CD Review: THE ARTIST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/05/2011
THE ARTIST soundtrack | ©2011 Sony Classical

When it comes to talking about retro scores, you can’t go back any further then the days when there was no music at all – at least when it came to the complete lack of soundtrack on celluloid nitrate was all about the herky-jerky picture. Such were the glory days of silent movies, when music had to do all of the talking. Whether it was a pianist desperately improvising away, or a full orchestra keeping time with reams of rapidly changing melodies, the 1920’s were truly the time when film scoring was king. The fact that so little of these […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: LE GRAND PARDON soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/19/2011
LE GRAND PARDON soundtrack | ©2011 Music Box Records

As the French label Music Box Records continues to release Gallic scores that are intriguingly foreign to our ears, certainly one of their most oddball, and fun soundtracks yet accompanies the 1982 crime epic LE GRAND PARDON, one that still remains unreleased in America (even if its sequel took place there). That you might feel like doing the disco Horah will quickly clue you in that LE GRAND PARDON’s mob family is of the Jewish persuasion. Serge Franklin’s energetically versatile score puts his theme through all of the Hebraic paces from solo piano to violin and rhythmic suspense. Franklin even […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

CD Review: 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/18/2011
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

If Walt Disney had a house composer, few occupied more glorious rooms than Paul J. Smith, whose seminal Disney animation scoring credits included SNOW WHITE, a shared Oscar win for PINOCCHIO and co-nominations for THE THREE CABALLEROS and CINDERELLA. While these may have seemed like cartoons on the surface, the action, humor, and emotion that Smith invested in their scores made the pictures as richly palpable as any live-action movie. It was this talent that made Smith particularly invaluable when it came time for Walt’s “real” deals like THE SHAGGY DOG, THE PARENT TRAP and POLLYANA, not to mention any […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD review: MALENKA soundtrack (limited 500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/17/2011
MALENKA soundtrack | ©2011 Quartet Records

Also known as FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, MALENKA (directed by THE BLIND DEAD trilogy’s Amando de Ossorio) casts the voluptuous Anita Ekberg as Sylvia, a fashion model who makes the mistake of visiting her vampire uncle’s castle. Of course in classic Euro-horror tradition, Sylvia also happens to be the vengeful Malenka, a centuries old executed witch out for some payback. But if it’s old-fashioned musical bats in the belfry you’re looking for, not to mention every other great horror score trope, than the glorious guignol of Carlo Savina delivers the goods. When he wasn’t conducting scores like THE GODFATHER […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE SKIN I LIVE IN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/16/2011
THE SKIN I LIVE IN soundtrack | ©2011 Quartet Records

Pedro Almodovar has a long history of making skewed “womens’” pictures, where sensuality and perversity are one and the same. Yet one major reason why so many of them are regarded as class instead of camp are the very serious musical contributions of fellow Spaniard Alberto Iglesias, whose intriguing, and refined melodic sensibilities for the likes of BAD EDUCATION, VOLVER and TALK TO HER create both an elegant, and psychologically penetrative elegance to fit Almodovar’s glossy imagery. Now with THE SKIN I LIVE IN (aka LA PIEL QUE HABITO), Iglesias takes Almodovar’s bent sensibility to a whole new level of […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

CD Review: DOLPHIN TALE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/15/2011
DOLPHIN TALE soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

Mark Isham is one composer who knows his way around the animal kingdom, from capturing the joyous flapping of Canadian geese in FLY AWAY HOME to the victorious gait of a talking zebra in RACING STRIPES and the never-say-freeze spirit of EIGHT BELOW’s abandoned huskies. The fact that Isham’s very first score accompanied the plaintive howls of NEVER CRY WOLF, as heard by star Charles Martin Smith, makes it a welcome homecoming that the composer’s now swimming about the Smith-directed DOLPHIN TALE. While there are the playful cutes to be had at points, this TALE isn’t exactly bounding about like […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: 1941 soundtrack (limited 3,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/14/2011
1941 soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

It almost never fails that a filmmaker who thinks he’s King of the World will produce at least one box office disaster (if not two) in an otherwise hugely profitable, and sometimes critically distinguished career. Sometimes, said films are of the “movie I really want to make” variety, the kind of “little” picture that the studio gives the director a mulligan on so they’ll do the blockbuster sequel they really wanted in the first place. But even when that personal movie is packed with enough spectacle and explosive hubris to make it anything but an art film, there can still […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: THE BLACK HOLE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/13/2011
THE BLACK HOLE soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

Where Disney turned to Jules Verne for their trailblazing sci-fi magnum opus in 1953 with 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, THE BLACK HOLE sought to tap into the renewed space craze brought on by George Lucas’ STAR WARS. But instead of battling starships, the big difference here was that laser blasts, rolling meteors and robotic mayhem would mostly occur within the awe-striking confines of one mighty spaceship named the U.S.S. Cygnus. Piloting it far less sympathetically than Captain Nemo (if not without a unhinged commanding presence) is Dr. Hans Reinhardt (played with always-eccentric élan by Maximillian Schell), who gives no […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: YOUNG GUNS 2 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
YOUNG GUNS 2 soundtrack | ©2011 Intrada Records

Hollywood’s revisionist youthquake movement really hit dead center when a “Brat Pack” gang headed by Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips took up the mantle of Billy the Kid and his regulators for 1988’s YOUNG GUNS. Their new blood helped energize a genre that was rapidly gathering tumbleweeds, the charismatic cast’s rock and roll energy blasting onto the screen with a memorable electric guitar theme by Anthony Marianelli (his score replacing a gunned-down James Horner’s). Where the rest of Marianelli’s effective synth-based score took a relatively subtle approach to the action, Alan Silvestri would bring his pistols packing […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)

CD Review: TAKE SHELTER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/12/2011
TAKE SHELTER soundtrack | ©2011 Milan Records

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but one with more of a tantalizing musical whisper than an overwrought bang. For while TAKE SHELTER’s stormy doom might promise an orchestral apocalypse, its catastrophe is filtered through the creepy visions of a man doubting his own sanity, making this a disaster movie of the mind, as opposed to the Irwin Allen kind. It’s a relative lack of spectacle and budget that also opens up intriguing musical visions from composer David Wingo. Just as he provided the evocative soundtracks for such character-driven Indies as ALL THE REAL GIRLS and […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 35
  6. 36
  7. 37
  8. 38
  9. 39
  10. 40
  11. 41
  12. ...
  13. 48
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round