Soundtracks

CD Review: A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS soundtrack

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s part of this seditious series’ way of twisting straight-laced society that the latest HAROLD & KUMAR movie – A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS –  has gotten William Ross to do a lushly melodic score for number three in 3-D. After all, this is the THUMBELINA composer who’s also orchestrated the warm, fuzzy, child-friendly sound of Alan Silvestri’s THE POLAR EXPRESS and A CHRISTMAS CAROL.  So it’s fitting he’d apply said holiday magic to a VERY special yuletide film filled with s pot-crazed super baby, a sadistic Russian and an ornery Mexican hombre. But it’s in how well Ross nails that […]Read On »


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CD Review: SCROOGED (3,000 edition)

SCROOGED soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

Danny Elfman has never made any bones that the holiday has always been a dead man’s party for him, particularly with his cheerfully demonic, and demented holiday score that updated Ebenezer into a miserly, public-hating and altogether sleazy TV executive. Just as circus music is ingrained into Danny Elfman’s musical DNA, the holiday trimmings of sleigh bells, caroling and snowflake-like melodies have kept showing up in the Hanukkah-celebrating composer’s work, even when his scores weren’t about Christmas. But among the soundtracks that have directly dealt with the holiday like EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, THE NIGHMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and FAMILY MAN, […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS soundtrack

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS soundtrack | ©2011 Water Tower Music

Sherlock Holmes was always a bit of a stuffed British shirt before Guy Ritchie gave him a rock and roll, martial arts attitude that re-invigorated the character with his SHERLOCK HOLMES franchise and its latest installment SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS. Part and pipe of Ritchie’s in-your-face makeover was Hans Zimmer’s audacious score, whose crashing player pianos, scratchy strings and bombastic orchestra gave a terrifically fun, steampunk attitude to Holmes, in much the same way as his defiantly anti-historical music brought unexpected juice to the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN soundtracks. Now Holmes and his ever reluctant partner Watson are […]Read On »


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CD Review: ARKHAM CITY soundtrack

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY soundtrack | ©2011 Water Tower Music

It’s a very dark musical night when the bats are ruling the belfry, or in this case the unleashed, insane inmates of comics’ most infamous asylum- one that’s also become video gaming’s most acclaimed lock-up. Arkham’s gotten expanded to its own bizarro Gotham in BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY for the latest edition of the smash franchise, with Batman / Bruce Wayne trapped behind enemy lines. However, the most sonically important dual identity belongs to Nick Arundel, a man who’s served as the audio director and composer for both BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM and ARKHAM CITY. Given a powerful orchestral expanse in which […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

One of the most rollickingly enjoyable crime movies of any age is Michael Crichton’s 1978 historical heist flick THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY which had dapper Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and a particularly bodice-cous Lesley Anne-Warren ripping off the Crimean War gold from said speeding train. The fourth accomplice who truly helps them get away with the crime of the Victorian century is composer Jerry Goldsmith, delivering what arguably stands as his most elegantly stylish, and fun score of all time. With a score that sounds as much as a locomotive as melodically possible, the thematically driven Goldsmith varies his main […]Read On »


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CD Review: HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY soundtrack

HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY soundtrack | ©2011 Microsoft Studios

It’s been ten years since The Master Chief took on The Covenant to essentially create the modern video game industry. And through numerous sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs, the legend of the HALO name brand has been the one ringworld to rule them all. But just as importantly, HALO helped show the non-gaming industry that music for the medium could rival the musical quality, and production values heard on television and film. Credit for that can be given to HALO composers Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, the distinct voices that have been heard through all the main HALO games. While it […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE IDES OF MARCH soundtrack

THE IDES OF MARCH soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

In the midst of a very busy year that’s included THE TREE OF LIFE, EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE,  the finale of HARRY POTTER and the ironic opening and closing titles of CARNAGE, French-gone-gloriously Hollywood composer Alexandre Desplat found time to expose our nation’s king-making machine during the month of THE IDES OF MARCH. Far more serious in tone than his previous, ironically offbeat political takedown for GHOST WRITER, Desplat lets his Americana flag fly here, and at low, concerned mast. A Copeland-esque orchestra reveals George Clooney’s potential president as yet another moralist full of hot air, with a trumpet […]Read On »


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CD Review: I MELT WITH YOU soundtrack

I MELT WITH YOU soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

Forty-something guys behaving badly get a beguiling collection of ‘8o’s era American punk, new wave and English beat songs for an album that plays like a Goth hell version of ST. ELMO’S FIRE. You can practically see the black eye shadow dripping from the emo singers whose music made for the characters’ best years, songs whose guitar-driven angst thankfully took pop b.s. into the rabbit hole for the birth of alt. music a couple of decades ago. Now their brooding, vibrant melodies for addiction, suicidal tendencies and sexual dysfunction make MELT‘s twisted beach get-together anything but a blanket bingo. Effectively […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHAME soundtrack

SHAME soundtrack | ©2011 Sony Masterworks

SHAME director Steve McQueen (soon never to be confused with the actor) takes us on the musically eclectic predilections of a sex addict’s listening tastes, both from Brandon’s utterly confident position as a vinyl-obsessed pick-up artist to expressing the unrelenting carnal drive whose reasons are never expressed in the film. A bit more of a glossy cousin to the sensual, s & m likes of 9 1/2 WEEKS than SHAME would like to admit, McQueen’s choice cuts lend class to the unseemly, ranging from Glen Gould’s vocalized Bach playing to the seductive retro beats of Blondie’s “Rapture” and Chic’s “I […]Read On »


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CD Review: SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND (3,000 edition)

SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

A year before Johnny Rico screamed, “Kill ‘em all!” towards the bug planet of Klendathu, space marines were shouting their battle cries at Chigg fighters on the deepest galactic skies of the small screen. And just as Basil Poledouris applied symphonic battle fury to that film’s classic score, Shirley Walker showed she had the right, manly militaristic stuff to blast aliens to the tune of a 1996 Emmy scoring nomination for SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND. X-FILES. Producers Glenn Morgan and James Wong followed up that show’s tenuous genre tone with this outright sci-fi series, their first with Walker, who’d go […]Read On »


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