CD Review: DEAD RINGERS, NAKED LUNCH and CRASH soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/15/2014
DEAD RINGERS soundtrack | ©2014 HOWE Records

Howard Shore made his musical bones on the body horror of director David Cronenberg, a match particularly made in visceral-intellectual heaven with DEAD RINGERS, NAKED LUNCH and CRASH, three scores that show the chilling diversity in what’s arguably the most rewardingly unhinged (and ongoing) collaboration between two creepily-minded auteurs of this dark side of Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock. Now Shore gives this twisted trio a collector’s edition re-mastering, made complete with additional music that truly brings out his music’s mesmerizing power. 1988s DEAD RINGERS marked Shore’s fourth collaboration with Cronenberg for the most realistically disturbing movie the director had […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: SHE-DEVIL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/07/2014
SHE-DEVIL soundtrack | ©2014 Music Box Records

Before Howard Shore became the thunderous orchestral king of serial killers, fantasy epics and heavy duty drama, the Canadian composer (and former SNL music director) did indeed have a funny bone to his body early in his Hollywood career, as can be evidenced by AFTER HOURS, BIG and even MOVING.  Sure these scores might have been sandwiched between the Cronenbergian likes of THE BROOD and THE FLY, but humor has always provided Shore with some of his most purely enjoyable scores, especially when taking on the harlot-housefrau battle between Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr in 1989s SHE-DEVIL. DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN director […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Exclusive Photos from THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG Los Angeles Premiere

By SUE SCHNEIDER 12/11/2013
Benedict Cumberbatch at the Los Angeles Premiere of THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG | ©sue Schneider

New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures presented the Los Angeles Premiere of THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG recently at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Fans lines the street and up the center of the Hollywood/Highland Complex where the black carpet ran right up to the stairs leading to the doors of the Dolby Theatre. The fans were more then happy to be able to get up close to get pictures and autographs of the stars. THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG continues the adventure of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) on an epic quest to reclaim the […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Revew: The Best Score Runner-Ups and Composers to Watch for 2012

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/06/2013
CHICO & RITA soundtrack | ©2012 Red General Catalogue

The Best Score Runner-Ups and Composer to Watch for 2012 ARBITRAGE (Cliff Martinez / Milan) As the composer who virtually created the ethereal indie sound with SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, Cliff Martinez has always played psychological tension in offbeat, ethereally percussive ways. Here’s it’s a moody spider’s web of drones and percussion that’s closing in on a magnate’s gigantic F-up, rhythmic tension that’s all about the inner turmoil that clings to the antihero as he uses all of his charms to clean things up. Speaking with his soft, haunted confidence, Martinez’s Eno-ish washes of melodic textures always have a cold […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

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 »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: COSMOPOLIS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/14/2012
COSMOPOLIS soundtrack | ©2012 Howe Records

With nearly ever David Cronenberg collaboration, Howard Shore stretches his imagination into unexpected dimensions of inner madness, from the cathode ray synth sadism of VIDEODROME to CRASH‘s grinding metal and the slow-boil orchestral murder that accompanied A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. In the process, Shore’s found some truly interesting collaborators, particularly as he induced Ornette Coleman’s jazz madness for NAKED LUNCH. But for all of the bizarrely visceral qualities that Shore’s Cronenberg scores have exhibited, they’ve also shown surprising beauty, most recently with the Wagnerian analysis of DANGEROUS METHOD. Now on their fourteenth ride together, Shore’s hypnotic strangeness finds perhaps his […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Composer Interview: Howard Shore talks HUGO and A DANGEROUS METHOD

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/27/2011
Howard Shore | ©2011 Howard Shore

In the near four decades that have taken him from being the bandleader of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE  to walking onto the stage to accept a couple of Oscars, you could say that Howard Shore has been on a continual journey of wide-eyed wonderment, one encompassing as much tender emotion as utter insanity. In over eighty scores, Shore’s used cheerful bells to embody MISS DOUBTFIRE, reached into the percussively booming pit of a serial killer’s mind in SEVEN, given a hack director the symphonic glory of Orson Welles in ED WOOD, created the mind-blowing pulsations of SCANNERS and took the side […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: HAWK original soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/08/2011
HAWK original soundtrack | ©2011 Movie Score Media

When you hear the lush orchestrations, female choruses singing in some seemingly Elvish language and the dark, foreboding brass that signals ring-obsessed villainy, you might think you’ve somehow time-warped yourself a copy of the score for the forthcoming HOBBIT. Yet what’s even more astonishing is that HAWK turns out to not only be the score for a Welsh fantasy, but a short film at that. It’s a major stylistic leap up for British composer Stuart Hancock, who last impressed on Movie Score Media with his hard-edged martial arts music for UNDERGROUND and BODYGUARD: A NEW BEGINNING. Now Hancock enters far […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round