sadly, he has since left – I wrote the show in response to a call for written submissions on “the definition of jazz”; ten months later, the CBC informed me (quite to my surprise) that it was actually a contest of sorts, and subsequently sent me a CD wallet, Verve Records shirt and no less than twelve albums by bassist Charlie Haden.

Hockey Night in Canada is but the icing on the cake – with a Cherry on top, one might add.

Happy Canada Day, eh.

Speaking of 1 July, the other anniversary of sorts, but one a hundred years younger, is the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, which is celebrated every year with a good old-fashioned pro-democracy protest. Now, I know I have said little to nothing on these here pages of my June excursion to that region of the world, but that would just lead to more expressions of British colonial pride – which, of course, bring us back to the subject of the Dominion; and what a Dominion it is.

Regular readers can expect my reviews, or more precisely, recommendations of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Terminal later this week – but first, to some urgent business.

It may be the month of June, but with Christmas less than half a year away, the wishlist compilation has already begun. This year, the item on the top of the list is, one might say, a rather modest request. I will admit, whenever I emphasize the magnitude of importance embodied by this very simple favour, I sound like a mother asking a little boy to clean up his room – but it’s necessary.

Joel Schumacher: please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t screw up The Phantom of the Opera.

In the fifties you had your fun, vibrant musicals with the Freddies and Gingers that defined a genre, colourful displays of movie magic with extended surrealist sequences like Gene Kelly’s all-dancing finales to An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. That is not The Phantom of the Opera. The epic stage adaptations of the sixties that knocked one Best Picture after another out of the park – rival gangs on the mean streets of New York in West Side Story, the loverly Covent Garden by firelit night in My Fair Lady, the whole gamut from Andrews to Anschluss in The Sound of Music, the Artful Dodger’s whirlwind pickpocketing tour of London in the “Consider Yourself” number in Oliver! – that’s what I want from The Phantom of the Opera: grand, romanticist portraiture with a sense of humanity, a new association between memorable songs and memorable scenes, not to mention top-notch symphonic orchestration like John Williams’ Oscar-winning work on Fiddler on the Roof.

We already know about one somewhat major plot change and the addition of a new song. Fine – that’s excusable, and every movie musical pulls off that kind of thing; “Something Good” in The Sound of Music comes immediately to mind. However, here is a sample of things that are not quite so acceptable, many of which are unresolved ambiguities, some of which are hopefully going in the commonsensical direction. Of the latter is “trying to be Chicago and confining musical elements to the stage rather than using the songs as the primary storytelling device.” I liked Chicago, but this is The Phantom of the Opera. Of the former: if the orchestration is not consistent with the music of the period depicted, it is nothing to me. I adore Moulin Rouge! like family, but this is The Phantom of the Opera.

The first public footage was released this weekend in the form of a teaser trailer that shows a fleeting montage of images in rapid succession. Initial impressions are as such: the sets, the costumes, the piece’s appropriateness to the period – that looks fine. The trailer linked above is fairly low-quality, but already it is possible to discern some key shots that pertain to memorable scenes – Meg Giry at the mirror in “Angel of Music”, the chandelier, the cemetary in “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”, the Phantom punting his way down the sewers, “Masquerade” – and they look fairly good. The snow in the cemetary is an especially nice touch.

When adapting a stage production to the screen, especially a musical and more to the point, one of this calibre, one of the foremost criteria for judgment is whether or not it does something with the screen that cannot be done on stage. Primarily this deals with setting and atmosphere. In this respect, things are looking up.

The photography looks dynamic and the colours are gorgeous, but the darkness could be darker – or maybe it’s the fault of the low-quality video in the current trailer. As far as dynamism in cinematography goes, having the odd shot with a twenty-degree rotation is perhaps too modern a styling, but time will tell if this works in context of the finished work.

I sincerely hope the rapid cutting in the trailer is due to the post-production audio work being incomplete and an inability to show off any of the singing in sync with the pictures at this stage, and is no reflection of how the movie will actually be edited. Quick cuts from shot to shot that masked the flourish of the dancing worked for Baz Luhrmann (however debatably), but for the umpteenth time, this is The Phantom of the Opera. I want sustained imagery. The stage production already had sustained imagery, and between media, that’s what films are supposed to be best at creating.

Red flags: none. Uncertainties: many.

Let me make this as clear as possible – and the fact that I am writing in the first person should clue one in as to the degree of seriousness and gravity with which I speak: with The Lord of the Rings out of the way, there is no adaptation in the motion picture industry I care about more than this one. That includes you, Goblet of Fire.

So don’t mess with it. As was the case with The Lord of the Rings, anything less than a serious run for Best Picture is abject disrespect to the source material.

Seriously, Joel: do me this one favour for Christmas, and all is forgiven for Batman and Robin; and let me assure you, I take my Batman seriously.