CD review: WORLD WAR Z soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/11/2013
WORLD WAR Z soundtrack | ©2013 Warner Bros. Records

Sure Marco Beltrami scored the first movie in zombie history that elicited a tear-jerking lump in one’s throat instead of ripping it out. But just because Beltrami did such a great job on the simillarly terrific WARM BODIES, don’t think the guy behind SCREAM, HELLBOY and THE THING has gone all soft and emo on us as WORLD WAR Z shows with music-gnashing global destruction. Imagine ten thousand Ghost Faces piling on top of each other to make mincemeat out of humanity, and you’ll hear the relentless, rhythmic rage that’s made Beltrami the go-to guy for horror scoring. There’s tons […]Read On »


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CD review: YELLOW ROCK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/09/2013
YELLOW ROCK soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

As every western from ULANZA’S GOLD to JEREMIAH JOHNSON has proven, two big no-no’s for the white man is to go crazy for precious minerals, let alone violate a sacred Indian burial ground. Both are done in spades for the indie oater YELLOW ROCK, as a well-intentioned search party spins out of control with greed to the accompaniment of a vengeful, straight-arrow score by Randy Miller. An underrated, orchestral composer for such films as HELLRAISER III, WITHOUT LIMITS and TV movie spins on DARKMAN and FIRESTARTER,  Miller has always put impressive thematic muscle into his work. His talent is especially […]Read On »


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CD review: WHAT MAISIE KNEW soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/08/2013
WHAT MAISE KNEW soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

As a composer with a sensibility as rhythmic as it is eccentrically loopy, Devotchka’s Nick Urata has captured the ups and downs of adult relationships with such charming scores as CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, RUBY SPARKS and ARTHUR NEWMAN. What makes WHAT MAISIE KNEW particularly striking is how gentle Urata is in his approach, but no less ironic as he evokes a children’s sensibility to depict a little girl who’s caught in a tug of war between her divorced parents and their new amours. It’s an “Alice in Wonderland” approach where a fantasia of bells, gentle pianos, halting strings and a […]Read On »


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CD review: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/07/2013
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Horner fans will have a field day with this complete presentation for the composer’s second stab at Jack Ryan, Intrada’s two-CD set offering a virtual checklist of everything that’s great about the composer’s unabashed symphonic sensibilities. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER offers the heroic outrage in full swing, from a valorous main theme to another mournful take on a classical piece (here reprising Aram Khachaturian’s “Gayane Ballet Suite” after ALIENS) and a organic-electronic mastery of world music – here tuned to the South American drug war. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was a welcome change of pace after Horner accompanied America’s favorite […]Read On »


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CD review: STUCK IN LOVE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/06/2013
STUCK IN LOVE soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Nate Walcott (of the group Bright Eyes) and Mike Mogis go from the elderly, ironically enchanted vibe of the excellent Alzheimer’s film LOVELY, STILL to STUCK IN LOVE, a far younger-skewing picture about a romantic roundelay of a writer’s family, producing LOVE‘s score as well as its indie-centric songs. “At Your Door” (featuring Big Harp) has an fun, determined bounce, while teaming with Friends of Gemini for the similarly upbeat “Somersaults in Spring.” Other tunes range from the meh strumming of Conor Oberst’s “You Are Your Mother’s Child” to the likewise indistinct rock of Polkadot’s “Like Pioneers” to pretty good […]Read On »


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CD review: TAKE THIS WALTZ soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/05/2013
TAKE THIS WALTZ soundtrack | ©2013 Movie Score Media

A prolific Canadian composer whose most popular film might still be his scoring debut out of the slasher gate with 1982s VISITING HOURS, Jonathan Goldsmith has since written far more delicate works, especially for director Sarah Polley on AWAY FROM HER and STORIES WE TELL. There’s a real feminine sensitivity to the actress-turned-filmmaker’s work, a tenderness that Goldsmith captures with surreal enchantment for the exceptional romantic drama TAKE THIS WALTZ. As Polley depicts the slow, sensual burn towards a marriage-ending affair, Goldsmith captures her breathless anticipation with music box bells and the light tap of a piano, graced with muted […]Read On »


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CD review: NO PLACE ON EARTH soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/04/2013
NO PLACE ON EARTH soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s almost disarming how pleasant John Piscitello’s documentary score is when you think that it’s for a Holocaust movie about Ukrainian Jews who find shelter, and safety from the Holocaust in the bowels of a giant, utterly dark cave. While Piscitello evokes the string-shivering danger of the depths these survivors are reduced to, the main feeling that NO PLACE ON EARTH evokes is a hauntingly beautiful nostalgia for a past, an innocence that can’t be reclaimed. Think of this gently melodic score as the visions that these people see in the dark, tonal visualizations light and love of homes and […]Read On »


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CD Review: TO THE WONDER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/04/2013
TO THE WONDER soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

Mea culpa, but forgive me if I have yet to see Terence Malick’s TO THE WONDER, having been perhaps permanently scared off from his visually striking miasmas after the stupefyingly boring and pretentious movie-as-art instillation that was TREE OF LIFE. That being said, the truly wondrous, and always-entrancing score that Hanan Townshend has created for Malick’s latest existential outing just might get me to watch it. As a New Zealand expatriate based in Malick’s Austin digs, Townshend captures a universal feeling of longing in his concert piece-cum-film score, one of those few soundtracks that captures the melodic potential of what […]Read On »


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CD review: DARK SKIES soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
DARK SKIES soundtrack | ©2013 Void Recordings

If Blumhouse Productions is literally going to set every one of their movies in a house, then it’s likely their economically advantageous location choices won’t get creepier than the alien home invasion that rains down from DARK SKIES. Infinitely scarier in every respect than the far more notoriously successful THE PURGE, DARK SKIES gains no small share of its effectivenes from Joseph Bishara’s surprisingly restrained, but no less imaginative score. Taking a completely different direction from the violent demonic antics he’d conjured for INSIDIOUS (in which he played one such creature), DARK SKIES is the semi-musical approximation of the evil […]Read On »


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CD review: DRESSED TO KILL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/23/2013
DRESSED TO KILL soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Filmmaker Brian De Palma couldn’t have asked for a better composer to assist in his stylish Alfred Hitchcock dress-ups for SISTERS  and OBSESSION than the composer the Master of Suspense did wrong with TORN CURTAIN. After Bernard Herrmann’s passing, a talented Italian named Pino Donaggio, who’d thrilled with the right musical stuff whilst pursuing DON’T LOOK NOW‘s killer dwarf about Venice, stepped into the maestro’s music shoes to perfectly replicate Herrmann’s identity in a way that would make Kim Novak jealous. Of the De Palma-Donaggio collaborations that included CARRIE, BODY DOUBLE, BLOW OUT and RAISING CAIN, none reached the stimulating […]Read On »


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