CD Review: THERE BE DRAGONS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/26/2012
THERE BE DRAGONS soundtrack | ©2012 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s no easy task scoring a movie as singularly over the top, in that romantic 1930’s kind of way as Roland Joffe’s THERE BE DRAGONS, a film whose overly passionate intentions managed to turn the Spanish Civil War into a soap opera. Even an accomplished musician can slip from the dramatic into the maudlin when given this kind of florid scope to accompany, as could be heard in the over-emphatic score by the film’s original composer Stephen Warbeck during DRAGON‘s brief theatrical run last year. Thankfully, the producers’ commitment to salvage one aspect of the film afterward turns out to […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: HAUNTED OR HUMORED soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
HAUNTED OR HUMORED soundtrack | ©2012 Christopher Young

Few composers have been as diligent about getting their work out there as Christopher Young, whether his music accompanied blockbusters, unreleased indies, concert pieces, shorts, or scores that weren’t used at all. Based on dozens of albums and promos, Young has been one very busy man over the decades. Yet even his most obscure releases have shown the same dedication to quality and creativity, no matter the project’s music budget or studio politics. Now Young’s relentless musical drive has inspired his own record label to put these scores onto, beginning with the compilation HAUNTED OR HUMORED. As a composer whose […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE GREY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/25/2012
THE GREY soundtrack | ©2012 Lakeshore Records

Joe Carnahan’s previous films like NARC, SMOKIN’ ACES and THE A-TEAM have had no shortage of headbanging action for composers to play. But those kinds of opportunities are in short supply for his esoteric man-against-nature film THE GREY, which instead offers shades of macho-talk colors for Marc Streitenfeld to play with when wolves don’t occasionally show up to kill its Alaska-stranded characters. Yet for a film so intent on making this situation “real” in pseudo-Hemingway docudrama fashion, the THE GREY gets the most color, and emotional impact when Streitenfeld’s is hovering about the Deadly White North. Pretty much avoiding overt […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: RED TAILS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
RED TAILS soundtrack | ©2012 Sony Music

Terence Blanchard has been fighting the good fight when it comes to scoring the black experience in any number of scores for Spike Lee, including his look at negro soldiers in the WW2 Italian conflict for the MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA. But if this composer hasn’t progressed in Hollywood as far as he should have long ago, it’s because Blanchard’s complex, jazz-inflected orchestral writing for Lee’s films, not to mention his pigeonholing as a composer best suited to urban-themed pictures (thankfully excepting his awesomely nutty Kung Fu score to BUNRAKU) hasn’t made him as easily clichéd as a whitebread ‘action […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: FOOTNOTE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/15/2012
FOONOTE soundtrack | ©2012 Milan Records

Who’d have thought that the seemingly boring process of Talmudic translation would result in pokey pizzicato music that makes you think you’re listening to the score of the latest dumb multiplex pratfall fest, as mixed with the zanier stylings from THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. However, what you’re actually experiencing is the ever-maddening Tom and Jerry sound of a cat and mouse battle between hyper-intellectual father and son, the smarts behind this seemingly goofball soundtrack brilliantly captured by Israeli composer Amit Poznansky. Where so many ultra-serious pictures from the Holy Land are as dramatically dry as its sands, FOOTNOTE turns out […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/11/2012
JOURNEY 2 THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND soundtrack | ©2012 Water Tower Music

If you’re a teen heading off to explore a Vern-nian wonderland, a more powerful wingman to have at your side than even The Rock is composer Andrew Lockington. Truly burrowing onto the scene with 2008’s JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, Lockington impressed with his ability to conjure a wide-eyed sense of orchestral wonder for these kid-friendly re-jigs of their parent’s fantasy classics. Now after a slightly more foreboding tour through THE CITY OF EMBER, Lockington returns to the series with JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND with his most impressive score yet. Just don’t expect any hints of life-imperiling […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/10/2012
EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC soundtrack | ©2011 Nathan Furst

Ennio Morricone has gotten some real humdingers to score in his more-than-prolific career, particularly when it comes to such crazy genre pictures as ORCA, HOLOCAUST 2000 and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. Yet while these movies might be inadvertently hilarious, Morricone has always played the most ungodly material with a straight face, no more so than with EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC. One of this sequel’s many hilarious mistakes was turning its evil spirit into an African locust demon named Pazazu. Yet it’s this same tribal spirit that makes Ennio Morricone’s score for an otherwise woeful film so intriguing. With high-pitched […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE BATTLE OF NERETVA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/29/2012
THE BATTLE OF NERETVA soundtrack | ©2012 Tribute Records

Though his gloriously grandiloquent music was best known for having homicidal maniacs menace innocent women, or throwing gigantic beats onto the breach with valiant sailors, one of Bernard Herrmann’s most impressive, if least recognized scores pitted Yugoslavian partisans against the Nazi war machine for 1968’s THE BATTLE OF NERETVA. Essentially self-exiled in England by the time he landed this Yugoslavian-produced, Hollywood-style tribute to their country’s war effort, the always-defiant Herrmann went out with an bang for this type of epic movie, providing a score of fearsome, patriotic power, its themes raging with the sound of courage and sacrifice, as well […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: FRANTIC soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/28/2012
FRANTIC soundtrack | ©2011 Film Score Monthly

American star Harrison Ford ventured to France in 1987 for Roman Polanski’s fish-out-of-water thriller, as it would’ve been a legal drama of a whole different kind for them to team the other way around. A vital player in uniting their suspense sensibilities of Hollywood and Europe was Ennio Morricone, then riding high with his Oscar-nominated score for THE UNTOUCHABLES. That soundtrack’s edgy jazz sensibility would get an even more sinister, and strenuous work out with Ford as he navigated the mean streets of Paris in search of his kidnapped wife- with Polanski’s own young amour Emanuelle Seigner as his punk-ish […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: MAN TO MAN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/27/2012
MAN TO MAN soundtrack | ©2011 Movie Score Media

Patrick Doyle’s longtime association with French filmmaker Regis Wargnier on such sometimes exotic, history-based epics as INDOCHINE and EAST-WEST has brought out many of the composer’s most impressively lush works. Traveling to Africa to bring two pygmy tribespeople back to “civilized” Scotland results in a culture clash of symphonic nobility and age-old ethnic percussion for this 2005 score. But more than some soundtrack relic, the soaring MAN TO MAN serves as a hugely impressive warm-up to Doyle’s far-more violent musical conflict between barbaric civilization and those it torments in RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Doyle’s talent for hearing […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 30
  6. 31
  7. 32
  8. 33
  9. 34
  10. 35
  11. 36
  12. ...
  13. 48
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round