Soundtracks

CD review: WARRIOR soundtrack

WARRIOR soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

Having scored the inspirational hockey drama MIRACLE and the downbeat cop conspiracy PRIDE AND GLORY for writer-director Gavin O’Connor, Mark Isham’s third step into the ring with the filmmaker combines both the grim and victorious. And the result is a musical WARRIOR that grabs you with surprising subtlety before delivering a knockout foot to the face (this is mixed martial arts after all). For a good while, Isham keeps his drama in a brooding key, full of the fighting brothers’ family resentments and recriminations. But emotion steadily rises to break through the orchestral ice, his heavy strings and brass steadily […]Read On »


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CD Review: YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE soundtrack

YOR soundtrack | ©2011 Buysoundtrax

Where they ripped off American westerns with an refreshing dose of spaghetti in the 1960’s, the Italians had a far less successful (if hilariously entertaining) go of doing their own “salutes” to CONAN and STAR WARS in the ’70’s and ’80’s. However, in an exploitation coliseum that included the likes of ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE and STARCRASH, few rip-offs stewed savage beefcake with helmeted “space” invaders like 1983’s YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. Reb Brown (TV’s Captain America) was cast as the dino killer who makes his fellow cave people safe from dinosaurs and badly dubbed future aristocrats in […]Read On »


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CD Review: EXPLORERS soundtrack

EXPLORERS soundtrack | © 2011 Intrada

In a legendary career filled with long-standing relationships with such directors as Franklin J. Schaffner (PLANET OF THE APES) David Anspaugh (RUDY) and Curtis Hanson (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL), perhaps no filmmaker brought out the child-like glee of Jerry Goldsmith’s music like Joe Dante- even if some of the nine pictures they’d do together exhibited a deliciously twisted streak of black humor when it came to putting youths in peril from GREMLINS or SMALL SOLDIERS. Yet there’d be nothing but innocence in 1985’s EXPLORERS, Dante’s guileless movie in which a bunch of youths (including River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke) build a spaceship […]Read On »


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CD Review: BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1,000 Edition) Soundtrack

BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS soundtrack | ©2011 Buysoundtrax Records

Roger Corman has given breaks to such future Hollywood superstars as Martin Scorcese, Jack Nicholson and Jonathan Demme under the most pitiable budgetary circumstances.  What distinguished James Horner’s big musical break on 1980’s BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS is that it was Corman’s biggest budgeted-film yet, making it quite the step up for a 27 year old who’d impressed New World with his scores for UP FROM THE DEPTHS, THE LADY IN RED and HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. Finally given a STAR WARS rip-off instead of some JAWS-inspired aquatic monster, Horner mightily rose to the challenge with this terrifically thrilling soundtrack, […]Read On »


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CD Review: STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION COLLECTION: VOLUME 1 soundtrack

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION COLLECTION: VOLUME 1 soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

It was a strange, syndicated world in 1987 when a brief quote of Alexander Courage’s inimitable melody launched into Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from ST –TMP– a bold announcement if there ever was one that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION was going to launch a whole new franchise of Roddenberry-based shows. But as opposed to the kind of bold melodies by the likes of Sol Kaplan, Gerald Fried and George Duning that distinguished the scoring of classic TREK, producers Rick Berman and Peter Lauritson went for a more sleekly homogenous route. While the show and its spin-offs wouldn’t get outrageously distinctive […]Read On »


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CD Review: TOO BIG TO FAIL

TOO BIG TO FAIL soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

After doing consistently interesting, small-scale scores for such HBO movies as TAKING CHANCE and YOU DON’T KNOW JACK, Marcelo Zarvos literally takes on his biggest subject for the financial apocalypse that nearly took down the U.S.A.- that is if you believe the bankers who got a zillion-dollar government rescue from the home loan meltdown they caused. But there’s no doubting the urgency that Zarvos brings to the crunching numbers that the freaked financial kingpins are throwing about, a driving, rhythmic mix that makes you picture Jason Bourne leaping over the Wall Street bull in a mad dash to save the […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE soundtrack

THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

Uday Hussein has a rocking good time ravaging Iraq under dad’s carte blanche, not to mention the protection of a hapless look-a-like. It’s a musically mesmerizing balance between the fruits of evil, and an onlooker’s moral anguish, two tones merged into one beast for this killer alt. bio score by Christian Henson. Just when you think you’ve heard it all in the sinister soundtrack land of Middle East-meets-west rhythms, THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE arrives to kick the genre in the ass as its antagonist does far worse things to his people. Not only does it help that Henson was a programmer […]Read On »


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CD Review: VIENTO EN CONTRA soundtrack

VIENTO EN CONTRA soundtrack | ©2011 Movie Score Media

Alfons Conde, a Spanish composer better known among horror fans for the Movie Score Media releases of his utterly sinister soundtracks to THE ABANDONED, THE DARK HOUR and NO-DO finally gets the opportunity to score a film where a woman gets to fight back against evil odds. In the case of MSM’s VIENTO EN CONTRA (AGAINST THE WIND), it’s a female executive who’s set up for a murder, and has to become a fugitive with her kid in tow. As with a heroine’s dead aim that seems to come out of nowhere in a film like this, Conde plugs us […]Read On »


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CD Review: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

For a movie that’s about evolution, it’s fitting that Patrick Doyle, a composer once renowned for the classical orchestral sound of HENRY IV and DEAD AGAIN, would essentially turn himself into a master primate of the new Hollywood action sound- a similar jump up the blockbuster studio ladder that he took earlier this summer with THOR. But as with that thoroughly entertaining film and superhero score, the transfiguration of Doyle’s trademarked sound with pulsing electronic and orchestral rhythms is very much a good, if not pretty great thing, especially for the command and conquer goals of Caesar in RISE OF […]Read On »


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CD Review: BEING HUMAN soundtrack

BEING HUMAN soundtrack | ©2011 Silva Screen Records

For this horror take on THREE’S COMPANY, a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf try their hand at co-habitation with results that would have made mincemeat out of Mr. Roper in the BBC series BEING HUMAN. Yet composer Richard Wells (EVIL ALIENS, THE MUTANT CHRONICLES) music goes a long way towards aurally convincing us of BBC’s oddball high concept, taking a straight-laced approach to this series’ growing supernatural friendship in Series 1 & 2, while also giving its ties that bind a particular mournfulness that comes with being undead. The cues within offer visceral shocks and eerie abstractness, while a […]Read On »


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