CD Review: HOUSE OF CARDS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/24/2013
HOUSE OF CARDS soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Though he’s relatively young, it seems that composer Jeff Beal has been at TV series like FAMILY LAW, ROME, UGLY BETTY and MONK with the entrenched dependability of a continuously elected senator. If that’s an apt metaphor, then it’s no wonder that HOUSE OF CARDS just might end up being Beal’s biggest hit in the medium- even if the “network” it’s on happens to be Netflix. You might also find it hard to believe that the English came up with the idea first for such a distinctly American show about a devious politician out to step up the broken ladder […]Read On »


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CD Review: CONAN THE BARBARIAN soundtrack – 3 discs

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/10/2013
CONAN soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

What is best in life? How about getting just about every note of one of the greatest film scores ever written, as spread over three CD’s for 1982’s score to CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Ever since the 1982 CONAN THE BARBARIAN LP on MCA (also included here), just about every label from Varese to Milan has been trying to solve The Riddle of Steel with fits and starts of additional music, most recently with an admirably inclusive re-performance by Tadlow Records. But it’s Intrada that has gloriously mustered the full scope and lusty power of the Might that is Poledouris, his […]Read On »


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CD Review: CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/08/2013
CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II soundtrack | ©2012 Activision

When so many kill-crazy videogame scores are basically comprised of rock guitars blasting over shock waves of electric percussion, it’s nice to have one mega-popular franchise offering far more than you’d expect from the usual musical campaign. Not that there’s any less of the shredding action stylings that have become as popular on consoles as theater screens. But it’s just how interesting Jack Wall makes the nearly 2 ½ hours of score offered on CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 2 that merits attention, especially when divorced from the game’s bazooka-level sound design. A hardened warrior of such weapon-packed games as […]Read On »


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CD Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM soundtrack (1,000 expanded edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/07/2013
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (1,000 expanded edition) soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

In the annals of musical comedy theater, few productions remain as joyfully historic as 1962’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM wherein WEST SIDE STORY composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim and writers Burt Shevelove (“No No Nanette”) and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H) drew from the farces of the ancient playwright Plautus for a toga-switching, cross-dressing, door-slamming farce that showed Romans did indeed have a sense of humor when not weren’t staging far-less funny fights in the Coliseum. Hilariously adapted for the screen in 1966 by Richard Lester, the king of such antic English films as HELP! and […]Read On »


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CD Review: LOS ANGELES, 1937 (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/06/2013
LOS ANGELES, 1937 soundtrack | ©2012 Perseverance Records

As Peter Best was to The Beatles, Phillip Lambro is to film scoring history, the musician who could have been a contender if only it was felt that he had the chops to accompany an iconic act. In Lambro’s case, that historically elusive prize was 1975’s CHINATOWN, whose soundtrack he’d labored on before director Roman Polanski and producer Robert Evans summarily tossed the score after a teen-filled test screening (a similar fate that happened to Gabriel Yared years later on “Troy”), leaving Jerry Goldsmith a scant ten days to whip out what’s arguably one of the greatest scores ever written […]Read On »


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CD Review: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN soundtrack (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/05/2013
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

By 1971, the question asked by most over-the-hill Hollywood starlets was “Whatever happened to?” or “What’s the matter?” as their onscreen romantic glamour was traded in for roles as homicidal harpies. In the latter query about WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN, it’s Debbie Reynolds’ dancing teacher who wants to know what the heck is up with her partner Shelly Winters when their dance school for Shirley Temple wannabes starts to hit the bloody skids. Devilish camp humor was a big part of the appeal of watching Grande Dames shrieking whilst holding blunt instruments, “hagsploitation” that marked the studio swan song […]Read On »


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CD Review: HAWK THE SLAYER soundtrack (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/04/2013
HAWK THE SLAYER soundtrack | ©2012 Buysoundtrax

There’s perhaps no finer smell of cult cheese then an 80s so-bad-it’s good sword and sorcery movie, a genre that Buysoundtrax seems to love above all other labels as they follow up THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER with this hilariously entertaining gem that started off that decade. But where Albert Pyun’s movie drew from the Hammer ranks by getting VAMPIRE CIRCUS‘ David Whitaker to compose a classically symphonic score, HAWK THE SLAYER director Terry Marcel had LUST FOR A VAMPIRE‘s Harry Robertson (who also produced the picture itself) melds disco with an orchestra for a score of immense guilty pleasures. […]Read On »


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CD Review: CONDORMAN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/03/2013
CONDORMAN soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

For a studio who’s goofier late 70s / early 80s live action efforts involved a cat from outer space, an astronaut in King Arthur’s court and a midnight treasure hunt that tried to rope audiences in by offering a real prize, perhaps no oddball old regime premise was as face-palming as a cartoonist jumping off the Eiffel Tower in a bird suit. But if there was one composer who could turn this kind of Clouseau-esque bumbling into a class act, then it was Henry Mancini, whose score for 1981s CONDORMAN had a feeling of swooping, bold comedic adventure that’s made […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE UNTOUCHABLES: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/02/2013
THE UNTOUCHABLES: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

Ennio Morricone has never been better then when composing for Sergio Leone’s epics of American gangster-ism, whether it was committed in dust busters for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, or in the flashy 30s hood attire of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. So it seemed only natural when the Italian maestro finally pulled a job for crime-obsessed director Brian De Palma, whose 1987 take on THE UNTOUCHABLES remains not only one of the best TV-to-film translations ever, but a picture where De Palma’s stylistic swagger was a perfect fit for Morricone’s, propelling him to made man status […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Special Edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/01/2013
THE HOBBIT soundtrack | ©2012 WaterTower Music

Probably the best reason to celebrate Peter Jackson’s plodding return to Middle Earth in THE HOBBIT is that it gives Howard Shore a chance to once again make the aural trek from Hobbiton for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. The fact that listeners will feel they’ve already been on this familiarly epic road for a good long time makes for a welcome sense of return to the dictionary’s worth of musical vocabulary that Shore had so painstakingly set up in the previous LORD OF THE RINGS saga. Now THE HOBBIT more than proves the axiom that if it something ain’t […]Read On »


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