Soundtracks

CD Review: LES MISERABLES soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/23/2013
LES MISERABLES soundtrack | ©2012 Universal Music

Even when musicals deal with less savory subjects like dueling New York gangs or starving English orphans, there’s always a romantic layer of production polish to give our delicate sensibilities a comfort zone from the muck and grime of real life, but by immersing viewers in a sewer of excrement along with its lovestruck duets, LES MISERABLES shouts aloud that it’s a stage-to-screen game changer. There’s an unheard level of primal scream singing here that throws us into the gutter along with Victor Hugo’s period Parisians, who sing about the lack of justice (or the psychotic belief in it) for […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

CD Review: HOOSIERS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
HOOSIERS soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

Jerry Goldsmith was always pushing the musical boundaries of every genre he scored, sometimes applying seemingly anachronistic approaches where only a symphony would seem right. Perhaps no movie is a bigger case in points, or passes for that matter, then 1986’s HOOSIERS, in which Goldsmith applied the kind of synthesizers he’d most often used for sci-fi to the holy Midwestern sport of basketball. Along with Vangelis’ Oscar winning “Chariots of Fire,” Goldsmith’s Oscar-nominated work here would help change the game of scoring sports movies, creating a soundtrack as venerated as his similarly, boldly stylistic work on PLANET OF THE APES […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

Interview: WARM BODIES and A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD composers Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders write music to die for

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/22/2013
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD soundtrack | ©2013 Sony Music

If Marco Beltrami’s ever-growing resume of work makes him one of the hardest working composers in score business, then consider Buck Sanders as the session man who’s made the prolific number of IMDB entries possible (they currently have their work on display in the recent releases A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD and WARM BODIES). After assisting Beltrami since the beginning of his career in roles ranging from synthesist to sound design, score producer and additional music writer for such stylistically diverse titles as THE MINUS MAN, I ROBOT and SOUL SURFER, Buck Sanders finally got to step into the […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: CONAN THE BARBARIAN soundtrack – 3 discs

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/10/2013
CONAN soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

What is best in life? How about getting just about every note of one of the greatest film scores ever written, as spread over three CD’s for 1982’s score to CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Ever since the 1982 CONAN THE BARBARIAN LP on MCA (also included here), just about every label from Varese to Milan has been trying to solve The Riddle of Steel with fits and starts of additional music, most recently with an admirably inclusive re-performance by Tadlow Records. But it’s Intrada that has gloriously mustered the full scope and lusty power of the Might that is Poledouris, his […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/08/2013
CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II soundtrack | ©2012 Activision

When so many kill-crazy videogame scores are basically comprised of rock guitars blasting over shock waves of electric percussion, it’s nice to have one mega-popular franchise offering far more than you’d expect from the usual musical campaign. Not that there’s any less of the shredding action stylings that have become as popular on consoles as theater screens. But it’s just how interesting Jack Wall makes the nearly 2 ½ hours of score offered on CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 2 that merits attention, especially when divorced from the game’s bazooka-level sound design. A hardened warrior of such weapon-packed games as […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

CD Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM soundtrack (1,000 expanded edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/07/2013
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1,000 expanded edition) soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

In the annals of musical comedy theater, few productions remain as joyfully historic as 1962’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM wherein WEST SIDE STORY composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim and writers Burt Shevelove (“No No Nanette”) and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H) drew from the farces of the ancient playwright Plautus for a toga-switching, cross-dressing, door-slamming farce that showed Romans did indeed have a sense of humor when not weren’t staging far-less funny fights in the Coliseum. Hilariously adapted for the screen in 1966 by Richard Lester, the king of such antic English films as HELP! and […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Revew: The Best Score Runner-Ups and Composers to Watch for 2012

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/06/2013
CHICO & RITA soundtrack | ©2012 Red General Catalogue

The Best Score Runner-Ups and Composer to Watch for 2012 ARBITRAGE (Cliff Martinez / Milan) As the composer who virtually created the ethereal indie sound with SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, Cliff Martinez has always played psychological tension in offbeat, ethereally percussive ways. Here’s it’s a moody spider’s web of drones and percussion that’s closing in on a magnate’s gigantic F-up, rhythmic tension that’s all about the inner turmoil that clings to the antihero as he uses all of his charms to clean things up. Speaking with his soft, haunted confidence, Martinez’s Eno-ish washes of melodic textures always have a cold […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: The Best Scores of 2012

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
CLOUD ATLAS soundtrack | ©2012 Water Tower Records

THE BEST SCORES OF 2012 BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin / Cinereach Music) An adolescent’s ability to turn a dangerous world into a place full of fantastical possibility provides the subtext for this strikingly fresh, Cajun-cum-magical realism score by director Benh Zeitlin and co-composer Dan Romer. “Beast’s” flooded island is a palpable, dangerously enchanted place in this jambalaya of music box bells, fiddles and plucked strings, strongly melodic storytelling that dances with local flavor while taking listeners to a truly new, mythic land where giant prehistoric pigs can come to life. In the their native […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: LOS ANGELES, 1937 (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
LOS ANGELES, 1937 soundtrack | ©2012 Perseverance Records

As Peter Best was to The Beatles, Phillip Lambro is to film scoring history, the musician who could have been a contender if only it was felt that he had the chops to accompany an iconic act. In Lambro’s case, that historically elusive prize was 1975’s CHINATOWN, whose soundtrack he’d labored on before director Roman Polanski and producer Robert Evans summarily tossed the score after a teen-filled test screening (a similar fate that happened to Gabriel Yared years later on “Troy”), leaving Jerry Goldsmith a scant ten days to whip out what’s arguably one of the greatest scores ever written […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN soundtrack (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/05/2013
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

By 1971, the question asked by most over-the-hill Hollywood starlets was “Whatever happened to?” or “What’s the matter?” as their onscreen romantic glamour was traded in for roles as homicidal harpies. In the latter query about WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN, it’s Debbie Reynolds’ dancing teacher who wants to know what the heck is up with her partner Shelly Winters when their dance school for Shirley Temple wannabes starts to hit the bloody skids. Devilish camp humor was a big part of the appeal of watching Grande Dames shrieking whilst holding blunt instruments, “hagsploitation” that marked the studio swan song […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 31
  6. 32
  7. 33
  8. 34
  9. 35
  10. 36
  11. 37
  12. ...
  13. 64
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round