MINIONS: Composer Heitor Pereira gives Groo’s hench-things a swinging ’60s spy-pop groove

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/18/2015
MINIONS | ©2015 Universal Pictures

While the films he scores might not have to do much with his homeland of Brazil (even if they’re filled with yellow characters with mad love for a certain tropical fruit), there’s most often a joyous, rhythmic energy that fills the soundtracks of Heitor Pereira. With a surfeit of kids’ movies to his credits, Pereira’s lovably bouncy, melodically eccentric scores are the equivalent of smurfs, chimps and Chihuahuas, all jumping for joy and lapping your face. They’ve got enough unrestrained, clever fun to put an energetic smile on anyone’s face, perhaps most notably one super villain hell-bent on being the […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

THE ORDER: 1886 composer Jason Graves joins the steampunk video game – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/24/2015
THE ORDER soundtrack | ©2015 Sony Classical Music

Since his 2005 video game scoring debuts with RISE OF THE KASAI and GAUNTLET: SEVEN SORROWS, Jason Graves has played faithful service to a genre that’s continually evolved in terms of its striking visuals and bold storytelling as the genre has done its damnedest to shirk the mantle of being kid’s stuff, no more so than in the quality of its music. Action has been a particular forte for Graves, who’s proved that one could indeed hear a terrifying orchestra shriek in the void with the DEAD SPACE franchise. He’s given the stuff of soaring fantasy to DUNGEON SEIGE III […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Interview: Composer Geoff Zanneli helps pulls off a shagedlically artistocract art heist with MORTDECAI

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/17/2015
MORTDECAI | ©2015 Lionsgate

  There’s no doubt that the O.G. masters of movie score Shagadelia knew they were being funny back in the ultra-60s day when Burt Bacharach had various James Bonds bouncing to the Tijuana Brass, or Charles Fox and Bob Crewe were disrobing Barbarella from her space suit to the strains of a female chorus and a funk guitar. Now with the groovy one-two punch of George S. Clinton and David Holmes making already-hip retro rhythms cool again for Austin Powers’ wacky spy jazz and the rocking organ-guitar grooves of twelve con artists pulling a big Vegas rip-off, everything old is […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

SELMA composer Jason Moran talks about taking his big Hollywood step – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/03/2015
SELMA | ©2014 Paramount Pictures

We all know the music that’s supposed to accompany Hollywood depictions of history, let alone the real-life, freedom-fighting icons whose charisma transcends any imagined depiction of them. For whether they’re Michael Collins leading Irish guerillas, William Wallace swinging a sword for Scotland or Mahatma Gandhi traversing India with a walking stick, audiences know they’ll hear the lofty noble strains of a symphonic orchestra – as mixed in with melodic ethnicity if the subject allows. Indeed, there’s nothing like a symphony to stoke the fires of justice, whether lit with cries of violence, or asking for the complete restraint of it […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

AUTOMATA composer Zacarias M. de la Riva finds the musical ghost in the machines – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/24/2014
AUTOMATA soundtrack | ©2014 Movie Score Media Records

More than ever in science fiction, humans are being proven to inferior, doomed species in the face of the infinitely more compassionate creations they now want to destroy. It’s a message that science fiction cinema has increasingly hammered in, whether the lab-born synthetics were virtually indistinguishable from us (BLADE RUNNER, A.I., THE MACHINE) or had an artificial appearance that led us to think it was impossible for them to have a soul (“I, Robot”). But now, even the most pathetically abused, humanoid-shaped machines are given the grace of God in AUTOMATA, no more so than in the gorgeous spirituality of […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING composer Johann Johannsson gets scientific – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/08/2014
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING soundtrack | ©2014 +180 Records

One could say it’s the cold, volcanic icescape of the earth’s most forbidding land mass that have often infused Johann Johannsson’s music with a beautifully foreboding presence. Like his innovative countrywoman Bjork, Johannsson received art-music acclaim by merging modern classical and alternative music to haunted and mesmerizing effect, creating a series of conceptual albums like “Englaborn” and “Dis” at the same time he began scoring a myriad of shorts, features and documentaries – usually involving brooding, disaffected characters he could apply a psychologically-minded musical style to (even giving ennui to prairie dogs in the process). With his songs playing a […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Composer Kathryn Bostic has some notes for DEAR WHITE PEOPLE – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/27/2014
Dear White People | ©2014 Roadside Attractions

For a country where some people can congratulate themselves for electing a black President, it often seems that America is more behind the times then ever, both in lethally law-enforced terms, and artistic ones where “black” entertainment more often than not engages in minstrel show drama and humor. For an “enlightened” Hollywood that engages in “some of my best friends” lip service, it’s particularly disappointing when the precious few black film composers are kept by The Man in a musical ghetto where only brown color applies. It’s the kind of can’t-we-all-just-get along attitude that would make any self-respecting minority get […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

WHIPLASH composers Justin Hurwitz and Tim Simonec keep a mean jazz beat – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/26/2014
WHIPLASH soundtrack | ©2014 Varese Sarabande Records

In a cinema where wannabe musicians have their aspirations lifted through the very mild tribulations of crotchety, yet ultimately humane instructors, filmmaker Damien Chazelle’s WHIPLASH  is FIGHT CLUB as opposed to FAME – the equivalent of a cymbal in the face, or a shower of blood splashed across a drum kit. While young percussion prodigy Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) gets out of the way of the first abuse-bomb, he’ll have plenty of blood, sweat and tears to give in his sadistic servant-master relationship to his instructor Terence Fletcher, a jazz drill sergeant who makes the scream-swear martinet in FULL METAL […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Composer Harry Gregson-Williams guns for THE EQUALIZER – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/28/2014
THE EQUALIZER soundtrack | ©2014 Varese Sarabande Records

Harry Gregson-Williams has often been a man on a mission of dark righteousness. Sure he’s done far gentler scoring for the likes of ANTZ, SHREK, THE TIGGER MOVIE, ARTHUR CHRISTMAS and the first two NARNIA movies, where he even essayed the voice of Patterwig the Squirrel. But if you cross the side of justice, just hear Williams’ family-friendly orchestral voice set its watch to 60 seconds, and become a distinctive sound of simmering electronics, imposing strings, slicing rock guitars and beds of raging percussion – melodic, often hallucinatory music that builds for characters’ with haunted pasts to explode into body count […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. 3
  6. 4
  7. 5
  8. 6
  9. 7
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round