dvdspd Reviews

Turner & Hooch (1989)

Irresistible force meets immovable object

[10/10 · 18 January 2005]

Turner = immovable object. Hooch = irresistible force. Hooch wins the battle. Both win the war. Hooch wins respect, acceptance, perhaps even love. Turner wins by losing - losing his illusion of - and need for - control. Hanks has a field day improvising in his one-on-one scenes with non-speaking but far-from-silent co-star "Beasley" aka Hooch. Said co-star may be the most formidable "actor" Hanks has ever worked with. In fact, he might well be dubbed the "Richard Boone" of animal actors - i.e. homely as hell and impossible to take your eyes off of.

To sum up, funny and moving, and as if that weren't enough, they went and hired two of my favorite under-and/or-mis-used actors, Mare Winningham and Craig T. Nelson, each of them tackling relatively thankless roles with gusto.

Demon Seed (1977)

Orchestral portion of the score is just one in a series of amazing efforts from the late Jerry Fielding

[16 January 2005]

My mixed (at best) feelings about the film as a whole are reflected in the range of previous comments. My response to the contributions of composer Jerry Fielding, however, is unadulterated awe. The harmonic richness and complexity of his music sometimes seemed wasted on the films they accompanied - i.e. "Funeral Home", "Grey Lady Down, some of the Michael Winner collaborations et al - both the attention to detail his scores displayed and the complexity of response his music evoked were simply not supported by what was on screen. In fact, some of these films probably could have been served just as well if not better either by a relative hack or simply by a composer more able to work at "half-mast" on a given project - i.e. Goldsmith, Williams etc. Fielding's effectiveness was not restricted to scoring intense and/or violent scenes - witness his brief, exquisite interludes early and late in ""Junior Bonner", the heartbreakingly beautiful music underscoring Warren Oates' tortured efforts to express his feelings to Isela Vega in "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" or for that matter the many gentle moments of respite in "The Wild Bunch" itself. Still, some of the most imaginative and memorable marriages of sound and image in the history of film are provided by Fielding in just such intense contexts, often in scenes anticipating or immediately following violence and especially scenes of violation – i.e. the rapes of "Straw Dogs", the near rape of "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", the rough sex / bondage of "The Nightcomers", or the not-in-itself particularly violent but perhaps even more disturbing – more violating – situation played out in "Demon Seed" 's centerpiece. However unbelievable or even ludicrous this scene's premise - or the "science" underlying it - may seem, the emotional journey the film's protagonist is forced to take is massive and mind bending (the scene turning into something somewhat reminiscent of the penultimate scene of 2001). Fielding's music is more than up to the task, amply supporting and even expanding the scope of this journey.

Anyway, I think I've expended enough syllables. Fielding is one of the extremely small group of film composers whose work is just as absorbing and memorable with or without the image. So, to all those who are interested – follow the IMDb links and search … and look and listen …

P.S. As a previous poster has noted, the soundtrack recording is available on a cd pairing it with the score from "Soylent Green" by Fred Myrow. It was released by FSM (Film Score Monthly) on their Silver Age Classics label.