Fun Stuff section

Made a couple of additions to the Fun Stuff page - head on over there for vintage Chinatown parodies by MAD Magazine and Cracked, plus some pics and videos.

Chinatown: The Expanded Score

Chinatown's classic soundtrack has finally received an official expanded treatment, courtesy of Intrada Records:

Intrada presents an expanded edition of Chinatown, with the first 12 tracks presenting the original 1974 album, remastered from the stereo masters for a more suitable natural sound of the ensemble (previous CD releases altered the dynamic range and overall levels considerably). The remaining tracks offer the entire score for the first time in the intended picture sequence. These precious recordings have been mastered from what may be the only surviving session elements in existence: a pair of aging 1/4˝ seven-and-a-half IPS full-track (mono) rolls retained by the composer and transferred to DAT some three decades ago.

http://www.intrada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7090

Deleted Scene: The Rainmaker

Jake encounters a local character in the drought-ridden fields of Southern California.

The Two Jakes: Take 1

Los Angeles, 1984

Robert Towne scored an Oscar for Chinatown, followed it up with another hit, Shampoo, and spent the rest of the 1970s as the most lauded, in-demand screenwriter and script doctor in town, but the new decade had not been so kind.

Deleted Scene: Horseshit

Noah Cross philosophises with Jake.

Chinatown: The Lambro Score

"I couldn't believe it - it was Chinese-sounding!"

- Jerry Goldsmith on Phillip Lambro's score, Soundtrack! Magazine

Composer Phillip Lambro

It's hard to imagine Chinatown without the now-iconic score by Jerry Goldsmith - Uan Rasey's haunting trumpet solo over the opening credits, the sense of impending doom underlying the tender love theme, the dark, brooding suggestion of a great evil approaching in Noah Cross, and the understated menace of the simple cues accompanying Jake's investigations.

What's particularly remarkable is that Goldsmith completed it in ten days, having been brought in at the very last minute when the film's initial score, by composer Phillip Lambro, was finally rejected. This earlier score has only been briefly mentioned in passing by the film's main participants, and not kindly:

Deleted Scene: A Satisfied Client's Wife

Jake and Evelyn's conversation in the Brown Derby is interrupted by the fallout from one of Jake's recent investigations.