Word: phantomed
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Recently, I found myself arguing with a friend over the merits of John Williams, the composer of numerous film soundtracks including the upcoming Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. My friend was accusing Williams of being a shameless sell-out, a hack who borrows from a hundred other works, including his own soundtracks on occasion. The Star Wars soundtracks steal voluminously from Holst and Wagner, as well as Stravinsky; the soundtrack for JAWS is an amalgam of numerous traditional sea themes from dozens of sources. But while I attempted to make a comparison of Williams' use of so many different sources...
...what is the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace soundtrack like? Quite dissimilar from its predecessors, actually, though it does share a few things in common with other John Williams soundtracks...
Stars? They were lined up in the Broadhurst's wings like a queue for The Phantom Menace. Steve Martin played a nasty shrink to Stockard Channing's frazzled patient. Nathan Lane and Swoosie Kurtz as two actors waiting for an opening-night review ran their fingernails under each other's egos. Betty Buckley as a modern-media Medea got lectured by a toughlove angel (Whoopi Goldberg). Stunning Susan Sarandon was a fretful Southern mama trying to marry off her shy, sly son (delicious David Hyde Pierce), who had eyes only for his glass menagerie of cocktail swizzle sticks...
Most of us can recall being so immersed in a fantasy world that it changed the way we behaved. At age 11, I developed a case of phantom scarlet fever after reading about Beth's brave death in Little Women. As for TV, I can't watch the local news in New York City without becoming convinced that I'm going to be hit by falling construction debris. Crazy? Maybe. But you won't see me walking under scaffolding in Manhattan...
...time to make the Science Center into a first-run luxury theater. We need surround-sound, skyboxes and low-cal popcorn," Smith says. "Get 'Phantom Menace' into Science Center B, move C.S. 51 to the crappy Loews down the street, and all is forgiven. Are you listening, Neil...