CD Review: DIRTY GIRL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/31/2011
DIRTY GIRL soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

It’s been a long time since the glory song-soundtrack days of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and THE BREAKFAST CLUB, LP’s so full of instantly great, eternally listenable FM hits that you were guaranteed to wear their vinyl out. Set in 1987 DIRTY GIRL has that awesome pop-rock flashback power, with an accent on Grlll Power that makes its heroine anything but a hussy. With Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” standing for the boring Oklahoma digs she flees from in search of her biological dad in Fresno, DIRTY GIRL brings on a fun road trip with the proto-punk likes of Bow […]Read On »


COMMENTS (4)

CD Review: THE CORE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/30/2011
THE CORE soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

If it’s going to be the end of our globe as we know it, leave it to Christopher Young to be damn sure to try and save it with a big bang instead of a whimper for THE CORE. After doing many ferocious scores about the depths of hell, Young actually got to go to the pseudo-scientific thing with this journey to the musically raging center of the Earth, its hugely entertaining disaster-movie mission to re-ignite of our planet’s very CORE. Sensing the monumental burrowing task at hand, Young responded with more notes than a Mahler symphony for what stands […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: REAL STEEL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/29/2011
REAL STEEL soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

If there was one film whose high concept promised a TKO, then it was having the director of the disastrous PINK PANTHER redo make the movie version of the old Hasbro toy Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots- as channeled through the father-son corniness of THE CHAMP. But like its junkyard automaton, REAL STEEL shouldn’t have been counted out, as this Hugh Jackman effects vehicle has not only proven to be one of this year’s most entertaining box office winners, but has also delivered a truly unique Danny Elfman genre score that’s all about the musical rope-a-dope as opposed to a […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: TRADING PLACES soundtrack (2,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/28/2011
TRADING PLACES soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

An old fogey named Elmer Bernstein became the new (and perhaps unwitting) king of youth comedy scores when filmmaker John Landis had the idea that the composer’s straight-laced, old Hollywood approach would be ideal to play the classically pompous academia who did their best to make sure Faber College had no fun of any kind. The keg smash of 1978’s ANIMAL HOUSE made Bernstein into The Man in more ways than one, tuning his often brassy approach to the height of wealth-spoofing irony- an approach that would pay huge dividends for both men ten years later with TRADING PLACES. Of […]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: JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN soundtrack | ©2011Varese Sarabande Records

If  Christophe Beck does his musical all to pump up the frequently inept robbers of TOWER HEIST  into master criminals, then Ilan Eshkeri has the even mightier job of turning Rowan Atkinson’s catastrophically inept 007 wannabe into a super agent who’ll out-Bond Connery for JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN. Eshkeri outfits himself with the comedy secret agent score checklist of a swaggering main theme, trademarked fuzz guitar, rocking exotica for the luxurious locations he’ll fight through, and lush, John Barry-esque strings, for the sinister villains and lovemaking he’ll have to endure. It’s a jacket that’s been to the cleaners many times by […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE RUM DIARY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/26/2011
THE RUM DIARY soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

If Christopher Young isn’t going on an orchestrally raging bender in the pits of hell, then it’s hitting jazz dives with an equally hot ensemble. Over the decades, his brilliant sets have ranged from funk gnarliness for ROUNDER’s well-liquored card games, a sales convention-cum-Esquivel fiesta in THE BIG KAHUNA, and the Mancini swing for the cult spy spoof THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE, Young now gets to slam back some tunes with the notorious bar fiend Hunter S. Thompson, just the kind of guy the composer’s more outré licks were created for THE RUM DIARY. What makes this far […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: GREMLINS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/25/2011
GREMLINS soundtrack | ©2011 Film Score Monthly

If you were among the generation that saw one great genre film after the other in the early ’80’s, perhaps no signature theme signaled these pictures’ often seditious spin on kid-friendly formulas than the sweet whistling of Gizmo and the cackling, rambunctious jazz rag of what would pop out of that furry little fella if you fed him after midnight. It’s taken nearly three decades for those little devils’ music to fully metamorphose, but at long last, Jerry Goldsmith’s full score to GREMLINS is finally here to create hilariously menacing havoc. While Goldsmith was famed for scoring the far more […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE MUPPETS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/24/2011
THE MUPPETS soundtrack | ©2011 Walt Disney Records

It’s time to play to play the music, and light the lights after way too long a spell without Muppets tunes to delight. Now innocent kids, old coot fans and spoof-loving hipsters will find equal fun in the fresh approach taken by the FIGHT OF THE CONCORDS directing-songwriting team of James Bobin and Bret McKenzie, who treat THE MUPPETS with equal parts joyful, un-ironic fun and gentle in-jokes- winningly re-creating a tuneful formula that first helped Jim Henson’s creations find an audience way outside of a children’s puppet show. Now that recipe is likely do the same for this sweet […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

Interview: STRAW DOGS composer Larry Groupe takes aim at the Peckinpah classic

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/17/2011
Composer Larry Groupe | © 2011 Larry Groupe

We might primally root for him to take down a bunch of barbaric English yahoos. Yet as Sam Peckinpah’s violent parable STRAW DOGS more than pointed out in 1972, there’s little glory to be had by a seeming milquetoast in the middle of a home invasion. You could imagine the same reaction of a composer tasked with re-scoring the action that Jerry Fielding so memorably wrote for that iconic picture. But like the broken-spectacled mathematician who proves himself a he-man in the face of impossible odds, Larry Groupé weathers the potential brickbats, boiling oil and bullet to successfully score his […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 34
  6. 35
  7. 36
  8. 37
  9. 38
  10. 39
  11. 40
  12. ...
  13. 48
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round