Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if the era of charming 1950's and 60's Italian comedies and 1970's American lounge jazz jives with your sense of grooviness. Avoid it... if a highly consistent and repetitive underscore of the above-mentioned style --complete with vibes and flutes-- could make you pull your hair out. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Sideways: (Rolfe Kent) Serving as 2004's arthouse surprise, Fox Searchlight's Sideways has been picking up critical and, to a slightly lesser degree, popular momentum as it launches itself into the attention often given to such films during awards time. Directed by Alexander Payne of About Schmidt and Election fame, Sideways renews a collaboration with screenwriter Jim Taylor (who not only worked with Payne on About Schmidt and Election, but was strikingly out of his league with Payne on writing Jurassic Park III). Payne and Taylor seem to love taking jabs at American culture, whether satirically or affectionately. Based on Rex Pickett's novel, Sideways does the latter, following two middle-aged men on their comical, narcissistic mid-life-crisis journey through the Northern California wine country. One man a failed, divorced novelist and the other a has-been television actor about to get married, the two spend most of the film using discussions about wine as metaphors for real-life emotional issues. The comedy of the story not only extends from the funny twists on viniculture and the fine twists of metaphor throughout, but Sideways also features snippets of outrageous sexual material. Those flagrant depictions of fornication and full-frontal nudity, along with a certain amount of womanizing that occurs to the two lovely leading ladies in the film, offer the foundation for Christian religious organizations and other squeemish types to take aim at the film with protest. The vulgarity throughout the picture is strangely soothed by Rolfe Kent's continuously upbeat and light-hearted jazz score. Payne claims that he has been influenced in the past by Italian composers more than any others, and it's fitting for the wine-related subject of Sideways that an Italian genre approach be taken with the music this time in particular. Rolke Kent is the regular collaborator for Payne, and Kent's career there and beyond has been most widely publicized for its modern and lightly orchestral comedy tones. Whereas Payne has asked for lessons by Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone to be followed by Kent in previous works, the Sideways score is influenced by Piero Umiliani, reaching into the nearly forgotten realm of 1950's and 60's Italian comedies and 1970's lounge jazz in America. If you're familiar with that genre of music, then you'll immediately be able to hear that stereotypical sound in your head. A small ensemble consisting of piano, saxes, trumpet, flutes, vibes, bass, and drums/percussion constitute the entirety of this score, with no orchestral backing necessary. What Payne was seemingly looking for is a score that expresses both the comedy and drama of the characters' personalities without ever becoming sentimental about those characters, and, except for the cues of more solemn piano solos, Kent achieves that task. To say that the score is melodic from start to finish would be correct, but don't expect to be humming any particular theme after the film or album is over. Despite a series of primary and secondary themes and motifs established by Kent, it is the instrumentation and rhythm that really sticks in the listener's mind. With almost no cue changes whatsoever in the middle of each track recording, the album plays like a very consistent 60's-70's retro jazz collection. When the piano, sax, bass, drums, and other percussion perform alone, the sound is perhaps more easy to grasp for modern sensibilities; the vibes and flutes, on other hand, firmly place this score in the proper age group. Whether this score jives with your sense of grooviness or not, its rhythms will sustain you from beginning to end. You may be pulling your hair out by then, if not because of the constant, faithful rhythms then maybe because of the irrepressible charm throughout. It's a buyer beware venture, but as a background listen on a sunny morning, it's a refreshing change from the usual film scores of today. The rather short album appears in identical form on the Silva Screen label in Europe and New Line Records label in America. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 37:24
All artwork and sound clips from Sideways are Copyright © 2004, New Line Records. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/14/05, updated 1/15/05. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2005, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
