CD Review: THE KING’S WHORE (500 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/22/2013
THE KING'S WHORE soundtrack | ©2013 Music Box Records

One of France’s great melodists, Gabriel Yared’s impossibly lush, romantic scores like Oscar-nominated THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and Oscar winning ENGLISH PATIENT have recalled such melodic masters as Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. So one can imagine the spot-on results when Yared truly climbs into those costumed shoes when the assignment asks for that style, which is the theme of this splendid three-for release from the French label Music Box Records. First up, it’s hard to imagine a more blunt title than THE KING’S WHORE  a very good bodice ripper from 1990, with Timothy Dalton employing all of his dashing, royal […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MATRIX RELOADED (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/21/2013
THE MATRIX RELOADED: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

When THE MATRIX appeared in 1999, Don Davis’ score was one of those thunderbolt game changers that pretty much re-wrote the book on sci-fi scoring. Taking the already revolutionary approach of such modern classicist-to-film composers as John Corigliano (ALTERED STATES) and Elliot Goldenthal (ALIEN 3) into the computer reality of bullet time kung fu action, Davis’ use of high-tech electronics and a distorted, brass orchestral writing was a kick-ass head trip that created an oppressively thrilling sense of darkness and defiance against the future’s robot overlords. Davis’ fusion of melody and musical sound design was a classic in every sense […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MIRACLE WORKER (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/20/2013
THE MIRACLE WORKER soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland

Helen Keller remains the most famous special needs student in history, her struggle to the light after being looked at as being blind, deaf and dumb guided to the light by the miraculous efforts of her teacher Annie Sullivan. With Keller’s valiant lessons in living fully first detailed in her book, then seen on stage in William Gibson’s play, it was only natural that Hollywood would afford a completely sensory version of struggle with Arthur Penn’s Oscar-winning 1962 adaptation of THE MIRACLE WORKER. One of its biggest challenges was given to Laurence Rosenthal, who had to conjure the sound of […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/19/2013
THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland

Sure Alfred Newman is known for towering, drama-filled epics like THE ROBE and HOW THE WEST WAS WON. But I have to confess that I’m even more game for the legendary composer’s far frothier stuff. It seems that Newman was just as prolific, if unsung with sweet, jazzy comedy, an effervescent touch for orchestra and brass that Kritzerland is finally giving a chance to shine with such confections as TAKE CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Now THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY is all ours for Newman’s 1961 score, whose wedding bells herald Fred Astaire’s arrival […]Read On »


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CD Review: PLANES and TURBO soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/18/2013
PLANES soundtrack | ©2013 Walt Disney Records

Mark Mancina has a long history of scoring talking animals for The Mouse House, from his arrangements on Hans Zimmer’s THE LION KING to his own adventurous score to TARZAN and BROTHER BEAR. However, his new, exhilarating work for a little plane that could flies far more in the spirit of TOP GUN and REMEMBER THE TITANS than a reincarnated bruin. With noble trumpets, rock-military rhythm, a rousing chorus and a sweepingly courageous orchestra, one might easily expect the underdog team entering a Midwestern stadium for the big game they somehow made it to. It’s a propulsive, flesh and blood […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE GRANDMASTER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE GRANDMASTER soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

If anything, Wong Kar-Wai’s movies are about the lack of movement, an overrated auteur reputation built on languid pacing and dreamily unreadable characters. All of this makes his choice to make a high-kicking Ip Man picture all the more surprising, and for once interesting. As expected, THE GRANDMASTER comes across as the artsiest Hong Kong chopsocky movie ever made, a stunning visual poetry that often beats down the always-spectacular action choreography by MATRIX master Yuen Woo-Ping. That leaves two musical martial artists named Shigeru Umebayashi and Nathaniel Mechaly to really do the heavy lifting when it comes to conveying physical […]Read On »


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CD Review: ADORE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/10/2013
ADORE soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

You can say there’s something more than uncomfortable about two beautiful best friend cougars getting it on with each other’s sons, even if the pseudo-incest angle is somewhat muted by the fact that these strapping Aussie surfer lads are barely legal at the start of their affairs. Yet ADORE’s mixture of inappropriateness and eroticism is actually beautifully transfixing to look at, let alone listen to with the soothing score by Christopher Gordon and additional composer Antony Partos to lend lyrical heat to what could be far more musically sensational and explicit given the subject matter. Gordon (MASTER AND COMMANDER, MAO’S […]Read On »


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CD Review: PRISONERS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/09/2013
PRISONERS soundtrack | ©2013 WaterTower Music

It’s particularly cool when Hollywood takes a chance on foreign talent, whether it lies across the cold Canadian border with Quebec director Denis Villeneuve, or in Iceland itself in the hiring of composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. This artistic gamble that yields depressively mesmerizing results as two sets of parents cross the moral, and legal boundaries to find their kidnapped children. The results of PRISONERS are sure to entail plenty of church confessional time for them, hence the “holy minimalism” approach taken by Jóhannsson. His PRISONERS is certainly one of the more interesting scores to appear since Johnny Greenwood’s brilliantly bizarre THERE […]Read On »


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CD Review: PAIN & GAIN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/13/2013
PAIN & GAIN soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Michael Bay’s career has been based on brain-frying excess, mainlining images of sweaty biceps, barely-fitting bikinis and joyful violence upon the popcorn eating masses. In the process, he’s encouraged his composers to pump the volume to 11 with rampaging walls of muscular rock-fueled orchestras. But where Bay has often been righteously lambasted for being lame-brained in his stylistic choices, the multiplex king now reveals his over-the-top fetishes as the ultimate act of artistic subversion as he plays the amped energy of murderous adrenalin junkies in PAIN & GAIN and in the process encourages his musical confidant Steve Jablonsky to deliver […]Read On »


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CD Review: WILLARD soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/12/2013
WILLARD soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Squeaking, clawing, skittering and doing the polka? These are but some of the musical approximations of being both rat and human screwball that Shirley Walker conjures in her beyond brilliant score for one of the last decade’s most unexpected cult pleasures. As an orchestrator for such macabre Danny Elfman efforts as BATMAN RETURNS and NIGHTBREED, Shirley Walker got to demonstrate a talent for black humor and eccentric orchestrations, seizing upon her abilities for the BATMAN animated series and the hilariously gore-licious FINAL DESTINATION series. It was that gross-out franchise’s creators Glen Morgan and James Wong who had the brilliant idea […]Read On »


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