Soundtracks

CD Review: TOTAL RECALL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/01/2012
TOTAL RECALL soundtrack | ©2012 Madison Gate Music

If an old school score fan visited Rekall, it’s likely their fantasy would be to go back to the days when Jerry Goldsmith plied a roaringly thematic score for Arnie’s trip to Mars. But then, you can’t go home again to that kind of unabashedly melodic action sound. And to be fair, this isn’t your generation’s TOTAL RECALL, a time that Hollywood’s effects capabilities, and musical tastes have long since surpassed, for better and worse. Yet while there’s no surpassing the original film in every category (red cheesiness and all), this revisionist RECALL turns out to be a way more […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN soundtrack | ©2012 Walt Disney Records

For what could be described as the kinder, gentler Disney version of PET SEMATARY, a couple longing for a child bury their wishes in a box, only to have a magical kid pop out to teach them some invaluable life lessons, as opposed to rampaging through the neighborhood. And there’s certainly no reason to fear otherwise in Geoff Zanelli’s sweetly magical score. But while heavily adorned with bells, voices, accordions and unstrung guitars, Zanelli’s deft emotional touch makes the music lyrical as opposed to being cloying. Though an orchestra is there for the necessary handkerchief heartstrings, Zanelli’s approach is mostly […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE BOURNE LEGACY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/31/2012
THE BOURNE LEGACY soundtrack | ©2012 Varese Sarabande Records

James Newton Howard takes the baton from John Powell to run a more straightforward, beat-driven marathon. In much the same way that new writer-director Tony Gilroy has thankfully wiped out Paul Greengrass’ crazy-cam movement, Howard’s keeps the ethnic, thematic rhythms of Powell’s three previous scores to a minimum to make his LEGACY to BOURNE‘s seminal action sound a combo between that composer’s lean, mean fighting machine and his own breathless, powerhouse suspense for another guy on the run he scored called THE FUGITIVE. That Oscar nominated touch is a bit more hipped up here, and with significantly less orchestra, which […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE EXPENDABLES 2 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE EXPENDABLES 2 soundtrack | ©2012 Silva Screen Records

At this point, Brian Tyler has been on target at scoring so many testosterone fiestas that one feels he’d be just as capable of trading in his keyboard for an Uzi. But until Tyler actually becomes a trigger-happy merc, muscle music fans can happily get their freak on for the composer’s return to The Team. THE EXPENDABLES 2 is all happily what they’d expect, with urgently dire blasts of rhythm and building orchestras, relentlessly climbing towards those big explosions of flame and flying insta-corpses. If the last movie’s problem was that absolute no character was actually expendable, Tyler’s graver, even […]Read On »


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CD Review: ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 / DARK STAR soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/12/2012
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 soundtrack | ©2012 Buysoundtrax Records

Buysoundtrax has had varied luck when re-performing cult score favorites, especially ones done with then state-of-the-art keyboards like THE BOUNTY  and LEGEND. So if you’re attempting to replicate such a distinctive sound, who better to get then a composer who helped create an unrepeatable sound in the first place? That’s the reason why Alan Howarth, the musician best know for being “in association” with John Carpenter on such genre favorites as HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH and PRINCE OF DARKNESS (the real deals of which are available through Buysoundtrax’s site on Howarth’s AHI label) has had the best success […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/11/2012
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN soundtrack | ©2012 Sony Classical

Few movies set off the spider-sense like thoroughly unnecessary, or ill-funded pictures that have been made to cling onto a franchise, a la the dreadful Roger Corman FANTASTIC FOUR movie that’s thankfully never seen the light of day beyond bootleg VHS sellers at comic conventions. But even more problematic is when a huge-budgeted saga you would’ve liked to have seen continue with the original players (even if it had a lackluster last chapter) has broken down because of script issues and contract negotiations. With this being said, for a movie that has no real right to exist if those calamities […]Read On »


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CD Review: BERNIE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/16/2012
BERNIE soundtrack | ©2012 Lakeshore Records

Having assembled such varied soundtrack compilations as DAZED AND CONFUSED and BEFORE SUNRISE, Richard Linklater slices another winning piece of musical eccentricity. In the true-crime case of BERNIE, it’s from the big plate of his Texan soil, carving out a slice of home-fried country as opposed to the city SLACKER indie rock section. Jack Black has a new Tenacious D. album out. And if his diehard fans enjoy the singer’s hell-blazing approach to the ways of metal, they might even be more intrigued with Black’s subversively holy stylings as an effete funeral home manager with both a heart, and throat […]Read On »


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CD Review: ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/15/2012
ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN soundtrack | ©2012 Tribute Records

Tribute Film Classics has done an admirable job of putting new luster into the golden age of Hollywood film scores, a truly lost time when epically brazen, note-filled music gloriously had no shame in highlighting every emotion, and action you were seeing on the screen in big, orchestrally lavish colors. These were love letters to the pure romance of the studio system, a wonderfully overblown style particularly practiced by such giants as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner. They don’t make overpowering soundtracks like these anymore (sometimes to the movies’ detriment), which hasn’t stopped Tribute from sumptuously restoring, and re-performing […]Read On »


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CD Review: COSMOPOLIS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/14/2012
COSMOPOLIS soundtrack | ©2012 Howe Records

With nearly ever David Cronenberg collaboration, Howard Shore stretches his imagination into unexpected dimensions of inner madness, from the cathode ray synth sadism of VIDEODROME to CRASH‘s grinding metal and the slow-boil orchestral murder that accompanied A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. In the process, Shore’s found some truly interesting collaborators, particularly as he induced Ornette Coleman’s jazz madness for NAKED LUNCH. But for all of the bizarrely visceral qualities that Shore’s Cronenberg scores have exhibited, they’ve also shown surprising beauty, most recently with the Wagnerian analysis of DANGEROUS METHOD. Now on their fourteenth ride together, Shore’s hypnotic strangeness finds perhaps his […]Read On »


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CD Review: MEN IN BLACK 3 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/13/2012
MEN IN BLACK 3 soundtrack | ©2012 Sony Records

Who ya gonna call when it’s time to bust some illegal aliens? The answer of course for team Tommy and Will is Danny Elfman, who dons his dark sunglasses and suit to hit the trail with the Men in Black in MEN IN BLACK 3 soundtrack. That proves to be a real charm the third time out for this time-travelling entry that gives a huge, rejuvenating boost to the franchise after an unholy second film (not that Elfman’s music has ever been worse for the wear). Time travel’s the McGuffin that brings Agent J and K back to the 60’s […]Read On »


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