Lost Horizon to DVD on October 4

[nymusicalsguy]

It looks like LOST HORIZON will arrive, packed with extras, on DVD on October 4. The downside? It appears to be part of Sony's made-to-order DVD(-R) program rather than a pressed DVD. Some details here:

http://www.oldies.com/product-view/1441ED.html

Now, if only the laserdisc's isolated score track will survive to DVD...

Joe

[nymusicalsguy]

For today's Friday Feature at The Second Disc, we're celebrating Burt Bacharach and Hal David's music of LOST HORIZON. Check it out!

http://theseconddisc.com/2011/09/09/fri ... izon-1973/

Best,

Joe

[burtchifan]

Greeting to all fellow Bacharach-ians! It's been a while since my last posting.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that this post hasn't received any more replies. The release of 'Lost Horizon' on dvd has got to be about the most sought-after dvd by Burt fans. I've seen the movie a few times, and I may not be a movie 'expert', but I like it. It works for me, at least. I have 2 copies of the film on vhs (courtesy of some great folks a few years back): the Laserdisc edition and the 'cut' version, shown on tv. I find the movie entertaining, fun, and the music enjoyable. Ok, sure, the songs aren't up there with 'classic' movie musical pieces, but they are good enough to listen to. As for the critics who panned the movie back then, and continue to do so: why the hate? Maybe the film is worth a second look, watch it as if though you've never seen it, and maybe, just maybe, you'll enjoy the movie. What is it about the movie that people don't care for: the story, the acting, the set designs, the musical numbers? There are waay too many bad movies, and this is not one of them.
I ordered my copy and can't wait to pop into my dvd player. It's been too long for this movie to be treated with the respect it deserves. Or am I missing something?
Thank you!

[steveo_1965]

hey, its a great musical score.....glad it's coming out!
I too, hope the seperate track for music is included!

[Roberto Pinardi]

This fully restored extended version, with a length of 149 minutes, includes deleted musical numbers not previously seen and sequences restored from the original roadshow version of the film, featuring a newly remixed 5.1 stereo soundtrack. Also included in this sought-after DVD release are original song demos performed by Burt Bacharach (with photo gallery) and special vintage featurettes.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/31530 ... n-1973-mod

A big issue ?????

Bye
Rob

[BachtoBacharach]

I just can't get too worked up over revisiting Lost Horizon. The score was good but the musical numbers were just average in my opinion. I saw the film three times when it was released and each time I watched, I was more and more disappointed in the film each time. It just didn't work. I have watched many time on television over the years and I just can't feel any differently all these years later. I have listened to the musical numbers from the film as stand alone tunes and some are fairly good and some aren't. Knowing that Bacharach SLAVED over the score and musical numbers for well over a year I was expecting something much better...I have also tried to visualize in my ear (if there is such a thing) these tunes as Dionne might have sung them if Burt had composed them for, say, her album after "Dionne" and they just aren't that compelling. I am not a fan of the film or the music as you can tell! The film was panned justifiably and although the score Bacharach wrote was better than the musical numbers in the film, the whole thing is just tainted for me...knowing that this film was in large part responsible for ending the professional and personal relationship between Burt, Hal and Dionne for many years adds to my disdain for the film...had the film and the music been a sublime masterpiece, maybe I would feel differently but for their relationship to end due to such mediocrity is such a shocking thing.

[Blair N. Cummings]

A major reason for Lost Horizon`s commercial failure was its belated and silly attempt to resonate with the "counterculture" which, by the time of the film`s release, was gasping its last breath. I know; I was among those gasping it. It really was no more cornball than "Hair" which succeeded perversely well in giving the world "Broadway hippies" and with a far lamer score. (Of course "Hair" boasted a naked Heather MacRae, but I digress). The age of the epic musical, however, had passed and in retrospect it`s difficult to imagine how Ross Hunter thought that this would revive it. After all, it had been a full eight years since the last blockbuster, The Sound of Music, had hit the screen and the world and pop culture had changed beyond recognition since then.
In the end, Burt`s inability to take an unaccustomed failure in stride, while understandable, was devastating. Nothing about the project was worth the fallout.

[BachtoBacharach]

Blair, ITA. Hal wrote the lyric for the musical numbers and was able to walk away to other things. Burt has said that he grew to resent Hal because Hal did just that (and Burt acknowledges these days that his role in the musical required his undue attention; that's the nature of his craft)...while Burt struggled and struggled with the score and the musical numbers. Burt felt that he gave 1000% while Hal didn't. It's a moot point then and now. Burt was the "famous" one of the two and was the front man...Hal was low key. Burt was interviewed many times in the late 60s and early 70s after his own star began to ascend apart from Dionne and Hal and Burt was always quick to acknowledge Dionne's part in his success but often, he failed to acknowledge Hal and they started growing further apart. Dionne always acknowledged them both. I truly believe that Burt, by 1971, had lost some interest in working with Hal and Dionne because he was so enamoured of his own stardom, which blew up dramatically after Butch Cassidy and his Raindrops Oscar win. I remember one particular thing happened when Dionne, Burt and Hal were recording some tunes for her "Very Dionne" album and Burt was going on and on about "Close to You" which had hit #1. Dionne finally had enough, and chided Burt in a joking manner if he was not going to pay attention to the session and quit going on about Karen Carpenter, that he could get Karen in here to do the vocals...she made her point but there was tension during the session...she was unhappy with Scepter, she was unhappy with some of the tunes or lack thereof that Bacharach/David had written for the album and both Paper Mache and Let Me Go To Him had not performed as well on the charts as she had hoped...in fact while Close to You was hitting #1 in 1970, her stunning Paper Mache was stalling in the 40s on the Billboard Hot 100. Bacharach was pursuing his own star agressively at the time and it showed...he was very distracted...it also showed in their next project, the "Dionne" album which was their swansong; it had some great tunes but in reality was pretty much a toss-off...something to meet an obligation (in his eyes anyway, I believe). She had just signed with WB for a huge contract (at the time, the biggest ever for a female vocalist) and she knew a lot was riding on the album being a success, but Burt was interested in other things and just wasn't as committed. Here was his superstar songbird with a new contract and he practically phoned his effort in (which I say is pretty selfish; perhaps he really did began to feel as though Dionne and Hal were baggage...that he didn't need them anymore to be a success on his own...OMG, it's A Star Is Born!!!). There were only 10 tunes on the album and only 3 original Bacharach/David tunes. Dionne has acknowledged that her 1972 versions of Hasbrook Heights, Close to You and One Less Bell to Answer were filler and thrown in because there wasn't anything else to finish the album out with and Burt gave the arrangement duties to Bob James; rumor has it that Burt had written Be Aware with Dionne in mind but let Barbara Streisand introduce it in his 1971 special because he enticed Barbara to appear by telling her he had written the song just for her...the Dionne album was light of original material probably because Burt was recording and touring more on his own instead of writing material for Dionne. You are right that Burt just couldn't take the failure of Lost Horizon...he became depressed and retreated from everything for over a year...and his inability to cope with such a publically colossal failure did the team in...in retrospect it seems to be that the movie was so hyped and his participation was so hyped and when it failed, he ran...the hype was so overwhelming for both the film and Bacharach's participation in the film that there was no way he could have lived up to the expectations and no way he could have lived up to his own expectations...he (or his ego) bought into the hype...he also took his bitterness toward his failure out on Hal and Dionne. Had the movie been a success, Burt, Dionne and Hal would have all fared quite differently. Sad period for all three and a flaming crash of their important and historical collaboration over such a trifle as Lost Horizon.

[Blair N. Cummings]

In a radio interview from `77 discussing Futures, Burt introduces "No-One Remembers..." as being written by him with Hal "after we started talking and writing" again.
So, why did this ( and presumably the others in the batch) not resolve the lawsuits among the two, Dionne and Warners?
Why didn`t they say, "Look what we just came up with?" Was the blood so bad between them and her? Was everything by then too far gone? Wouldn`t they have been legally required to record these songs with her?
And how in hell (I ask again) did Stephanie Mills end up with them? (Nothing against Stephanie; although never a disco fan, I really liked "Never Knew Love Like This Before").

[BachtoBacharach]

I can provide a little perspective on that…when Burt holed up in Malibu after the reviews for Lost Horizon came in, he was devastated. The album “Dionne” was released in January 1972 and Bacharach went to work on Lost Horizon shortly afterward. Dionne’s previous album “Very Dionne” was released in December 1970 and was followed in July 1971 by “The Love Machine” which contained the soundtrack to the film plus two tunes from the film rearranged by Bacharach and cut by Warwick(e)…this to satisfy contractual obligations to Scepter. Dionne had been label shopping since March of 1971 because Scepter couldn’t match the $1.5 million offer Bell Records had thrown down nor an offer from Columbia and allegedly RCA. Warner Brothers got in the bidding war for Dionne and ended up offering her a 5 year $5 million contract. The deal called for one album per year. Dionne had a side contract with Bacharach and David’s production company Blue-Jac to write and produce said albums. After the Lost Horizon debacle, Burt was pissed at Hal…by the time the reviews were coming in, they had split. Dionne read about it in the LA Times and attempted to reach Burt and Hal and their attorneys…her calls went unreturned. Mo Osten of WB paid her a visit and told her that she had an album already overdue per her contract and that if she didn’t get back in the studio with Burt and Hal that he would sue her for breach of contract. He told her to talk to Bacharach and persuade him to come out of hiding to produce her album. She paid Burt a visit at his home in Malibu and he basically told her that he was not working with Hal and that he was not going to produce her album. She told Burt that WB was going to sue her for Breach of Contract if she didn’t get an album out…Bacharach said that not only was he not going to produce her but no one else was either…her contract with Blue-Jac was exclusive and for her to work with other producers, she had to have the consent of Burt and Hal. Burt wouldn’t budge. Dionne paid him one more visit and basically begged him to relent because Osten was going to file suit. He relented and Dionne called in a favor from Lamont Dozier and Just Being Myself was hastily recorded over existing backing tracks and released…a slim eight tunes. But it got WB off her back. A few months later, Burt was in a more reflective mood and asked Dionne if she would cut a few tunes that he had co-written with Neil Simon for a possible revival of Promises, Promises. Dionne was hopeful that this would settle the matter and that she could at least work with Burt on her next three albums still due under her WB contract. Not so. She cut three tunes as well as a couple of others for the sessions but Burt cancelled the sessions abruptly without explanation and the project was shelved and Burt didn't not allow WB to release the tunes for use in Dionne's next album. Burt remarked to friends that he and Dionne had their run and the spark was gone. Allegedly Dionne, upon hearing this, was livid. She felt she had been screwed around by Burt once again and from all accounts of studio musicians there for the sessions, the tunes were very good. She was fed up with Burt's fickleness and decided to move on without them and enter Thom Bell…Bell loved Warwick and wanted her to record a duet of Then Came You with the Spinners….long story short…in October 1974 Dionne hit #1 with the tune. Bacharach allegedly was pretty shocked that Dionne hit with an R & B tune that sounded nothing like anything he had written for her and went all the way to #1. She was also nominated for a Grammy for the tune. Burt was pretty depressed that Dionne seemed to be coming out of her slump without him. Things came to a head in July 1975 when Dionne had enough of the bickering and bull and filed suit against Blue-Jac for Breach of Contract for $5.5 million. Dionne’s suit against Blue-Jac actually prompted Bacharach and David to make an uneasy truce. Bacharach was livid as was Hal David about the suit and they wanted to prove that they still had what it took and that they sure as hell didn’t need Dionne…and I firmly believe that was what provided the impetus for the Mills project. Mills began work on the album in the summer of 1976. There was still some rancor between Burt and Hal and allegedly most all the tunes Mills recorded had been in the drawer for a few years and speculated to be for Dionne’s follow-up to “Dionne”…Burt had minimal involvement in the project. Of course, the effort flopped. Mills, a lovely singer, but certainly not the caliber of talent of Dionne and the album fell flat. Burt fought Dionne all the way up until 1979 when Hal convinced Burt to settle for $5 million. Burt felt that he would have prevailed against Dionne if the suit had gone to trial but Blue-Jac’s attorneys and Hal felt much differently…they had basically been responsible for pulling the plug on Dionne’s career because they failed to honor their contract with her. Burt has acknowledged in recent years that it was his fault and that he was callous toward Hal and especially Dionne. Shortly after the suit was settled in the summer of 1979, Dionne hit with her album for Arista, ironically called "Dionne" and had a huge comeback...the album platinum and she had gold selling singles in Deja Vu and I'll Never Love This Way Again and two Grammy awards...Burt told the Miami Herald in Dec 1979 that he would never work with Dionne again and was glad that her chapter in his life was over. Dionne, I am sure, was laughing (all the way to the bank) by that time. Funny, Burt ate his words in 1984 and I am glad he did! Burt was a sore loser but not so sore that he didn't visit Dionne, hat in hand, at her Beverly Hills home at the prompting of Aaron Spelling, to ask her to sing the title tune to Spelling's television show "Finder of Lost Loves."

[nymusicalsguy]

Has anybody here actually heard the fruits of those 1974 Bacharach/Warwick sessions? They've long been my true Bacharach holy grails.

It's been said that the songs recorded were: "Plastic City" (Bacharach/Russell; registered 1974), "And Then You Know What He Did" (Bacharach/Russell; registered 1974), and "And Then He Walked Through The Door," with a Neil Simon lyric...possibly to the same melody as "And Then You Know What He Did," with a Bobby Russell lyric? ("Seconds," recorded by Burt himself as well as by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and "And Then [S]he Walked [Right] Through the Door" are both registered at ASCAP to Bacharach and Simon, and were reportedly written for a film version of PROMISES, PROMISES.)

When one thinks that these might have emerged on a future volume of the Rhino Handmade series of Dionne reissues - along with all of the remaining live and vault material promised in early volumes of that series - the cancellation of that program is all the more disappointing.

Best,

Joe

[BachtoBacharach]

I remember hearing a raw recording of Then He Walked Through the Door many years ago and it was on par with anything Burt and Dionne did together during her tenure with Scepter and that means, in other words, it was really good. I am not sure of the registration of the tunes though because of the confusion of the similar titles or re-written lyrics by Neil Simon. I seem to recall that there were two sessions with three tunes recorded in one session and two in another but it's been so many years ago, but I seem to remember five tunes were recorded all together and I believe possibly 6 or 7 were actually rehearsed or run-through. David Nathan had promised that he would put all those recordings out but the Rhino reissues were stopped at the reissue of the expanded Very Dionne. He continued the series with her WB recordings but they were not expanded versions...Spy Records didn't have the budget to allow Nathan to include the expanded material as he had planned, which would have been added to, probably, the WB "Dionne (1972)" reissue. Let's hope all the unissued material in the WB vaults will surface one day.

[nymusicalsguy]

Thanks, B2B. I, too, have long hoped this material will finally see the light of day, as well as the rest of the unreleased music promised by David Nathan in the Rhino Handmade liner notes for future volumes that, alas, never arrived...fingers crossed. Thanks, too, to David for getting Dionne's WB catalogue on CD. But oh, what might have been...!

[Roberto Pinardi]

...and great extras: demo piano Burt solo



Rob

[Roberto Pinardi]

Grover Crisp, Executive VP of Asset Management, Film Restoration & Digital Mastering at Sony Pictures:"......We were especially pleased that Burt Bacharach contributed his original demo recordings, for instance."

Thanks Burt!!!!!!!!



Rob