 |
|
|
|
|
 |
Sax Solos by:
|
Dan Higgins
|
Orchestrated by:
|
John Neufeld
|
|
|
|
|
Release Date:
|
December 10th, 2002
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
 |
| | Williams | |
|
Catch Me If You Can: (John Williams) Concluding a busy year for the
maestro, John Williams completed his twentieth collaboration with
director/producer Steven Spielberg for the crime thriller Catch Me If You
Can. Williams has soared across the stars, into a future with pre-crime, and
back to Hogwarts all in an eight month span, and Catch Me If You Can
proves Williams' knack for diversity more than any of his others this year, or
in recent times. The Spielberg film chronicles the true to life adventure of
master criminal Frank Abagnale Jr., a man whose skill in disguise and fraud
catapulted him to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list at a very young age. Set in the
1960's, the film is a chase thriller with style as the FBI agent assigned to the
case spends the duration of the movie chasing Abagnale through every conceivable
location. The choice of music use for the film mirrored the choices of past
films that have dealt with pop 1960's culture. In this case, that meant the
fusion of several older generation songs with a similarly older style jazz. It
had been many years since Williams had returned to his talents with the jazz
genre, and even longer since he combined that sound with intrigue and more
serious drama. His most recent jazzy score was the remake of Sabrina in
1995, but Catch Me If You Can takes a much darker avenue of introspection
and sophistication.
Williams' painstaking attention to each and every note of this score shows in
the intricacy in many of the vibraphone and sax performances. It is no wonder
that Williams turned the scoring duties of Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets over to associate William Ross; the amount of detail in some of the
solo performances for Catch Me If You Can are remarkable to an extent
that they occasionally blur the mind's ability to perceive them. The ensemble is
small for the film, with a moderate orchestral presence that remains light on
its feet while filling the gaps in between the popular jazz performances of the
principle solo artists. The second track on the album, "The Float" exhibits an
excellent sax solo that perfectly captures the light spirit of the score and
film's beginning, with ominous dramatic undertones introduced sparingly to
realize the criminal chase under way. The piano is also required to provide some
snazzy accompaniment at breakneck speeds. The score as an entire package,
however, is deceiving. It establishes an upbeat return to the days of high jazz
and then sinks further into a miserable and introverted form as the film and
score continues. The official "concert suite" for the film is the more
restrained "Father's Theme," a piece that offers a more tender and dramatically
engaging attitude from Williams 1970's work. By the end of the score, the
seriousness of the cat and mouse game has produced a score that has plunged into
the complicated and subtle-toned atmosphere of Presumed Innocent. Short
interludes of the title theme --which loses all its catchy-ness by the end of
the album-- are performed by singular woodwinds in between low key shifts of
strings. Brass exists in an accompaniment roll at most, if at all. By the time
the album reaches the "Broken Home" cue, it has been reduced to the solitude
introduced by a slow solo harp and carried by lonely shadows of the solo sax and
piano performances the graced the score's beginning.
The resulting overall effect of Williams' music for Catch Me If You Can
is a fittingly depressing one. Do not be fooled by the seemingly frivolous
direction that this score appears to be taking at the start. Even its somewhat
redeeming finale cue, "Doctor, Lawyer, Lutheran," provides only a glimmer of
hope in a temporarily increased pace of the score, allowing the music to then
slowly fade into nothingness. When the lighter shades of urban rhythm shine
through, the resulting generational style puts this score in the era of The
Towering Inferno... an easily recognizable trip to Williams' past. This is a
score unlike anything that newer fans of Williams will be able to immediately
recognize. If you are a collector of Williams in only the past ten years, then
it may take you a while to become accustomed to this sound. The intrigue of the
title track and the subsequent "Float" cue --which contains the sax solo that
Spielberg boasts about in his notes-- elevate those cues to the level of album
highlights. After these two cues (unless you count the reprise of the title cue
at the end of the album), the album is a somber and reflective listening
experience, with great emotional detail taken for each cue. Williams succeeds in
producing the needed dramatic effect, but the album could suffer from a lack of
engagement with many listeners as a result. Catch Me If You Can is, by no
means, an uplifting score or, for that matter, a very enjoyable one. If
anything, however, Williams has used this opportunity to show that his diverse
talents have not escaped him over the past decade of scoring primarily adventure
films with massive ensembles. True Williams enthusiasts will likely find the
album very interesting; it contains several pleasing songs from the era as well.
It is difficult to determine if the mainstream will be attracted to this dated
sound, though. A well-written, genre-constrained score. ***
 |
|
Viewer Ratings and Comments:
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
• 1. Catch Me If You Can (2:41)
• 2. The 'Float' (4:56)
• 3. Come Fly With Me (3:19) - Frank Sinatra
• 4. Recollections (The Father's Theme) (5:16)
• 5. The Airport Scene (2:26)
• 6. The Girl from Ipanema (5:15) - Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim
• 7. Learning the Ropes (8:44)
• 8. Father and Son (3:15)
• 9. Embraceable You (2:50) - Judy Garland
• 10. The Flash Comics Clue (1:47)
• 11. Deadheading (2:25)
• 12. The Christmas Song (3:10) - Nat King Cole
• 13. A Broken Home (4:25)
• 14. Doctor, Lawyer, Lutheran (3:12)
• 15. The Look of Love (3:31) - Dusty Springfield
• 16. Catch Me If You Can (Reprise and End Credits) (5:14)
| |
|
The insert includes a short note from
Spielberg, as per usual, but nothing else about the score or film.
|
