Mozert: Avatus, A Musical Opera (Blur-ray review)

Lt. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and His City Slickers. Lots of singers, too. Remastered 4K/4-D screen presentation. DDT-LSMFT 20.35 surround-sound audio track. Danish-only spoken language. Really Big Pictures; 2022; Really Big Blur-ray Discs 7.77.777.7777.etc.

By John J. Puccio

Anyone who doesn’t think that Avatusian composer-writer-producer-director-spot-remover J. Cameron Mozert’s 2022 movie epic Avatus: A Musical Opera isn’t the best 4K/4-D movie-musical-opera rip-off ever made is obviously unable to comprehend the genius behind this monumental project and deserves whatever ill fortune fate has reserved for him. In other words, if you don’t like this movie, you’re an idiot.

J.C. Mozert has generally reserved his best work for small-scale projects like Terminatoricus, Titanicus, and Aliens in the Atticus, but this time he has outdone himself with a musical opera so natural, so lifelike, so genuine, you’d think he used real people to perform it. Avatus: A Musical Opera (music by J.C. Mozert; lyrics by Mahatma Kane Jeeves; words by W. C. Dukenfield) stars counter-soprano Leonardo Di Capricorn as Jake Dawson; basso-profundo Kate Winstone as Rose Butler; alto-sexist Clarke Gable as Rhett Butler; mezzo-neen Sigorney Weaving as Robert Ripley; renowned hopscotch authority and part-time hockey puck Morgan Freeperson as The Great Mandala; and the incomparable Mac Demon as Francois “Sparkling” Perrier. Lt. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and his Band That Plays for Fun support the singers with a deferentially recalcitrant opprobrium.

The music explores one man’s vision to bring to the masses of a dying planet, Avatus, the rugged indoor sports event known as Mallet-Style Quidditch (or MS Quidditch), a variation on the hammer throw and tiddly winks, using large wooden mallets. (And not be confused with Mullet-Style Quidditch, which requires participants wear their hair short in the front and long in the back).

Needless to say, the people of Avatus are reluctant to take up a new sport, far more content to continue their time-honored amusement of killing one another for power and wealth. Even Mandala, His Greatness, an instant fan of MS Quidditch, is appalled at his own Avatusians’ willingness to shed blood over trivialities like war and peace rather than over something really important like MS Quidditch. Nevertheless, the Greater Mandala plunges forward, organizing an MS Quidditch team to equal any in the universe. Since it turns out there are no other MS Quidditch teams in the universe, this is far easier done than said.

Unfortunately, no one in the known universe has ever figured out the rules for playing MS Quidditch, which somewhat limits the scope of its promise. But it does not stop either Mandala the Greater-Than-Anybody-Else or Mozert the Not-Really-So- Entirely-Great from forging headlong ahead in heading up their head count of headcheese (a necessary ingredient in any MS Quidditch game worthy of the name, although for what purpose, no one has determined).

By bringing MS Quidditch to Avatus, the Greatest of All Mandalas saves the sports-starved peoples of the planet from near extinction by encouraging them to stay in school, get high grades, go to college, become good citizens, cure cancer, end bigotry, prejudice, and hatred, establish eternal peace, and live long and prosper. More important, the Intergalactic Sports Television Network makes a fortune.

We interrupt this review for an important message from our sponsors:
Have you been in a accident? Do you suffer from Post-Accident Depression (PAD)? Are you looking for legal remuneration for the incident? Look no further than the firm of J. Justice Justin and Clarence Calhoon Case, fair, proven, and cheap. Remember, when you need help, come to us, Justin-Case.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled review:
Anyway, that’s about all the plot there is to the plot, plot wise, but the opera’s undoubted pleasures are its visual splendors rather than its narrative, and these splendors are simply splendiforous. Di Capricorn is divine, Winstone is winsome, Gable is glorious, Weaving is wonderful, Freeperson is frabulous, and, as expected, Demon is darling, especially in 4K/4-D. To feast one’s eyes on these individuals in all their grandeur is a banquet to behold. Which is about all one can do when one is hungry, stuck in a theater with 800 other people, and can find no way to the refreshment stand (or the exit doors). Oh, and there’s some singing in the opera, too. So there’s that.

Video:
Not content with conventional 2-D or gimmicky 3-D, this Blur-ray disc brings us Avatus, the Musical Opera in all its 4K/4-D theatrical-release glory. (A 4K four-dimensional motion picture provides an audience not only with the dimensions of height, width, and depth but adds the sensation of touch as well. Things don’t just jump off the screen at viewers, they actually hit them. This has inevitably led to several law suits (see our sponsors) from patrons claiming to have been maimed by flying MS Quidditch chips, but I understand most of the suits have been settled out of Quidditch court. I, myself, have never been struck by any flying objects during a 4-D movie, although a poorly thrown MS Quidditch grenade narrowly missed me on several occasions. I also understand that at least three actresses in 4-D movies have claimed they were casually caressed by overzealous theater patrons, again unsubstantiated, although what 4-D activities one pursues while in the privacy of one’s home is another matter entirely.)

Incidentally, the folks at Really Big Pictures are also making Avatus, the Musical Opera available on a standard-definition Digital Ultimate Disc (DUD), but, really, who would want the movie on an ordinary DUD when you could buy the 4K/4-D Blur-ray edition?

Audio:
Here, we get a loss-leader soundtrack in DDT-LSMFT 20.35 surround that closely matches what several people claim they heard in a theater. Is it worth upgrading your audio system to 20.35 for a single motion picture? The answer is a resounding, Yes! Especially when you consider that there is no way on Earth (or on Avatus) that you could fully understand or appreciate the game of Mallet-Style Quidditch without 20.35 speakers. Well, to be fair, there is no way on Earth (or on Avatus) you could understand or appreciate the game of MS Quidditch under any circumstances, but that’s beside the point.

Oh, and the sound is pretty sound, too.

Extras:
Because of the film’s raging length--5 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes, 30 seconds (or 7,227.5 minutes for the minutely minded, or 433,650 seconds for the compulsively compulsive)--Really Big Pictures didn’t have a whole lot of room left over for too many extras, even using a bi-quadral, multiplex-layered, high-capacity Blur-ray disc. So about the only supplemental materials we get are two of J. Cameron Mozert’s younger brother’s briefer briefs, Alienicus from 1986 and Aliensicus from 1997. Of course, they don’t compare with big brother J.C.’s monumental achievement, but they are useful to have around.

In addition, the disc contains approximately 4.7 scene selections; a six-hour theatrical trailer; Danish as the only spoken language; and some fishy-looking captions for the herring impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
Words cannot adequately express the joy, elation, bliss, delight, happiness, felicity, rapture, ecstasy, jubilation, enchantment, exultation, exhilaration, joie de vivre, or downright really good feelings one gets from watching Avatus, the Musical Opera, be it on the big 360-degree wraparound 4K/4-D screen at your local movie theater or on the 3” x 6” cell phone you use at home. Mark my words, Mark, Avatus, the Musical Opera will go down in history as one of the greatest film adaptations of an Avatus, the Musical Opera opera ever made.

And anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

Cautionary Note:
A 4K/4-D Blur-ray disc must only be played on compatible 4K/4-D Blur-ray equipment (4K/4-D television, 4K/4-D Blur-ray player, 4K/4-D Blur-ray receiver, 4K/4-D Blur-ray speakers, 4K/4-D Blur-ray speaker wire, 4K/4-D Blur-ray goggles, 4K/4-D Blur-ray gloves, and 4K/4-D Blur-ray couch). Any attempt to play a 4K/4-D Blur-ray disc on an ordinary Blu-ray, DVD, HD DVD, LD, VHS, Betamax, Victrola, Dictaphone, or Vitaphone player will result in grievous bodily harm. For more information on the availability of compatible 4K/4-D Blur-ray equipment, visit https//:www.wereouttosoakyouforeverythingyouvegot.con.

JJP

To listen to an excerpt from this album, click below:

Mozert: Magnificent Ambersens, the Opera (Super-8 review)

Restored Director’s Cut, with Orson Bean, Joseph Cottontail, Elvis Costello, Tom Hulce, and Agatha Sorehead. Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III, Toontown Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. 1930; 260 minutes. Standard and enormously overblown extra-widescreen presentations; B&W and color; 2-D, 3-D, and DD-T soundtracks.

By John J. Puccio

As every opera buff knows, Magnificent Ambersens (1930) was the writer, producer, actor, composer, film editor, gaffer, grip, and best boy director Wolfgang Orson Wellseyan Mozert’s enigmatic musical follow-up to his celebrated antiestablishment idyll, The Citizen Kane Mutiny. And, as every musical film buff also knows, Ambersens was corrupted, shredded, mutilated, and maimed by its studio, R.K. Maroon International, when the filmmaker left it in their care whilst he took a cruise to South America with his girlfriend, Jessica Rabbit. Mozert always said that he regretted what later happened. (The studio’s cutting of his film, not his fling with Ms. Rabbit.)

Providentially and unbeknownst to anyone outside his immediate circle of friends, Mozert was able to retrieve most of the excised portions of the movie from a dumpster behind the Maroon studios, footage that only today, over ninety years later, he has reconstructed into a true Director’s Cut. The incomprehensible new version--restored to its original operatic setting--now includes several hours of expunged words never before heard outside the Mozert household. The new version runs some 260 minutes, with about three-and-a-half hours of additional, inexplicable verbiage. “A Magnificent Ruin,” as one critic once called the truncated edition, is once again “A Magnificent Rune.”

For those readers who may not be familiar with the film, Magnificent Ambersens recounts the familiar tale of the demise of an American way of life in Yoknapatawpha county, with the dissolution of the once lofty Grierson dynasty and the depletion of the family fortune at the hands of modernity. The cast includes Anne Boxster as Dolores Costello, the demanding matriarch of the clan; young Timmy Holt as Richard Bennett, the handsome, ne’er-do-well; Joseph Cottonball as Sterling Hayden, the corrupt police captain; Peter Lorry as Heinrich Strasser, the gallant saloon keeper; longtime Mercury Theatre singers Agnes Moorfoot, Ray Collyns, and Edward Rochester as Othello’s household staff; and W.O.W. Mozert himself as the narrator, Paul Masson. Oh, and it’s an opera, so there are also some songs.

But the studio’s version of the film was all they wanted audiences to see. At last, with the additional footage, we are introduced to the plot’s more intriguing music and characters: Gibson Gowland as Frank McTeague, a San Francisco podiatrist; Zazu Pitts as Emily Tarkington, an inconsolable harlequin; Humphrey Bogart as Corliss “Rosebud” Archer, a relentless gumshoe; Erik von Stroheim as Mr. Arkadin, a small knot of indecipherable fiber; G.W. Bush as Manderley, the sinister butler; George Lucas as Sabrina, the butler’s daughter; Marlon Brando as the Chorus (widescreen); Gabriel Heatter with the news; and one hard-boiled egg.

Together, they sing and act an unforgettably thrilling narrative of greed, mystery, and women in flimsy white negligees that no film buff, buffed or otherwise, should ignore. To say this new Director’s Cut is merely a melodramatic journey into fear, the equivalent of a black-magic stranger, a third man on the other side of the wind, a touch of evil, or a war of the worlds would simply be the expression of a deep-seated and quixotic riposte. No, this Director’s Cut restores the very essence of the songs, a trial no viewer should miss.

Incidentally, I understand that later this spring Maroon Studios will be releasing their big biographical epic of Mozert’s life, starring Tom Hanks as W.O.W and Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger as his good friend and buddy J.C.Penney Bach. Initially, the studio wanted Arnold to play Mozert, but Arnold refused, saying he’d rather be Bach. Anyway, something to look forward to.

In truth, it will be a long, hot summer in Shanghai before we see the likes of Mozert’s genius again. His Director’s Cut has already established itself above criticism, and far be it from me to peddle any word of reproach. At Classical Candor, we will sell no whine before its time.

Video:
In terms of overall appearance, the old, abridged, theatrical release of Magnificent Ambersens was a departure from the visionary, avant-garde, new-wave technology originally employed by Mozert. Always ahead of his time, Mozert had used widescreen, color, 3-D, and holographic (HG) photography to glorious advantage (despite his alleged claim that “no great film was ever made in color,” a nefarious misquote attributed to him by his enemies). But at the time of the film’s initial release in 1932, the studio would not have it Mozert’s way, bleaching out the color, cropping the frames, and eliminating the HG, three-dimensional sonic effects. Which is another reason the new edition is so welcome. What we have now in the Director’s Cut is the formerly deleted widescreen, color, 3-D, HG footage seamlessly intercut with the theatrical release’s standard-screen black-and-white. In the event a viewer should be uncertain as to which parts have been added to the older edition, the extra material has been clearly labeled with a large pink asterisk on the left-hand side of the screen. A pair of plastic HG glasses are enclosed in the reel’s case, and extra HG 3-D glasses may be ordered from the studio for viewers figuring on the unlikelihood of company.

As might be expected, the picture quality varies only slightly between the original and added elements. Indeed, the theatrical-release’s footage now looks its age, while the added footage looks even older. Using the HG 3-D glasses can be a minor inconvenience, as one has to put them on and take them off every ten seconds, but if you leave them on throughout the viewing, you’ll notice a marked improvement in the black-and-white. A lot of the grain and some of the smear of the old print is ameliorated, and if a character here or there disappears entirely, it will probably not be much of a concern to anyone but a die-hard movie aficionado, anyway.

Which brings up a final concern. With or without the HG 3-D glasses, the average viewer will probably not be able to discern much of what is going on. So, how was I able to see the picture when to you it will be a monumental blur? Because my equipment is better than yours, that’s why. But relax, because once you’ve finished reading my review, you’ll be able to hold an intelligent conversation on the subject with anyone. After all, that’s what reviews are for. You don’t have to go out and actually watch all those boring old classic movies that critics are always raving about. Just check out the reviews and people will think you’re smart.

Audio:
George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic Show have remixed and remastered Mozert’s original 1.0 monaural sound with mixed results in Dolty Digital-DDT 12.4ESP Amos InteriorScope At-the-Most Surround. No longer is the music confined to a single location or even to a single set of speakers; it now arrives at the ear from within the ear. The sound resonants outward from the inner ear to the outer chamber, creating the sensation of being completely under water. It is quite an accomplishment from a company renowned for its creativity and innovation. When questioned about why they wanted to create so aqueous an illusion, Mozert and Lucas replied, “Because.” Which is good enough for us.

Extras:
I had expected a musical-film release of this stature to be offered in at least a two-reel special edition, but, alas, it was not to be. The film and its extra materials are presented on one Zoetrope Super-8 strip, accommodating about twelve hours of content at a bit rate that failed to register on my Zoetrope player’s readout. Nevertheless, it is quantity that counts, especially in Hollywood.

The first and most important of the package’s bonus items is a new audio commentary by Mozert himself.  In it, the director takes us on a frame-by-frame tour of the Macbeth mansion and grounds, with lucid explanations on diet and exercise. Although the feature film itself is not rated, the director’s commentary is classified R for sex, nudity, witches, and violence. Next up is a six-hour documentary, “Along for the Ride,” the director’s unexpurgated diary of his South American road trip, also rated R, this time for scenes of graphic weight gain.

The rest of the extras are of the more mundane variety and are best watched once and forgotten. There are, of course, the usual behind-the-scenes scenes of scenic scenes, these with on-air narration by both W.O.W. Mozert and Marlin Brando (ultra-widescreen recommended). Then, there is a short series of still pictures: a Rita Hayworth pinup shot (required viewing); a Zazu Pitts pinup shot (optional viewing); and an Agnes Moorehead pinup shot (children’s advisory warning). The extras conclude with a menu containing one scene selection; a pan-and-scan theatrical release trailer; a widescreen rerelease trailer; and an obscenely wide re-rerelease trailer featuring both Marlin Brando and Orson Welles on screen at the same time (barely). Although Scottish is the only spoken language provided, there are Danish subtitles for the Scottish impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
For film fans who will undoubtedly greet the Magnificent Ambersens Director’s Cut gleefully, there is even more cause for gleeful glee. Mozert recently let it be known that he and screenwriters Stanley Kubrick and Broken Lizard are putting the final touches on the long-rumored musical sequel to The Citizen Kane Mutiny. Slated for release some time in the fall, Raising Kane is the story of the reclusive billionaire’s illegitimate daughter, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk. It stars Jessica Rabbit and Betty Boop as Sugar, with Harry Lime, Michael O’Hara, Will Varner, Hank Quinlan, and Peter Bogdanovich in the immortal and possibly immoral saga of love, hate, sorrow, horror, humor, and women in flimsy white negligees, set within a backdrop of tragedy, redemption, and abstruse reconciliation. Although it sounds too good to be true, it is. True, that is. And abstruse, promising to blow the lid off the entire skateboarding community. There will, indeed, be chimes at midnight and trouble in the glen tonight! And one hard-boiled egg.

JJP
 
To listen to a brief excerpt from this tape, click below:

Mozert: Sing Song, the Musical (Eight-Tract Bl-R review)

Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III, Westchester Girls Rubber Band and Chorus. Jackson Whole Pictures; 2025; 18 and 2880 minutes. Eight-Tract Blur-ray 09.30.44 (24 discs)

What co-composers George Peter Mozert and Lucas Jackson Mozert have done in their classic operetta is not just reinvent the venerable concept of a giant ape attacking a forbidden island in the sky, but they have set it all gloriously to music! The melodies, the harmonies, the lyrics, even the words to the songs are a revelation. The film and its attendant audio are themselves a marvel, of course; that goes without saying. But now, thanks to the Mozert Twins and Jackson Whole Productions, we are able to see it both in its original theatrical-release form and in the filmmakers' own Unrated Special Edition Audio Commentary Director's Cut (UR/SE/AC/DC). The deluxe, twenty-four-disc package surely offers a surplus of riches. And will just as surely make the Mozerts rich.

The story, based on the classic Anglican novel Great Expectorations by Mark Spitz, is almost too familiar to describe, but I'll recap the highlights for the uninitiated. A poor, down-on-his-luck choirboy, Hansel Solow (alternately performed by Harry Ray Hausen and Harry's son, Ford), finds refuge on a tramp steamer steaming to the steamy, uncharted island of Loonitoonie. Or a tramp steamer is tramping to.... I forget, but the steamer doesn't get halfway there before Hansel is accosted by a Wicki named Wacko. Or a Wacko named Wicki, I forget. In any case, Hansel is rescued by the heroine, Princess Pardonme Madear (Jack Hack), Queen of Medullah, and they instantly fall in love, not realizing that they are actually man and wife.

Then they spot the forbidden planet, Mobius, where everyone has to strip and the situation becomes intense. This is OK, though, because most of the crew are in tents, anyway, what with cabin space being at a premium. They land the ship on a nearby mooring and immediately set out to take pictures of the planet's inhabitants, the Mobiusan Moors. But the Moors are none too happy to greet outlanders, especially ones so keen on taking their pictures. These are, after all, pictures that have been in their families for generations.

Next, we hear the sound of distant rumblings (rumble, rumble), and we see the natives getting restless. It's well past their dinnertime, and their stomachs are growling something terrible. But, wait, it's something else as well; it's the ancient chant of voodoo drums along an enormous granite cliff. Cautiously, our intrepid band climb the rock, a sort of rising rock band, lead by Hansel and the Princess, and make their way to the base of the precipice, any moment fearing an overhead attack by the dreaded Sith. Fortunately, they have nothing to worry about from the Sith, having remembered to wear their sith helmets. But what they find there is something far more terrifying than even they could have imagined--a gigantic ape bigger than the Palpatine Hills and the Lower Antilles combined.

The natives call him...Sing Song.

Lt. Sir Cedric Etc., Etc.

From that point on, you all know the story. Captain Quirk (Louis Armstrong) and the crew of the Starship Babble-On attempt to buy the big ape (Zbig Cirkus) for a song, but can't, so they kidnap him and bring him back to Nabooey. Then the Princess learns that Song is her father, Hansel learns that the Princess is his wife, and Luc Peters learns that he's the half-cousin thrice removed of the wrestler Gorgeous George. It all seems so obvious, but it plays out much better than it sounds, thanks to the songs and music.

Who can forget those unforgettably unforgettable Mozert tunes, orchestrated and sung by composer James Newton Max Howard Steiner Zimmer-Williams: "Gorilla My Dreams," "I Only Have Ice Planets for You," "Simian in the Rain," "Climb Every Building," "Ape and Circumstance," "Yes, We've Got No Stinkin' Bananas" ("Bananas?  We haven't got any bananas. We don't need any bananas. I don't have to show you any stinkin' bananas"), "In the Cage Where You Live," "Get Me to the Perch on Time," "Seventy-Six Skull and Bones," and that perennial favorite, "How To Succeed in Monkey Business Without Really Trying."

"Sing Song" is a monstrous achievement.

Video:
The video quality of the theatrical release is excellent, the picture size measuring a screen ratio of approximately 3.437651.34:1, a size closely matching its original 3.437651.43:1 dimensions. Jackson Whole Pictures transferred both the theatrical release and Director's Cut to disc in VHS Super-String Anorexic Blur-Ray UltraVisionSD, at a processing rate of 800K pixels per square centimeter. However, using my own fully calibrated micronometer, I measured an average of between 5-10 psc, a little less than the claimed spec but still ensuring that most of the film's RGB color-matched hues are vividly reflected in the overall picture, so, close enough. A degree of grain washes out several scenes, but there's nothing in them worth seeing, so in all it's a wash.

There is a slight degradation of picture quality in the Directors' Cut. While the theatrical release was filmed in SuperUltra Cinepanormique Kodachrome Technorama VistaScope Todd-AO 70, the Directors' Cut was filmed in Super 8. The difference is, how should I put it...different. Nevertheless, once one gets used to the smaller screen size, .27:1, the black-and-white photography with pea-green overtones, the beclouded image, the montage of moiré effects, and the peripheral snow, everything looks pretty good. There are even several occasions during the forty-eight-hour Directors' Cut that one can almost, if not quite, make out what's happening.

Audio:
The theatrical release version of the film retains its mono soundtrack, while the Directors' Cut gets a brand-new, newly remastered DDT/Atmost 9.2 remix. Understand, however, that the film was originally recorded in monaural, so the remix puts the same track in all nine-point-two channels. Nevertheless, it places the listener in the dead center of the aural action.

Extras:
Disc one of this twenty-four disc set contains the complete theatrical version of the film, its entire eighteen minutes; plus English, French, Spanish, and Stallonese spoken languages; Modestian, Orang, Pongadae, and Danish subtitles; seventeen theatrical, TV, and teaser trailers; and one scene selection, with a full-color, black-and-white chapter insert.

In addition, the first disc contains a co-directors' audio commentary, wherein the two Mozerts boys laugh and talk and converse about their childhoods growing up in the far reaches of the galaxy: New Zealand and Modesto. They provide a good deal of verbal description of their lives before and after becoming famous composers, their upbringing, their religious background, their grades in school, their baptisms and bar mitzvahs, their first dates, their college education, their second dates, their courtships and assorted marriages, their mutual acquaintances, their industry buddies, their multitudinous awards, their hardships making the film, and their fishing trips together. Eighteen minutes never went by so fast.

Discs two through twenty-three contain the Unrated Directors' Cut of Sing Song at 2880 minutes (or 48 hours, depending on your math). This version includes several outtakes and deleted scenes. However, it does not contain a Directors' commentary, the two men having completely exhausted their supply of personal anecdotes, jokes, and reminiscences during their comments on the theatrical version.

Disc twenty-four contains the bulk of the extras. First up, there's a guest lecture by school librarian Merriam C. Cooper that lasts about six hours, in which he demonstrates why school librarians should never be allowed to give lectures. Second, there are spy shots of the Great Ape bathing nude with co-star Naomi Watsername, as well as spy shots of SEE-3PO'D bathing nude with co-star Kristian Haywire. They are both worth looking into. Third up, there is a pair of featurettes: "The Making of Harry Pottery and the Giblet of Ire As Told By His Ceramics Teacher" (PG) and "The Making of George Peters and Luc Jackson As Told By Their Parents" (XXX). Fourth, we have the complete text of "The Last of the Mohicans" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, read in its entirety by noted film buff J.D. Salinger (in the buff). Finally, the bonus items are rounded out by a small, circular blotch of unidentifiable material.

Parting Shots:
Alex & Emma is sweet without being romantic, cute without being funny. Even when Reiner has two different stories to work with, one inside the other, he can't do anything with them. Well, nobody stays down forever, and Reiner has a lot of good years ahead of him. From here on, he certainly has nowhere to go but up.

And then Song finds himself trapped in the botanical gardens atop the Empire State Building, surrounded by jet fighters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Air Force. ("How do they get those big horses inside such tiny cockpits?" asks film critic Marilyn Monroe.) To quote from the source, "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. The thing is...if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything." Reaching for the ring, Song toppled from the tower.

"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was booty killed the beast."

JJP

To hear an excerpt from the movie soundtrack, click here:

Mozert: Star Wards - A New Hype (Blur-ray review)

A space opera based on John Milton's epic sc-fi adventure, "Paradise Mislaid." Twenty-First Century Vixen Home Entertainment HAL2001.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that a member of the highly prodigious and exceptionally prolific Mozert family of musical geniuses would eventually make his way to Tinseltown. Then, several years later, he would arrive in Hollywood, and the rest would be history. This was, of course, Stanley Alfred Akira Orson Ingmar Federico Francis Mozert, Jr. (1823-1947), the celebrated operatic filmmaker who invented sci-fi, love beads, and singing.

Mozert started it all with his space opera "Star Wards - A New Hype" in 1922, and everybody has been waiting in line for its long-overdue release on Blur-ray longer than Christmas. Now, it's finally here in high deaf, episode twenty-three in the celebrated romantic horror-comedy fantasy, docudrama-opera saga that has shaken, if not to say stirred, the Western World. And a few pocketbooks, too. It couldn't have arrived on Ultra-Lofty Definition (ULD) Blur-ray at a better time.

Mozert's opera was directed on film by Georges Méliès ("A Trip to the Orchestra Pit"), produced by Stephan Spiegelburg ("E.T. The Extra Tenor"), and adapted for the screen by Roger Corperson ("The Beast with a Million Songs"), Petar Jacksson ("Sing Song"), Dino Martin Scoresese ("Boxcar Ballads"), and Francesco A. Capella ("A Pox on Your Lips Now"). It's a prodigious effort by a prodigious team of prodigious (and prolific) filmmakers.

"Star Wards - A New Hype," as you all remember from your Opera Film Study classes, is the story of a waif, Lucas Moneymaker (Narc Hemphill, countertenor), who saves a home for retired movie stars that is far, far away and a heck of a long time ago, like before you were even born, even. Well, maybe not that long.

With the help of his faithful companions--the haughty Hand SoLow (Harrison Fairlaine, baritone), the dauntless Princess Pixar (Carrie Mebacktu Olevirginny, mezzanine-soprano), the wise guru Olden-One Nairobi (Guinness Stout, "It's in the book!"), his comic sidekick ChewTobacco (Bert Skoal), and his mascots See-3-PO'D (Tom Hunks) and How-D-Do-D (Denny DaVeto)--Moneymaker rescues untold numbers of old folks from the diabolical clutches of their evil Overlord, Mala Vista (Robert Igor), his adopted son, Asta La Vista (the Honorable Arnold), and Vista's former henchmen, the brothers Mirra and Max (Darth Harvey and Darth Wienstine, bassi profundi), Dark Overseers of the Cinematheque. A cameo appearance by young soprano Sterling Christensen as the cuddly Judo Master, Yogi Teddybeara, completes the cast.

George Burns dubs the singing parts. Marcel Marceau handles the voices.

Bert Skoal

Fans of the complete saga will welcome this first-ever segment in its first-ever ULD Blur-ray edition (after six laser-disc versions, eight DVD incarnations, ten VHS and Beta tape renderings, and 800 semiannual theatrical rereleases since its première in 1913). Fans will also be pleased to note that this episode contains only a single example of the director's prized CGI creations that were so liberally appended to the saga's later remasterings. Indeed, the viewer may find the quaintness of this early movie's live actors a refreshing change of pace from the computer-generated animations so familiar to us today. Unfortunately, the live performers are unable to replicate the myriad visual nuances and facial expressions of their computer counterparts, but it's all part of the fun of this ancient, campy, live-action technology. Mr. Christensen remains the lone CGI-animated character in the film.

Based in part on the myth "The Hero of a Thousand Voices" by the late, great, celebrated PBS talk-show host J.R.R. "Soupy" Campbell and in part on the classic Samurai farce "The Hidden Fat in Chow Yun" by Acura Kurosodoff, "Star Wards - A New Hype" is THE seminal operatic work in early Hollywood's burgeoning retirement-home opera genre. Grounded in strong metaphysical convictions, deep existential philosophy, uncompromising ethical values, and women in flimsy white negligees, the movie is destined to stand the test of time, at least until the next installment comes out in two weeks.

Video:
For this Super-Deluxe, Extra-Elite, 97th Anniversary, Special Edition Blur-ray boxed set, the folks at Twenty-First Century Vixen Home Entertainment have transferred the film, all fourteen minutes of it, to three quad-layer Blur-ray discs, front and back, for optimum AV playback quality. And, of course, the THD-certified ULD-BR audiovisual format preserves the movie's original theatrical-exhibition size, a 360:1 anorexic-ratio, TechnoRabid SwaddleScreen-80 presentation. The filmmakers realize that this format could present some small problem to those viewers whose home theaters are not equipped to do it justice, but by utilizing as simple an array as sixteen 90" curved-screen ULHD televisions in a circular pattern around the viewing area, the film can still provide a fascinating, if somewhat limited, visual experience. Textures are lifelike; flesh tones, particularly light greys and whites, are extraordinarily natural; and the panoramic scenery is, well, panoramic.

Audio:
The sound reproduction is sound, offered up in the director's preferred configuration, lossless Dolby Digits TrueTH Atmospheric LucasEar 60.8 AX AuralSurround-500. Listeners with fewer than the optimal ten speakers per bank--ten front, twelve back, twenty sides, thirty ceiling, and forty-seven floor, with eight 36" subwoofers--will still get a kick out of the all-enveloping nature of the audio playback. Even as few as 43.6 speakers are adequate for the job, so almost anyone can enjoy the beauty of LucasEar's phenomenal monaural soundtrack. Highly recommended, especially if you don't like your neighbors.

Extras:
Discs one, two, and three in this ten-disc Blur-ray set are devoted, as mentioned above, to the movie itself, with six separate audio commentaries to enjoy. The first commentary, as expected, is with the director, cast, crew, and stars. The second commentary is with the stars, cast, director, and crew. The third is with everybody already cited plus the guy who cleans up after the lights go out. The fourth is with the best boy. The fifth is with the best boy's best girl. And the sixth is with the gaffer, a compilation of his very best gaffes.

Spoken languages come in Danish, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Lappish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, Texan, Stallonean, Nabuccon, Freishhok, Bombastic, and Toolouyie; with subtitles in Pitouy, Zha*#/-^sh, Orwellian Doublespeak, and Portlandian Redneck. For an additional charge, you can order English. Scene selections are on the light side, however, at two, including one for the closing credits. It's a small price to pay for perfection.

Discs four through ten contain the major bonus items, including documentaries, featurettes, poster galleries, interactive recipes, interviews, e-mails, private telephone conversations, Easter eggs, duck eggs, Fabergé eggs, scrambled eggs, National Be-Kind-To-Your-Ferret-Day eggs, and plenty of commas. Then there are behind-the-scenes photos of really old retired people (some as old as their fifties and sixties); and other stuff you'll never look at again.

Here, too, you'll find various theatrical trailers and tractors for "Star Wards" prequels, sequels, continuations, and spin-offs, including teasers for the new Ultra-Deluxe, Extra-Elite, Further Anniversary, Special Edition Blur-rays of the movie, plus all the other films in the series that are coming out next month with even more extras than this one.  "Buy now, buy later" is the industry motto. The present discs conclude with promos for various "Star Wards" paraphernalia, including video games, board games, card games, dice games, dart games, graphic novels, comic books, cartoon strips, action figures, thumb screws, razor blades, maps, hats, masks, gloves, ears, noses, eyebrows, laser guns, power drills, jackhammers, ball-peen hammers, and other merchandise the studio hopes to con you into buying before they're through.

Also included: "The Mozert Family Tree," suitable for framing, mounting, or planting. You, too, can grow little Mozerts in your garden. Who knows? Maybe someday one of them will write a sequel.

Finally, tucked away neatly in a back pocket of the beautifully illustrated metal-foil slipcase is a full-scale, foldout cardboard replica of Hand SoLow's lighter-than-air jet aircraft, the Millennium Buzzard. Fully expanded, the airplane measures some 300 feet, nose to tail, with functional cockpit and cargo bays. A word of caution about this item, however. It is designed as a simulation only and will not actually fly. Early reports have indicated that some beta testers apparently attempted to launch their vehicles from garage roofs with less than satisfactory results. The studio warns that such misuse of the product may be hazardous to the model and its occupants and could do irreparable damage to both. This is a full-size likeness only, kids, and should be treated as such. For safety's sake, if you have a 300-foot dresser in your bedroom, that's where you should properly display your Buzzard.

Parting Shots:
In addition to this latest complete edition of the initial chapter in the "Star Wards" saga, the marketing directors at Twenty-First Century Vixen are making available for the first time a special five-shelf Blur-ray disc bookcase to house the over 1800 re-releases so far in the series. As this bookcase will only accommodate Blur-ray discs, however, the studio advises buyers to hang on to their old bookcases to store any BDs, DVDs, videotapes, and laser discs already obtained. Do not, however, attempt to mix or match Blur-ray discs, BDs, DVDs, tapes, and LDs as the formats are not compatible and serious damage could result.

"Star Wards - A New Hype: Part XXXV1, A Space Opera" on Blur-ray may be purchased individually for $59.95 or in a complete box set of all seventy-two episodes (so far) for a MSRP of $6,876.40. Nevertheless, a perusal of the Dark Matter Web reveals several outlets discounting the price considerably, with several on-line stores offering the entire box for $9.95. A shipping and handling fee of $6,866.45 should not deter the dedicated buyer in search of a bargain.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this movie's soundtrack, click below:
 

Mozert: Sinfonia Estrema per Una Nota (Betamax review)

Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III (KCB, KCBS, KGB, CGI, DoD, WSJ), the Katzenjammer Baroquen Orchestra; North Corvina Girls' Drum and Bungee Corps; Norman Labernacle Choir; Bill Gates Singers; with the Emerson, Lake & Palmer Quartet. Odyssey Records HAL2001.

Australian composer, trapdoor salesman, and origamist Myles P. Galleon Mozert (1739-1862) was another in the long line of musical prodigies produced by the Mozert family this past quarter century. Although the public probably recognizes him best as the owner of a trapdoor company and an origami shop, he turned to music when the trapdoor business fell through and the origami business folded. All the better for the musical community, then, when he wrote his Sinfonia Estrema per Una Nota in B-flat C-minor Major, here performed by Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and his accomplished East Corvina Boys' Drum and Bungee Corps.

Mozert wrote the Sinfonia in November 1732, just three days short of his death in December 1659, and the work has remained among his most-popular compositions ever since. Critics who argue that it was his only composition are clearly missing the point.

[We interrupt this review for an important message from our sponsor, Nayfare.com: Drop the mic! Let us make your home a happy place. Again. If ever. Now, thousands of items nobody else wanted to sell can be yours at a fraction of their original cost. Drop the mic! Indoor picnic tables! Bathroom headlamps! Mustache wax! Dental implants! And Nayfare pays the shipping. Wow! Game-changer! Drop the mic! Come in today and negotiate a price with our Director of Ethics, Marty Shkreli, for the deal of a lifetime.

But wait! There's more! If you order within the next two minutes, we'll send you absolutely free a free set of Ginsu professional steak knives for free, for nothing, on orders totaling $10,000 or more. Just send four easy payments of $29.95 for shipping and handling.

Lft. Sir Cedric Etc., Etc.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled review.]

As most readers know, Mozert wrote the Sinfonia in thirty-seven contiguous movements rather than the customary two, the work consisting of a single, sustained tone lasting approximately two and a half hours, with no breaks between notes. What's more, the composer left explicit written instructions for the ensemble to omit any suggestion of contrast, inflection, rubato, legato, brio, sostenuto, spirito, bicarbonato, carborundum, initiative, or referendum of any kind. The results can be intensely exhilarating or unbearably emulsifying by turns, and a performance requires the utmost care in its execution, stand, and delivery.

With consummate facility, the band's concertmaster, Major Domo, opens the piece with the work's signature introduction on the Campanelli Metallophone Glockenspiel, Model 17, 9mm, followed by a diverssimentino of gradually diminishing extrapolation. The effect in toto (we're not in Kansas anymore) is exfoliating, to say the least.

Associate Executive Unit Producer Yelberton Abraham Tittle, Jr. and Second Assistant Co-Coordinating Sound Engineering Director Joseph Clifford Montana, Jr. recorded the symphony at the Hoover-Electrolux Junior Studios, South Corvina, California in January 2014. They used advanced Toshiba Betamax technology for maximum fidelity, transferring the recording to Crypton 42 carbon-fiber tape for standard home playback.

[Since there's nothing on TV you can't get here, and since it's been almost thirty seconds since our last commercial break, here's a word from another of our sponsors:

Friends, do you love your children? Do you want to keep them safe from harm in the most serious accidents? Then you should drive the new SubaRue Love Duette, the safest car on the planet (as long as you're a child). Adults are on their own, but we guarantee the security of young people under the age of ten. Of course, if you don't care about your kids and don't care if they love you, you can always buy a competitor's brand and take their lives in your hands. But if you want to show your children you love them, you'll buy a SubaRue.

Disclaimer: Owning a SubaRue can be detrimental to your health. If you are allergic to driving a car, try walking. Otherwise, a SubaRue may produce headaches, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, lung disease, tetrathrombosis, cardial disfibralation, and suicidal tendencies. Fortunately, your childern will always be safe in a SubaRue, but not you. Read our ad in Gastrointestinal Digest Today.

Now, back to our show.]

The sound obtained by the Odyssey Records junior engineering team can charitably called fluxinary. That is, it appears in continual transition from chocolatey vanilla to obtuse molasses, with hints of cherry blossoms and wild mint in the outermost ridges. Within this framework of estranged epiphanies, one can perceive the delicate fragrances of olive oil, paprika, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, especially when the timpani corps join in. Altogether, it makes for an extraordinary listening experience as well as a bewildering culinary encounter.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Mozert: Concerto for Three Hands and a Foot, "Hawaiian" (DDT review)

Also, Flat-Foot Floogie (with a Floy-Floy). D.G. Frump, lyre; Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III (Bart., Smpsn., O.B.E., W.A.N.); Buford (Wyoming) Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Sunny Classical BFD-911.

Most classical listeners today will  recognize the name Severus Octavian Siriasis Mozert better than that of his son and subject of this review, Ludvocio Ochozath Ludicrus Mozert. Be that as it may, we press onward.

L.O.L. Mozert (1753-1762) was born in the small Bavarian town of Mary-Kay-Upon-Avon in 1743 to the tune of an itinerant flue-pipe salesman. LOL's first notable achievement occurred during the Battle of Handly Fern, where young Ludvocio tried his hand at managing a self-serve restaurant, the War 'N Buffet, but failed handily. Later, he played hunchback at Notre Dame U. under the legendary coach, Urban Legend. When that didn't work out, however, it led to his greatest (and only) musical achievement, the chorale-prelude Concerto for Three Hands and a Foot in A-class lower-berth, "Hawaiian," co-written with his longtime attendant and accomplice, Warren Peece. Although Mozert wrote the work originally for penny whistle, we have heard it adapted over the years for any number of solo instruments, including but not limited to the tin whistle, the English flageolet, the tin flageolet, the Scottish penny whistle, the Irish whistle, the Belfast Hornpipe, the fleadóg stáin, and the Clarke London Flageolet. On the present recording, we hear it played on the lyre.

Lft. Sir Cedric Etc. Etc.

German-American-Scottish-Jamaican entrepreneur, bankruptcy lawyer, quiz-show host, reform-school graduate, and lyre exponent extraordinaire Domhnall Giovanni Frump performs the concerto with a haughty accord (or a Honda Accord if you're in the mood for some light traveling music). Ably accompanying Mr. Frump are Maestro Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and the Buford (Wyoming) Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra (Don Sammons, strings; Don Sammons, winds; Don Sammons, brass; Don Sammons, percussion; Don Sammons, woodwinds and harp; Don Sammons, piano, celesta, and keyboards; Don Sammons, electronics; Don Sammons, wind machines; and Don Sammons, motor grinder). The orchestra also play with one accord, which may be the only car in town.

We interrupt the review in progress with an important word from our sponsor:

Friends, do you feel fatigued, irritable, stagnant, annoyed, endemic, requited, bicarbonated, carborundumed, or referendumed? You need the new, super-improved Johnson & Johnson PfizerRoche NovartisPlus Teleportonic Elixir: good for everything in the home including coreopsis, (the secret is in the scrubbing; it doesn't suds and doesn't foam), and now it cleans your breath as it cleans your sink.

Side effects may include mild skin irritation, dandruff, hives, allergies, dizziness, indigestion, constipation, nasal congestion, back pain, weight loss, depression, fainting, influenza, tonsillitis, pneumonia, botulism, strep throat, hyperthermia, asthma, arthritis, bursitis, diabetes, osteoporosis, anemia, strangulation, pancreatitis, hepatitis, leprosy, blindness, kidney failure, lung and prostate cancer, tuberculosis, heart disease, brain tumors, narcolepsy, necrophilia, dementia, insanity, mad cow disease, and suicidal tendencies with uncontrollable desires to leap from tall buildings in a single bound. Do not use NovartisPlus if you drive a car, stand up, sit down, sleep, or breathe, as it may cause serious reactions.

We now return you to your regular programming.

Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes.

Executive producer Robert Langdon, digital editor Henry Higgins, and chief engineer Harold Hill, known professionally as "The Three Professors," recorded the music in the main gallery of the Buford Town Post Office on April 1, 2017 (well, actually, it's on Interstate 80, but close enough). The sound they obtained one might charitably call bearable. The highs spring forth with the stagnancy of a spring bouquet in fall, permeating the air with a quercetic vapor redolent of soggy underwear on a summer day. The midrange carries the sonic image further into the realms of the preternatural with a transparency borne of dedicated attention to enumeration and redundancy, the whole experience capped off with a basso-relievo that thunders through the floorboards, into the basement, and through some of the deepest fissures of the planet.

It sounds OK.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click on the forward arrow:

Mozert: Concertina in Absentia non Grata (HSALTPTR review)

Grover Cleveland Alexander, mezzo-soprano; Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III, Botloe's Green-Durbridge Redmarley Municipal Philharmonic Orchestra and Choral Society. Glyptograph Records of East Angelia Township GREAT-112233.

Astrobiologist, composer, and chocolatier Lillian Arlene Leonardo de Capistrano Mozert, the Lesser (1738-1744), affectionately known as "Lenni" to his friends, more or less made a career of writing concertinas, ocarinas, and bandoneóns, so it's no wonder Glyptograph Records remastered one of his best compositions: the Concertina in Absentia non Grata, Op. 1, WPA1934, BMWM3, recorded in 1737 by the noted Sumerian conductor Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III leading the beloved Botloe's Green-Durbridge Redmarley Municipal Philharmonic and Choral Society. It was about time this classic recording got a classy new remastering.

Young Mozert wrote the Concertina in 1732, and it became his single biggest hit. The fact that it was his only hit and that no one outside his family ever heard it is beside the point. Upon its completion, Mozert gave up the music business entirely and became an attic salesman. When asked "Why attics," Mozert replied, "Because I've always believed in starting at the top."

In any case, while busying himself with the dialects of ancient Greek attics, Mozert still found time to write several notable tunes, like the familiar cult favorites we all know: "Sam and Janet Evening," "She Rolled Her Big Blue Eyes at Me, So I Picked Them Up and Rolled Them Back to Her," and the theme music for the off-Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh, "I Only Have Ice for You." Nevertheless, he found no joy in popular songwriting and continued his work upstairs.

The Concertina certainly needs no introduction. Folks have been playing it, humming it, strumming it, and gumming it for well-nigh a generation, and Maestro Barnstable's interpretation couldn't have come sooner. The piece begins with an extended arpeggio de gramma, a chord lesson so protracted it rolls over the listener like a splashy ocean wave, here played by Atlantean pianist Austin Tayschious with such gay abandon it must have soaked the first nine rows. That's followed by a brief vocal interlude, Tempo Fugit, sung by counter-soprano Gay Abandon, who momentarily stays the onslaught of undulating roil.

Lft. Sir Cedric Etc. Etc.

It's really quite a magnificent performance, highlighted by Maestro Barnstable's magisterial management of the second-movement Orchestral Manoeuvres, which the conductor takes at a leisurely lentus poco allongo, with clarinetist Nino Nontroppo barely keeping stride. The entire work makes for an enjoyable two and a half minutes of entertainment.

Coupled with the Concertina is the midnight contrario for contrary voices and pennywhistle Longinus en Dies Carpe ("Longevity in the Day of the Carp") by Antarctican native, composer, and explorer Archibald Pate (b. 2003). Unfortunately, the length of the piece precluded its inclusion on the disc itself, so the folks at Glyptograph Records make it available on a second disc, sold separately. I did not get to hear it.

Finally, as a bonus item, the producers offer the complete, uncut 1939 radio broadcast of Gone with the Wind ("Perit cum Ventus"), starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory, and, of course, the incomparable George Reeves. I understand that same year MGM released a movie version of Margaret Mitchell's popular novel, but I'm not sure how many people actually saw it before it blew away in the wind. In any case, the movie could not possibly have equalled the opulent splendor of the radio show.

Producer Phil E. Minyon and former Audio magazine chief engineer Dr. Lirpa Loof remastered the 1843 recording for playback via HSALTPTR technology (Heterogeneous Superordinate Audiophile Long-Playing Telephonic Phonographic Tectonic Record). Moreover, Glyptograph technicians pressed the disc on 99 and 44/100% pure, organic, vegan vinyl for the best possible sound reproduction. As you no doubt know, HSALPPR discs are capable of holding up to 132 tracks of information (most of it text) for not only front, back, and side speakers but floor, ceiling, and places in-between as well. I listened in the single-channel monaural mode.

The sonics obtained at the extreme high end (above 50K Hz) sound creamy smooth; the lower-to-mid highs (8K to 49.99K Hz) display a more peaches-and-yogurt texture; the middle-to-upper highs (2K to 7.99K Hz) a rather coarse, caramel impression; the lower midrange (501 to 1.99K Hz) a definite soufflé-like element; the upper bass (75.3 to 500 Hz) an earthy, chocolatey flavor; and the lower bass (0 to 75.2 Hz) a crisp, hearty, high-ho-Silver sensation of oatmeal on a cold winter's morning. In fact, the listener will doubtless find the recording better tasting than sounding.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click on the forward arrow:

Mozert: The Last Lost Manuscripts (LED review)

Marion Morrison, mezzo-soprano; Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite, Nor'western Clyde Symphonic Symphony. Deutsche Grammerphone Gesundheit 928-435-7728.

People today probably recognize Epicurean composer, electrician, and skateboard enthusiast Lonnigan O. Lochinvar Mozert (1548-1697) best for his musical drama about overweight Italian opera singers, I Eata; or perhaps for his oratorio about automobile mechanics, Car Men. But all of that may be acqua sotto i ponti ("the Pontiff is green"), as they say, given several startling new finds. Dr. Karlheinz Klopweisser of the Arkham Institute for Arcane Musicology (Miskatonic University) recently unearthed two new lost Mozert manuscripts, although having found them, the manuscripts are obviously no longer lost and are certainly not new. Moreover, these newly discovered no-longer-lost lost old manuscripts may only be the beginning of a veritable treasure trove of Mozert music soon to be revealed. Thus, the scores we have here might not be the last of the manuscripts Professor Klopweisser uncovers; they might just be the last ones he found. Or they might simply be the first of the last lost but no-longer-lost lost scores. Such is the fascination of modern musical scholarship.

Anyway, as you know, young Mozert rose to prominence in the early 1640's through a whirlwind courtship with German national archery champion Kathoid Everlast, but the romance broke up. This was understandable, of course, as it was the Baroque age. Following the breakup, Mozert fell back into obscurity, fracturing several ribs and a pinky finger in the process. Still, it didn't stop him, and he continued pursuing his life's dream of working in his stepfather's knight, rook, and pawn shop, a dream, alas, like his love, unrequited. Still later, he took over editorship of the local newspaper in Wiley, North Dakota, The Wiley Post. And from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers.

Controversy surrounds the manuscripts, found by Professor Klopweisser tucked beneath an Egyptian mummy mask at the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Were the manuscripts really lost, or were they temporarily misplaced for several centuries? Were they Mozert's magnum opus, or were they a shopping list for his daily groceries? Were they the great man's final words on the subject of musical composition, or is it possible, as many ancient astronaut theorists believe, that they are fragments of the Gospel of St. Mark? The mystery has only increased over the past four hundred years since no one actually knew that the manuscripts existed.

Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite

Whatever the case, Professor Klopweisser and Maestro Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite have collaborated on a complete reconstruction of The Shroud, resulting in a stunning new winding-sheet, the context of which can only be realized through a complete reappraisal of the musical and archaeological worlds' accepted, predisposed, and wholly anthropomorphous perspective. Given that the lost manuscripts contained but a few miscellaneous shards, the twelve-hour epic created by Klopweisser and Twitt-Thornwaite is all the more astonishing. Indeed, it is a shame the present recording provides only about a minute and half of the completed score, the rest of the transcript having been lost in a presumptive gaming transaction at the Luxor.

But wait: If you order today, we'll double the offer. You'll receive not only The Shroud of Turing but The Shroud of Schenectady as well, absolutely free (just pay $39.95 shipping and handling). Remember, Carpe Diem ("Seize the carp").

As for the album's miserable sound, we must blame the producer and recording engineer, Jonathan O'Konnell Edwards, who is obviously an idiot. Anybody who would make an album as offensive as this one must also beat his wife, drown small puppies, and murder neighborhood children. He is clearly a wretched pile of.... (Ed.: John, you can't say these things about people. Mr. Edwards could sue you for slander. Interpol could come to your door and drag you away. John? John? John?)

To listen to a brief excerpt from a completely different album, click here:

Mozert: Suite Carmen in a G-String (SADD review)

Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivien Barnstable III, Upper Freedonia Baroquen Orchestra. Hecca-Goode Records IRS401k.

It's always a pleasure to welcome yet another recording from Maestro Vivien Barnstable in his pursuit of chronicling the entire oeuvre of the redoubtable fifteenth-century composer, accordionist, batboy, and student of the sweet science, Wolfpuck Amaryllis Mozert. That the composer's entire musical output amounted to but one composition seems irrelevant under the circumstances.

As a child, young W.A. (1717-1843) was so poor he couldn't afford parents. He lived first with a poor but honest woodcarver, Guippetto Polendina, whose only other friend was a talking cricket. When the state took Guippetto away for psychiatric care, young W.A., together with another homeless waif, Arne Schwarzenegger, went to live with a single man, Uhp Baum, and her husband, Adam Baum. By the time they were old enough to leave home (W.A. and Arne, not Uhp and Adam), the Baums asked them if they would like to change their names before venturing forth into the world. Young W.A. said, "Yes, I'll be Mozert," and young Arne declared, "I'll be Bach." The rest is history.

At the time young Wolfpack began in the music business, he didn't know a clef note from a notepad. Fortunately, he studied hard, and with the help of Clef Notes he soon wrote on his most-famous composition, The Nutquacker, premiered in 1716 by Maestro Aflack Duckworth. He followed that with the piece we find recorded here, Suite Carmen in a G-String, Take 5, BMW 536i, written posthumously in 1844 and redacted from the opera Lady Windermere's Fan Club, the tale of a poor but honest woodpecker. As an aside, W.A.'s only other music of distinction was a contemporary work, The Four Seasonings, premiered to great acclaim in 1983 by the Spice Girls. Of course, The Seasonings are a matter of taste.

Anyway, the Upper Freedonia Baroquen Orchestra are a hysterically informed ensemble who play not only on period instruments, but on several commas and an exclamation point. More important, Sir Vivien throws himself into the music with Gay Abandon (not to be confused with her cousin twice removed, Guy Renounce). The resulting experience is an experience to be experienced. At least once, especially the way the conductor goes out on a sneeze in the final Allegra con motocross.

And now, we go to our unofficial judge at ringside, Harold Lederman, for the official results. Harold, how do you score the performance? "OK, Jim, I have it 119-111, Barnstable. I thought he kept up a fast, aggressive pace throughout the show, with a clean, effective pizzicato and a balanced rest. Jim!" Thank you, Harold.

In terms of sound, producer Moses Horowitz (whose grandfather invented the top-loading Hoover), executive producer Jerome Horowitz, assistant producer Samuel Horowitz, and audio engineers Louis Feinberg, Joe Besser, and Joseph Wardell recorded the music in May, 1643, at Huntz Hall, Cardigansheer Shire, Wales, Czech Republic, using Doppelganger 747 open-ended cylindrical containers and Loomis B-29 cotton-fibre interconnects. The then-state-of-the-art equipment produced horrid results, naturally, which the present Hecca-Goode remaster has done nothing to improve. If you listen carefully to the MP-3 technostructure through non-spurious stereophile receivers, you will hear little but unintelligible noise; yet behind the discordant signals you may also note a conspicuous disquietude, attributable no doubt to the maladroit proclivities of the Hecca-Goode remastering technicians, whose rubato is clearly as dark as their hair. Incongruous coiffures aside, the soniferous impulses display a salient objectivity, marked by an extraneous absence of nugatory auditory oscillation.

It sounds OK.

Or, better yet, in the immortal words whence cameth the Beard of Avon calling:

"Fen be upon thy cudgel
Whose power is in the first proportion,
Advanced above pale envy's threatening reach.
As when the golden sun trembles at her earthly wait
And faster bound to Aaron's slavish weeds."

Write on, dude.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Mozert: Concertina for Theorbo and Marching Band in A-Flatbush (Stereo 8 review)

Also, Adam Baum: Konzert for Two Baroque Girls; Brother Buzz: Sting-Along Suite in D-major pain. Rt. Hon. Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivien Barnstable III, OBE, GYN, Bart., Simp., London Broil Effete Band. Blackadder Records 1185-1917.

Growing up was difficult for the Australian composer, pianist, lecturer, teacher, manufacturer, and titlark authority Jean-Claude Sly-Arnold von Mozert (1787-1743), born into abject poverty and raised in a foundling home for abject girls. He was sixteen years old before he had his own birthday, having to share his early years with other young women in the institution. Providentially, by the time he arrived of age, he become the titular head of the Salzburg Dirndl Manufacturing Company, inheriting the firm from his father, G.E.L. Beck, a noted merchant and titmouse specialist in the Salzburg area.

Young Mozert did not find himself until he was well into his nineties, when he famously exclaimed, “Huh? Where the hell am I?” At which point he began composing music, turning out some 243 symphonies, 57 concertos, 34 sonatas, 22 arpeggios, and at least one known partridge in a pear tree before his untimely death several months later.

Fortunately, Mozert’s biographer, Argentine writer and cinematographer Joaquin Mababie Bachholm, saved most of his compositions from decomposition, or we might not know the man today. Come to think of it, we don’t know the man today. Heck, they didn’t even know him in his own day.

Now, I can’t resist telling a very funny story about the younger Mozert. Oh, my, I’m laughing just thinking about it. The tale concerns the immature Master Mozert and two comely young lasses he met in an apothecary shop. Or was it a blind man he met in a window-shade shop? Come to think of it, it may not have been either, but what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn’t finished when he first come to the camp, and the store curtains were drawn against the light. Yep, that story is something all right, a real knee slapper, but I guess you hadda been there.

Anyway, Mozert wrote most of his music long before he acquired an appreciation for the subject. Consequently, most of it sounds conspicuously devoid of rhythm, melody, harmony, color, tone, voice, or instruments. Although critics over the years have generally characterized his work as nothing more than hour-long periods of sustained silence, this may be giving the composer short shrift, since one could easily discern a marked degree of wind noise in the confessional. Whether this effect emanated from the priest or the penitent after a particularly flatulent repast is wholly subjective and worthy of further auditory if not olfactory scrutiny.

Oh, and people tell me the disc also contains music. I didn’t have time to listen. However, what I can tell you is that the performance is excorticating and the sound a model of exemplar, with a rich, chocolatey high end; a creamy, indigent French-vanilla midrange; and a decidedly musty, lemon-meringue bass. Combined with the pungent aromas of a fine blush wine, say a Chateau Mountebank ‘04, a D'Alesandro Pelosi ‘07, or an Eau de Boehner ‘13, it may be hard for the ordinary bourgeois auditeur to resist.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Mozert: Arias for Coloraturas and Coloring Books (SACD-RW review)

Anna Moffet Field, contrasoprano; Rt. Honorable Maestoso M. Micetrow, M.S.S.E., North Essex Sinfonia at South Wessex. Wicca Wecords BMW 750i.

It isn't often I get a chance to review the work of musical prodigy Michael Tilson Herbert Georg Otto Bernard Mozert the Lesser (1712-1723), father of the renowned flautist and Doppelganger M.T.H.G.O.B. Mozert the Greater (c. 1704-1724). So it's a distinct honor for me, knowing as I do the younger man's penchant for flouting the flute, to hear so authoritative an interpretation as that from Maestoso M. Micetrow and his incomparable North Wessex at South Essex singers, players, and occasional hangers-on.

A little-known fact about Mozert (the Lesser), and one that constantly bewitches, bothers, and bewilders almost everyone who hears it, is that he originally wrote his Arias for Coloraturas and Coloring Books in 1735 for the noted mezzanine-soprano Mifeter Callous, a notorious dropper of names and notes. However, after a furious row over having to do the second aria da capo a cappella, Ms. Callous threatened to have her uncle, at the time a powerful capo, have poor Mozert capped. As getting capped by a capo for an a cappella capo was not the composer's idea of a capital idea, he reconsidered the proposition and assigned the part to his niece, the Italian castrato Don Vito Ivanitchie.

Anyway, I digress with these mesmerizing antidotes. As I say, it isn't often I get the chance to listen to such lilting and diverting arias so deliciously transcribed for bullhorn and woodwinds, so the opportunity is not lost on me. Unfortunately, the point remains lost, so let me seize upon the occasion to relate a story of young Mozert's encounter one afternoon in his youth with the redoubtable balloonist Professor Oscar Zoroaster Marvel and their subsequent travails in a far-off magical land somewhere over the.... But I digress again.

Countersoprano A.M. Field does an ab fab job fielding every note she's thrown and pitching a perfect score throughout the series, her West Essex support well up on their game. My only ersatz caveat, and a pejorative one at that, would be Maestro Micetrow's penchant for slackening his gait out the gate, tending to pause and crochet at the second and third crochets while poor Ms. Field has to sit and sew. I'd swear I heard her walk off the stage at one needle point.

Be that as it may, the whole affair is well catered by Wicca producer Michel Bay, who did his best to feed all the players and capture their sound before they fled. Recorded at the Little Chapel of the Crying Nuns (El Minuto Chapelle a le Nunne de la Crynoutlouda), Isole delle Femmine, Sicily, in 1738, the sound is big and bold, with the tonal resonance of a fine, chocolatey mousse mixed with the fleeting scent of bitter almonds.

I should note in closing that three years after their meeting, Micetrow and Bay eloped and are now living with seven children near a small shrub in Lompoc, California. Swell the music, Maestro. I love happy endings.

Or, as the celebrated music critic Alphonse K. Traz once remarked, quoting Ben Franklin, "Hunger is the best pickle." Yawrp.

JJP

Mozert: Concierto de la Bowerie (CD-R review)

Billy Halop, piccolo; Leo Gorcey, timpani; Huntz Hall, triangle; Isadore "Friz" Freleng, East Side Philharmonic Orchestra. HiBrow Records ICU-007.

Then nine-year-old Wolfsbane Amadayold Mozert (1758-1892) wrote his Sinfonia de la Bowerie in 1725 when he was only four years old. But in one of the classic stories of classical music, he left the manuscript in the breast pocket of his best plaid waistcoat when his mother ran it through the wash. "Wolfie," she famously remarked, "why do always leave things in your pockets!" And, thus, we have the Concierto de la Bowerie, written in 1743 but never performed in young Mozert's lifetime nor in our own.

In response to a dwindling public interest, Spike Jones and his City Slickers took up the baton, and several instruments, in 1943 to lead a revival of this essential share of nearly washed-up writing. Scored for two trombones and a pennywhistle, the Concierto found a near-perfect realization from Maestro Jones, Concertmaster Maestoso Maestricht, and the gang of Slickers on a never-released and long-forgotten LP, the musicians playing the three-minute opus uncut, without the usual repeats in the second-movement Allegro, the fourth-movement Allegorio, or the seventh-movement Allergico. The result is a perfectly charming example of the work of early Dutch settlers in the New York area.

As to the music of the Concierto, it stinks. If it weren't for the fact that conductor Freleng misses every beat, the players botch every note, and the audio engineers appear to have recorded the orchestra in the men's room of the East Side Masonic Lodge, the whole thing would have been a disaster. Fortunately, the awfulness of the performance complements the quality of the music, which is suspect from beginning to end.

Scholars believe that Mozert wrote about 8,542 compositions, from brief harmonica solos for his pals to full orchestral oratorios for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (an organization founded in 372 A.D. by the Roman plutocrat Glennus Becktus). But there is no record that W.A. ever sold a sheet of music in his life. Instead, young Mozert, the son of a prosperous pretzel maker, and his wife, Mitzi, the son of a wealthy pizza grinder, lived comfortably off their parents' dough their entire lives.

Incidentally, scholars have long debated whether W.A. Mozert was in any way related to his more celebrated namesake, Carlo Benitto Leonardi von Heineken Mozert (1758-1723), but so far as can be established, there is no familial tie (nor so much as a cravat). Although the two men shared the same Hamburg condo for decades and married the same woman, they apparently never met. Even W.A.'s own blood son was only related to him by marriage (on his mother's side).

One final note: For those listeners who prefer to hear the Concierto played by a small ensemble on period instruments, the company also make it available from the Guggenheim Grammar School Band and Bugle Corps de Ballet on their companion label, LoBrow Records ICU2-008.

JJP

Mozert: Piano Sonato (CD review)

Lft. Sir Cedric Noel Vivien Barnstable IV, OPE, MOP, DDS, LS-MFT; Fargo-Idado Wind, Percussion and Toasting Consortium; Harvard Boys' Choir. Nawtee Records 331/3RPM.

Little is known of the music of Carlo Benitto Leonardi von Heineken Mozert before his birth in 1758, but even less is known of his life. What we do know is that the young Mozert composed over 800 works for rattle and tin drum before he was three years of age and that the Piano Sonato No. 712, Op. 4932, AKA3102 presented here is among his few surviving opuses. Its probable origins date from the latter part of 1763, shortly before his untimely death at the hands of perturbed neighbors in 1764, an account based largely on the research of his older brother, the scholar Heinrich Duplitch von Schlitzenbeer Mozert, who assures us in a manuscript dated 1756 that AKA3102 was, indeed, a cause for concern in young Carlo's province of Quimberly-on-the-Hines, Austria. Or Australia; the manuscript is vague on the subject.

In any case, Lord Ceddy Barnstable directs a neat, straight-up account of the music, transcribed here for flugelhorn and din whistle, with full instrumental accompaniment by the University of Southern California marching band and flugel corps. Dedicated fans of the music will note that Sir Ceddy takes all the stops at full pitch, with the pianist pitching in, never hesitating to crochet at the minims or give quarter at the quarter notes. Which helps the concertmaster immensely, as any indecision on the conductor's part could mean his being trampled underfoot by members of the brass section.

What's more, there is never any indication during any part of the three-and-a-half minute production of the winds getting winded, the flutes getting flutey, the horns getting horny, or the strings getting strung up. It's a remarkable achievement, actually, one made all the more arresting by the flautists getting arrested for flouting. Intentional or not, Sir Noel retains all the work's semibreves, maintaining full tempo at the three-quarter staff to produce an almost perfect half-mast. Which undoubtedly would have pleased Mozert no end, had he lived long enough to hear his music played so proficiently, so passionately, so longingly, and with such scrupulous attention to his chin clef.

Needless to say, the timpani perform on authentic period strings, imbuing the music with a kind of dusky dawn that draws out its inner glow. Together with the close-to-nearly-perfect pitch of at least one member of the 200-strong Yale Teachers' Chorus, the Sonato makes an ideal Christmas gift for the Mozert lover in all of us.

Finally, in keeping with the high quality of the performance, the audio engineers at Nawtee Records have recorded a recording of record recordedness. Using six-inch M&M microphones at each instrument, a Sturdi mixing console, and Monster-Price cables, they have achieved almost the impossible, producing a sound more real than real. Indeed, played on any high-quality turntable with variable electronic current induction and antimagnetic moving-coil cartridge, this compact disc will outshine even the orchestra and choir that performed it.

For anyone in the market for yet another, alternative interpretation of this time-honored Mozert classic, Lord Barnstable's account makes an attractive proposition. And come to think of it, Ms. Darling, the first violinist makes an attraction proposition. But I leave that story to another day.

JJP