Soundtracks

CD Review: JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/27/2011
JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN soundtrack | ©2011Varese Sarabande Records

If  Christophe Beck does his musical all to pump up the frequently inept robbers of TOWER HEIST  into master criminals, then Ilan Eshkeri has the even mightier job of turning Rowan Atkinson’s catastrophically inept 007 wannabe into a super agent who’ll out-Bond Connery for JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN. Eshkeri outfits himself with the comedy secret agent score checklist of a swaggering main theme, trademarked fuzz guitar, rocking exotica for the luxurious locations he’ll fight through, and lush, John Barry-esque strings, for the sinister villains and lovemaking he’ll have to endure. It’s a jacket that’s been to the cleaners many times by […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE RUM DIARY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/26/2011
THE RUM DIARY soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

If Christopher Young isn’t going on an orchestrally raging bender in the pits of hell, then it’s hitting jazz dives with an equally hot ensemble. Over the decades, his brilliant sets have ranged from funk gnarliness for ROUNDER’s well-liquored card games, a sales convention-cum-Esquivel fiesta in THE BIG KAHUNA, and the Mancini swing for the cult spy spoof THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE, Young now gets to slam back some tunes with the notorious bar fiend Hunter S. Thompson, just the kind of guy the composer’s more outré licks were created for THE RUM DIARY. What makes this far […]Read On »


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CD Review: GREMLINS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/25/2011
GREMLINS soundtrack | ©2011 Film Score Monthly

If you were among the generation that saw one great genre film after the other in the early ’80’s, perhaps no signature theme signaled these pictures’ often seditious spin on kid-friendly formulas than the sweet whistling of Gizmo and the cackling, rambunctious jazz rag of what would pop out of that furry little fella if you fed him after midnight. It’s taken nearly three decades for those little devils’ music to fully metamorphose, but at long last, Jerry Goldsmith’s full score to GREMLINS is finally here to create hilariously menacing havoc. While Goldsmith was famed for scoring the far more […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MUPPETS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/24/2011
THE MUPPETS soundtrack | ©2011 Walt Disney Records

It’s time to play to play the music, and light the lights after way too long a spell without Muppets tunes to delight. Now innocent kids, old coot fans and spoof-loving hipsters will find equal fun in the fresh approach taken by the FIGHT OF THE CONCORDS directing-songwriting team of James Bobin and Bret McKenzie, who treat THE MUPPETS with equal parts joyful, un-ironic fun and gentle in-jokes- winningly re-creating a tuneful formula that first helped Jim Henson’s creations find an audience way outside of a children’s puppet show. Now that recipe is likely do the same for this sweet […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE ARTIST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/05/2011
THE ARTIST soundtrack | ©2011 Sony Classical

When it comes to talking about retro scores, you can’t go back any further then the days when there was no music at all – at least when it came to the complete lack of soundtrack on celluloid nitrate was all about the herky-jerky picture. Such were the glory days of silent movies, when music had to do all of the talking. Whether it was a pianist desperately improvising away, or a full orchestra keeping time with reams of rapidly changing melodies, the 1920’s were truly the time when film scoring was king. The fact that so little of these […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE CAPE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/20/2011
THE CAPE soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

Between a starlost spacecraft, homegrown mad science, killer robots and the shambling undead, Bear McCreary is rapidly becoming the king of genre television scoring- particularly the non-super superhero. After his adventurous symphonic scores for Fox’s adaptation of DC’s identity-shifting HUMAN TARGET, McCreary employed the orchestra to even more innovative effect for NBC’s THE CAPE. While not based on any comic book per se, what gave this billowing avenger distinction beyond a Batman-esque shtick was his Toreador-worthy use of the titular clothing article, as handed to him by a not-so-bad circus of crime. While THE CAPE’s promising premise ultimately slipped under […]Read On »


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CD Review: LE GRAND PARDON soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/19/2011
LE GRAND PARDON soundtrack | ©2011 Music Box Records

As the French label Music Box Records continues to release Gallic scores that are intriguingly foreign to our ears, certainly one of their most oddball, and fun soundtracks yet accompanies the 1982 crime epic LE GRAND PARDON, one that still remains unreleased in America (even if its sequel took place there). That you might feel like doing the disco Horah will quickly clue you in that LE GRAND PARDON’s mob family is of the Jewish persuasion. Serge Franklin’s energetically versatile score puts his theme through all of the Hebraic paces from solo piano to violin and rhythmic suspense. Franklin even […]Read On »


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CD Review: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/18/2011
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

If Walt Disney had a house composer, few occupied more glorious rooms than Paul J. Smith, whose seminal Disney animation scoring credits included SNOW WHITE, a shared Oscar win for PINOCCHIO and co-nominations for THE THREE CABALLEROS and CINDERELLA. While these may have seemed like cartoons on the surface, the action, humor, and emotion that Smith invested in their scores made the pictures as richly palpable as any live-action movie. It was this talent that made Smith particularly invaluable when it came time for Walt’s “real” deals like THE SHAGGY DOG, THE PARENT TRAP and POLLYANA, not to mention any […]Read On »


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CD review: MALENKA soundtrack (limited 500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/17/2011
MALENKA soundtrack | ©2011 Quartet Records

Also known as FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, MALENKA (directed by THE BLIND DEAD trilogy’s Amando de Ossorio) casts the voluptuous Anita Ekberg as Sylvia, a fashion model who makes the mistake of visiting her vampire uncle’s castle. Of course in classic Euro-horror tradition, Sylvia also happens to be the vengeful Malenka, a centuries old executed witch out for some payback. But if it’s old-fashioned musical bats in the belfry you’re looking for, not to mention every other great horror score trope, than the glorious guignol of Carlo Savina delivers the goods. When he wasn’t conducting scores like THE GODFATHER […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE SKIN I LIVE IN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/16/2011
THE SKIN I LIVE IN soundtrack | ©2011 Quartet Records

Pedro Almodovar has a long history of making skewed “womens’” pictures, where sensuality and perversity are one and the same. Yet one major reason why so many of them are regarded as class instead of camp are the very serious musical contributions of fellow Spaniard Alberto Iglesias, whose intriguing, and refined melodic sensibilities for the likes of BAD EDUCATION, VOLVER and TALK TO HER create both an elegant, and psychologically penetrative elegance to fit Almodovar’s glossy imagery. Now with THE SKIN I LIVE IN (aka LA PIEL QUE HABITO), Iglesias takes Almodovar’s bent sensibility to a whole new level of […]Read On »


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