The scope and scale of Jerry Goldsmith's output means that barely a week goes by without one of his films being shown on television. Over the past few weeks, anyone who tuned in to Chinatown, Poltergeist, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Cassandra Crossing, or
The Wind and the Lion will have - possibly without realising it - experienced Goldsmith's golden touch.
And although there are only three opportunities to hear Goldsmith conducting the RSNO live in Scotland,
there are plenty of chances to hear his music over the next few weeks.
Both the GFT in Glasgow and the Filmhouse in Edinburgh are showing a trio of Jerry Goldsmith-scored movies to mark the composer's 70th birthday visit to Scotland. Filmhouse director Jim Hamilton, who put together the mini-season, had hoped to track down 70mm prints of the war biopic Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!, Richard Fleischer's epic account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - two of the films whose scores have been recorded by the RSNO - but this proved to be a mission impossible: Patton is unavailable and Tora! Tora! Tora! exists only in a 35mm print.
However, Hamilton and Ken Ingles, director of the GFT, have still managed to organise a tempting trio: Ridley Scott's 1979 space/horror movie Alien (Sunday 7, GFT and Saturday 13, Filmhouse), Tora! Tora! Tora! (Saturday 14, GFT and Saturday 27, Filmhouse) and the mega-successful 1997 film noir LA Confidential (Sunday 21, GFT and March 1-3, Filmhouse). The GFT has also managed to persuade Goldsmith to slot into his schedule an appearance at the cinema on Friday February 19 when he will discuss his work with interviewer David Bruce.
Those unable to make it to the Glasgow and Edinburgh screenings can take consolation in the fact that you never have to wait too long for the next Goldsmith movie: he has no fewer than five films awaiting release this year. And couch potatoes can sample one of Goldsmith's earliest scores, for the 1962 Kirk Douglas movie Lonely Are the Brave, when it is screened on BBC2, on Saturday at 1am. Then, on Sunday, a more recent Goldsmith score can be heard when C4 shows the 1996 Al Pacino political drama City Hall at 10pm.
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