Soundtracks

CD Review: DOLPHIN TALE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/15/2011
DOLPHIN TALE soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

Mark Isham is one composer who knows his way around the animal kingdom, from capturing the joyous flapping of Canadian geese in FLY AWAY HOME to the victorious gait of a talking zebra in RACING STRIPES and the never-say-freeze spirit of EIGHT BELOW’s abandoned huskies. The fact that Isham’s very first score accompanied the plaintive howls of NEVER CRY WOLF, as heard by star Charles Martin Smith, makes it a welcome homecoming that the composer’s now swimming about the Smith-directed DOLPHIN TALE. While there are the playful cutes to be had at points, this TALE isn’t exactly bounding about like […]Read On »


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CD Review: 1941 soundtrack (limited 3,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/14/2011
1941 soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

It almost never fails that a filmmaker who thinks he’s King of the World will produce at least one box office disaster (if not two) in an otherwise hugely profitable, and sometimes critically distinguished career. Sometimes, said films are of the “movie I really want to make” variety, the kind of “little” picture that the studio gives the director a mulligan on so they’ll do the blockbuster sequel they really wanted in the first place. But even when that personal movie is packed with enough spectacle and explosive hubris to make it anything but an art film, there can still […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE BLACK HOLE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/13/2011
THE BLACK HOLE soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

Where Disney turned to Jules Verne for their trailblazing sci-fi magnum opus in 1953 with 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, THE BLACK HOLE sought to tap into the renewed space craze brought on by George Lucas’ STAR WARS. But instead of battling starships, the big difference here was that laser blasts, rolling meteors and robotic mayhem would mostly occur within the awe-striking confines of one mighty spaceship named the U.S.S. Cygnus. Piloting it far less sympathetically than Captain Nemo (if not without a unhinged commanding presence) is Dr. Hans Reinhardt (played with always-eccentric élan by Maximillian Schell), who gives no […]Read On »


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CD Review: YOUNG GUNS 2 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
YOUNG GUNS 2 soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

Hollywood’s revisionist youthquake movement really hit dead center when a “Brat Pack” gang headed by Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips took up the mantle of Billy the Kid and his regulators for 1988’s YOUNG GUNS. Their new blood helped energize a genre that was rapidly gathering tumbleweeds, the charismatic cast’s rock and roll energy blasting onto the screen with a memorable electric guitar theme by Anthony Marianelli (his score replacing a gunned-down James Horner’s). Where the rest of Marianelli’s effective synth-based score took a relatively subtle approach to the action, Alan Silvestri would bring his pistols packing […]Read On »


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CD Review: TAKE SHELTER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/12/2011
TAKE SHELTER soundtrack | ©2011 Milan Records

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but one with more of a tantalizing musical whisper than an overwrought bang. For while TAKE SHELTER’s stormy doom might promise an orchestral apocalypse, its catastrophe is filtered through the creepy visions of a man doubting his own sanity, making this a disaster movie of the mind, as opposed to the Irwin Allen kind. It’s a relative lack of spectacle and budget that also opens up intriguing musical visions from composer David Wingo. Just as he provided the evocative soundtracks for such character-driven Indies as ALL THE REAL GIRLS and […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE THREE MUSKETEERS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE THREE MUSKETEERS soundtrack | ©2011 Milan Records

Whether you’re a composer doing a new take on pirates from the Caribbean or England’s most famous detective, it seems impossible now to play it straight for movies determined to hip up the look, and sound of historically iconic characters. Hence, a plethora of soundtracks that apply the incongruities of electric guitar-topped orchestras and satirical ethnic stylings to accompany multiplex costume spectaculars. So make no mistake that Paul Haslinger’s latest iteration of Alexandre Dumas’ swashbucklers is going to give you the gloriously traditional symphonic strains that Herbert Stothart applied to the 1948 version of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, let alone the […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE THING (1982) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/30/2011
THE THING soundtrack | ©2011 Buysoundtrax Records

No, we’re not talking about a stillborn prequel here, but the one and only. Jack-of-all-trades filmmaker John Carpenter had served as a writer-director-composer on all of his films until his first studio production of THE THING. It was a bigger budget that allowed Carpenter to get his composing idol Ennio Morricone to provide the director with his first “real” orchestral score. That didn’t mean that Carpenter and his “in association” collaborator Alan Howarth wouldn’t give THE THING’s soundtrack more teeth by sweetening it with the icily sharp electronics that marked the auteur’s distinctive brand of horror. The result was a […]Read On »


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CD Review: FUNERAL HOME soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
FUNERAL HOME soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

Though best known for giving a dark, psychological edge to the violent western stylings of Sam Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH, Jerry Fielding’s twisted talent for combining dissonance and melody was equally effective in enclosed spaces, whether said abodes were being besieged by English rednecks (STRAW DOGS), a deviant handyman (THE NIGHTCOMERS) or a crazed computer (DEMON SEED). Fielding’s constant, mesmerizing sense of unease would ironically climax inside the FUNERAL HOME, an independent Canadian horror flick that proved to hold the composer’s last score.  Where a musician with Fielding’s studio resume would’ve turned their nose at being reduced to a PSYCHO-influenced […]Read On »


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CD review: LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1,200 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/29/2011
LORD OF ILLUSIONS soundtrack | ©2011 Perseverance Records

Having done standout, and distinctly offbeat synth-centric work for such twisted auteurs as Dario Argento (PHENOMENA), Alejandro Jodorowsky (SANTA SANGRE) and Richard Stanley (DUST DEVIL), Simon Boswell would ironically compose one of his most symphonically straightforward horror scores for Clive Barker’s unnerving, oddball take on Chris Angel, as ruled over by a Manson Family-esque demigod. With the English composer given a new Hollywood presence at the time of LORD’s 1995 release (a year that almost marked his noteworthy, if more rhythmically fun studio score to HACKERS), Boswell showed he could certainly bend the traditional orchestral tableau to his warped desired, […]Read On »


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CD Review: DREAM HOUSE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
DREAM HOUSE soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s been a while since John Debney got to score a body count thriller after the savage likes of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, END OF DAYS and THE RELIC, as well as the more beatific spirit of the underrated DRAGONFLY. Now as he enters a DREAM HOUSE that holds the spirits of a murdered family, Debney’s ghost leads with both the heart and raised hair follicles. It’s a nicely measured approach whose musical flooring ranges from the spiritual to the foreboding. Sorrowful violins, girls’ voices, and plaintive themes all make for a nicely melodic visitation, with even […]Read On »


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