OT: Music used in a Columbo movie
Count of Warwick
Self=Portrait" (made in 1989), in which the world's favourite scruffy
detective nabbed the killer while having his portrait painted.
Apart from clips from various scenes from Aida being heard in the
background, the orchestra kept nplaying a piece of music as
recurrent theme through the film, which was reprised also at the end
titles, sung in part by a tenor and soprano.
Does anyone know what this music is?
Cheers
C of W
Bren
"Count of Warwick" <raff_ma...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:d6d8cc24-e340-4ebd...@a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
This question came up in the IMDB chat room about 2 years ago, but without
any luck at the time.
If you email the OP he might have an answer for you.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097085/board/thread/80049669?d=80049669#80049669
Regards,
Bren.
Ancona21
wrote:
Have you ruled out O Terra Addio?
A21
Count of Warwick
-
I'd have recognised that.
There were clips from Aida, including the Nile Scene, but this was a
recurrent theme throughout.
I can't do it now, put I'll try and post the clip here when I'm home
tonight.
Count of Warwick
>
> - Show quoted text -
========
Couldn't find it in any of the video sharing sites last night. I have
to emphasise that the recurring theme was not from Aida, although
there were odd snatches of scenes, particularly in Vito's Bar (O
Patria Mia)
Calling all shabby raincoat fans....
LT
> "Count of Warwick" <raff_martin...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in messagenews:d6d8cc24-e340-4ebd...@a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Regards,
>
> Bren.
Btw:
The belovedly rumpled mastersleuth's forename appears to be
'Lieutenant'. At least, none of the episodes seem to have ever shown
otherwise.
Best
LT,
who never cared for the 'Mrs. Columbo' series; 'Kate' (portrayed by
one Kate Mulgrew) didn't at all seem right for him - IMEHO.
Count of Warwick
> The belovedly rumpled mastersleuth's forename appears to be
> 'Lieutenant'. At least, none of the episodes seem to have ever shown
> otherwise.
>
> Best
> LT
The mystery has been doing the rounds over here, too. A few years
ago, there was an article in the TV listings magazine RADIO TIMES, in
which an article examined the enduring appeal of the show (at that
time, there were still films being made), and there was a photo of
Columbo's police badge. It appeared to show that his first name was
"Frank". That same photograph appears on the wikipedia page with a
link to the police badge.
Wikipedia also suggests that an alternative could be "Philip". I
think Frank suits him more....
C of W
F R
Here's what seems like a reasonable explanation why many people thought
his first name was Phillip.
A little intrigue involved in this as well
------------------------------
Columbo: For six seasons (1971-77) as an entry in the NBC Mystery Movie
series (and in revivals and specials that continue to this day),
Lieutentant Columbo, the unkempt Los Angeles homicide detective whose
trademarks were a rumpled raincoat, an ancient, rusting Peugeot, and an
ever-present cigar, combined "the deductive genius of Sherlock Holmes
with the dogged determination of Inspector Maigret" to ensnare dozens
of killers who thought they had covered their tracks beyond any chance
of discovery:
Lt. Columbo drove a beat-up old car, wore a dirty, rumpled trench coat
that looked at least ten years old, and acted for all the world like an
incompetent bumbler. He was excessively polite to everyone, went out of
his way not to offend any of the suspects, and seemed like a hopeless
choice to solve any crime, especially a well-conceived murder. But all
that was superficial, designed to lull the murderer into a false sense
of security. Despite his appearance, Columbo was one of the shrewdest,
most resourceful detectives on the Los Angeles police force. Slowly and
methodically he pieced together the most minute clues leading to the
identity of the killer, who, when his guilt was revealed, was always
incredulous that such an unlikely cop had managed to find him out.
Coulmbo's creators, writers Dick Levinson and Bill Link, paradoxically
believed the less viewers knew about Lt. Columbo the more interesting he
would appear, so he has always been a rather mysterious figure. The only
setting in which we see Columbo is while he's actively working on a case
— we don't observe him at home or away from the job, and we rarely
see him at the office. (Even when Lt. Columbo occasionally goes on
vacation, it's simply a framework for his being caught up in a murder
investigation somewhere else.) His interactions with colleagues and
civilians are strictly professional, not social. All we know about
Columbo are the indirect tidbits about himself he sometimes drops in the
course of conversation — although he may speak of his wife, his
relatives, or other acquaintances, we never meet any of them. (Even when
Columbo faked his wife's murder in one episode ["Rest in Peace, Mrs.
Columbo"] to frame a killer, Mrs. Columbo was merely referred to, not
seen.) We don't know so much as his wife's first name, because he never
mentions it. We don't even know his first name.
In fact, we viewers can't be sure that we can trust what little we do
learn about Columbo by observing and listening to him. According to
Peter Falk, the actor who has portrayed Lt. Columbo for close to four
decades, his character's ambiguity is a deliberate trait:
Ask [Peter Falk] about specifics and he responds, "Oh, I'm not going to
talk about that. That's the beauty of it. Everyone can think about what
the wife should look like. Did he have children? Did he have one? Did he
have ten? That's up to them to decide. You never know when Columbo is
genuine. I tried to play it so you could never tell whether the
politeness was part of his nature or part of his act. Let the viewers
decide. You always have that ambiguity. Almost anything he does can be
taken two ways. A lot of what he says he might be making up while he's
sitting having chili somewhere."
With so many details of Lt. Columbo's life and person deliberately
obscured, his first name remains one of the enduring enigmas of series
television. It has never been mentioned (or even hinted at) in the show
itself, although the series has included a few in-jokes providing the
lieutenant with opportunities to deftly deflect any inquiries about his
given name. In one episode ("By Dawn's Early Light") Col. Lyle C.
Rumford asks Columbo, "Do you have a first name?" to which the
lieutenant responds, "I do; my wife is the only one who uses it." In
another episode ("It's All in the Game") Laura Staton poses the question
more directly, inquiring "What's your first name?" prompting Columbo to
answer, "Lieutenant."
Although fans have come up with a variety of guesses about Columbo's
name over the years, the given name most commonly (and mistakenly)
attributed to the gumshoe is "Philip," an error that apparently came
about through a bit of protective chicanery. In the 1970s, Fred Worth
published several compilations of trivia, including The Trivia
Encyclopedia and The Complete Unabridged Super Trivia Encyclopedia. Into
one of his Super Trivia books he inserted a "false fact" as a copyright
trap, similar to the mapmakers' technique of including fictitious
elements in maps (such as non-existent streets) to serve as evidence of
unauthorized borrowing when their works were copied by others. The phony
tidbit he chose to plant was the revelation that Lt. Columbo's first
name is "Philip." Sure enough, when the trivia-based board game Trivial
Pursuit took the market by storm in the early 1980s, Worth noticed that
about a third of the question-answer combinations used in the game
duplicated information (along with typos and misprints) published in his
Super Trivia books; including a "smoking gun" question about Columbo's
first name:
Worth filed a lawsuit against the game's inventors and distributors for
copyright infringement, but he ultimately came away with nothing. (One
cannot copyright facts, only their presentation, and the judge in
Worth's case ruled that a board game such as Trivial Pursuit was a
substantially different type of presentation than a book.) Nonetheless,
Fred Worth's bit of fiction lives on, cited as fact in a variety of
books, periodicals, and Internet resources.
Note: Some sources claim the 1962 play by Levinson and Link that
introduced the Columbo character to the world, Prescription: Murder,
specified a first name for the lieutenant ("Philip," of course), but it
did not. When NBC tried to revive the Columbo franchise in 1979 with a
short-lived mystery series featuring his wife (a suburban newspaper
reporter who naturally became involved in all sorts of murder
investigations), they chose "Kate" for the character's given name,
although that name was never mentioned in any of the original Columbo
episodes. (NBC eventually tried to disassociate their female crime
solver from her better known husband, altering the series title from
Kate Columbo to Kate the Detective and then to Kate Loves a Mystery,
changing her last name to Callahan, and omitting any further references
to her having a spouse.)
Regards,
Phillip... oops, i mean Frank
LT
wrote:
Thx to C of W and to (our) Frank, for the info; It'd seem that TV's
(IMO) most brilliant, least-fallible sleuth has, essentially, the same
name as a weight training icon/author of yesteryear, Franco Columbu
( a Sardinian).
As to the Lieutenant (and unlike any other such hero in my memory), he
unerringly managed to spot the murders' actual culprits within seconds
of arriving on the scene. His subsequent efforts were merely about
getting it all down in detail, for the formal prosecutions to follow.
LT,
noting that, while a true successor to Lt. (Frank... or Phil) Columbo
has yet to appear on the video horizon, a certain 'Rick Castle' (a
popular novelist, in the storyline)has come rather close, with his
exceptional intuitiveness; The lovely, but laconic, detectivette, as
it were, 'Kate Beckett', who he's been partnered with is clever and
technically competent in criminology, but never quite as much 'on the
ball' as Mr. Castle. This tends to frustrate her..
Still, there is, in this relatively new series, an ongoing romance
between them, as the episodes continue. 'We shall see what we shall
see' - Will Shakestein
F R
noting that, while a true successor to Lt. (Frank... or Phil) Columbo
has yet to appear on the video horizon, a certain 'Rick Castle' (a
popular novelist, in the storyline)has come rather close, with his
exceptional intuitiveness; The lovely, but laconic, detectivette, as it
were, 'Kate Beckett', who he's been partnered with is clever and
technically competent in criminology, but never quite as much 'on the
ball' as Mr. Castle. This tends to frustrate her..
Still, there is, in this relatively new series, an ongoing romance
between them, as the episodes continue. 'We shall see what we shall see'
- Will Shakestein
Thanks for the heads up LT. I rarely watch Tv detective shows anymore
except "Monk" as they are so poorly written..all are named NCIS this or
CSI that. No thanks.
What is the title of the show you mentoned? Is it in fact "Rick Castle"?
What station is it on?
Frank
LT
> LT,
> noting that, while a true successor to Lt. (Frank... or Phil) Columbo
> has yet to appear on the video horizon, a certain 'Rick Castle' (a
> popular novelist, in the storyline)has come rather close, with his
> exceptional intuitiveness; The lovely, but laconic, detectivette, as it
> were, 'Kate Beckett', who he's been partnered with is clever and
> technically competent in criminology, but never quite as much 'on the
> ball' as Mr. Castle. This tends to frustrate her..
> Still, there is, in this relatively new series, an ongoing romance
> between them, as the episodes continue. 'We shall see what we shall see'
> - Will Shakestein
> --------------------
> Thanks for the heads up LT. I rarely watch Tv detective shows anymore
> except "Monk" as they are so poorly written..all are named NCIS this or
> CSI that. No thanks.
I agree, but have found 'Law and Order' and its spinoffs to be among
the very best of today's police-drama offerings; another one, now
gone, alas, was 'NYPD Blue'.
> What is the title of the show you mentoned? Is it in fact "Rick Castle"?
Ah, I neglected to mention that it's 'Castle'.
> What station is it on?
Here in the NYC area, it's on WABC, and probably featured, too - in
first-run episodes - on that station's national affiliates.
How long it'll continue is anyone's guess, given the mortality rate of
numerous shows that I'd personally have considered topnotch. It's
those 'PTB', who always get to decide.
>
> Frank
LT
rossjh...@gmail.com
Patrick Williams wrote the music for that episode that isn't obviously somebody's opera, and claims to have written the closing credits music himself, but there's a 30 second snippet of Verdi's Rigoletto, Act 1, Scene 2, (Deh, Non Parlare Al Misero) that sounds exactly like this. Williams obviously changed the words and tempo, then fleshed it out a bit with a female part.
Here are links to both pieces of music:
http://home.comcast.net/~rossley/valentino salvini - verdi's rigoletto act 1 scene 2 - deh, non parlare al misero.mp3
http://home.comcast.net/~rossley/patrick williams - murder a self portrait.mp3
Unfortunately, Williams only wrote enough for the end credits, and that 30-second part never repeats in Rigoletto, so this is all there is.
