Derivative as it is, and as much as I hate the SPACE GODZILLA movie (the worst in the whole Japanese series -- the only worse movie with the Godzilla name on it is the 1998 American version), the score is decent outside the film. Composed by Takayuki Hattori, who also did GODZILLA MILLENNIUM (in theaters this summer as GODZILLA 2000). SPACE GODZILLA struck me as being too Hornerish and Barryish within the movie, but those very qualities make it a decent listen outside it.

Akira Ifukube's "Enter Godzilla" theme is heard once in the film and on the disc, for, what else, Godzilla's entrance (it seems to take him half an hour to get from the water to the beach, though, and is succeeded by that faintly silly bongo music.)

Indeed, as stated above, last time I was at Footlights, they still carried the single disc. Knock yourself out.

Hattori's Godzilla stuff is disturbingly Hollywoodish, but competently crafted. I think my reaction to the SPACE GODZILLA disc was more a question of "hey, I didn't hate this as much as I remembered." I would never have heard it if it hadn't been given to me. I think a better example of what his real voice is might be heard in THE RADIO HOUR. His grandfather, Tadashi Hattori, was another competent pasticheur -- the best of the earlier composers Kurosawa worked with, even though what Kurosawa wanted from him was dramatically a bit doubtful (Kurosawa didn't learn to trust music until he hooked up with Fumio Hayasaka -- his one interim experiment with the great Ifukube, THE QUIET DUEL, was mutually disastrous, and he went straight back to Hayasaka and, later, Sato.) Anyway, as far as Takayuki Hattori, I consider the jury to be out for now. THE RADIO HOUR showed some promise.

Yesterday I saw KIKUJIRO'S SUMMER, the new Takeshi Kitano picture. (Released here simply as KIKUJIRO, who knows why.) Surprisingly sweet and sentimental by his standards. Also interesting to see him write himself a role where he has so much dialogue, and hey, only TWO scenes where he beats up complete strangers. I'll write a longer piece about this over at "Just Movies" tomorrow or the next day (or maybe never, I'm peculiar that way.)

Anyway, I thought of it because you mentioned Jo Hisaishi (or Joe, as he spells it in English, although if you tried to write Joe literally in Japanese it would sound like "Jo-ay.") Hisaishi has scored most of Takeshi's pictures, and he approaches this one with sympathy and restraint -- I shudder to think what kind of syrupy mess your average Japanese soundtrack hack would have done with it (the Japanese scoring situation is probably worse than it's been since the forties, with Hisaishi probably at the top of a very small heap of competents. I leave Ifukube out of this estimation because he's done barely a dozen pictures in the last quarter-century.)