CD Review: BLUE VALENTINE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/08/2011
Blue Valentine soundtrack | ©2011 Lakeshore Records

Where NO STRINGS ATTACHED stands as a date film that’s likely to get you lucky, BLUE VALENTINE practically ensures you’ll never see your lady again, if not one that will plant the seeds for a future divorce with the wife you’ve foolishly taken to see the flick. That being said, BLUE VALENTINE is also certainly one of the best feel-bad relationship films ever made, a continual gut punch to the idea of true love. So it’s only right that its music should be as raw as its downward-spiraling couple’s emotions. What Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear delivers goes even beyond that […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MECHANIC soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/07/2011
THE MECHANIC soundtrack (2011) | ©2011 Mark Isham Music

While Mark Isham’s a jack-of-all-genres who has no problem with such musical niceties as THE COOLER’s dreamy jazz and MIRACLE’s orchestral inspiration, it always seems to be the high velocity likes of RUNNING SCARED, DON’T SAY A WORD and KISS THE GIRLS that draws some of his most enjoyably gnarly work. Now after putting new sound and fury into “remake” scores like THE GETAWAY and THE CRAZIES, Isham’s darker instincts return with newly fueled vengeance for this rebooted MECHANIC. So if you’re looking for the long-winding, psychologically troubling string lines that Jerry Fielding provided for the assassin team back in […]Read On »


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CD Review: SOLARIS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/06/2011
SOLARIS soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

Ever since composer Cliff Martinez broke the sound barrier of “indie” scoring with the similarly eccentric Steven Soderbergh on SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE, their collaborations on such films as KING OF THE HILL, KAFKA, TRAFFIC and the upcoming CONTAGION have resulted in near-hallucinatory atmospheres of melody, rhythms so fragile that they seemed in danger of breaking with a listen. That’s why there’s no better example of their hypnotic partnership than the crystalline vibe of Soderbergh’s 2002 remake of SOLARIS, a score wherein Martinez also brought in the larger sound of a 90-piece Hollywood orchestra, while using it in similarly offbeat […]Read On »


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CD Review: CLUE Original Soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
Clue Soundtrack | © 2011 La La Land Records

For all of the toy-to-movie adaptations ever made by Hollywood, 1985’s CLUE still stands as the only one done from a board game (sorry doubters, but JUMANJI was made up for that film). Director Jonathan Lynne’s staging of CLUE’s lethal antics as an all-star bedroom farce further propelled the picture to cult status. Now a phenomenon that’s grown to ROCKY HORROR stage show heights gets another wonderful knife in the attic with the release of John Morris’ wonderfully antic underscore, a Baroque-style dark and stormy night of screwball music. As the prime musical suspect behind such Mel Brooks satires as […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE YOUNG RIDERS soundtrack (1200 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/03/2011
THE YOUNG RIDERS soundtrack | © 2011 La La Land Records

Whether it’s ROAR or THE CAPE, television has unabashedly turned every big screen hit from BRAVEHEART to BATMAN into show’s whose themes were just discernable enough to avoid legal outrage. Such was the case of this YOUNG GUNS-esque adventure that ran from 1989 to 1992. The concept here was to turn teen outlaws into equally hot Pony Express riders, whose saddles would be filled by the likes of Stephen Baldwin and Josh Brolin. Another growing talent would be John Debney, who was sowing his musical oats on such movie spin-off shows as FAME and POLICE ACADEMY before taking on RIDERS […]Read On »


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CD Review: FIRST BLOOD soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
FIRST BLOOD soundtrack | © 2011 Intrada Records

This might not be the first time that Jerry Goldsmith’s inimitable action score has been released, but it likely won’t get better than Intrada’s “ultimate” edition, whose two CD’s feature FIRST BLOOD’s original cues and composer-sequenced soundtrack album. While Goldsmith would grow with Rambo’s transformation into a muscle-packed fighting machine, perhaps none of the composers’ three scores for the series packed the vulnerability, and even dare say tenderness, of a character that started off as a killable human being. It doesn’t take long for this mournful trumpet and guitar compassion to give way to Goldsmith’s way with the gracefully pounding […]Read On »


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CD Review: SANCTUM soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/17/2011
Sanctum soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande

When I hear a score that’s as unabashedly huge as SANCTUM, I’m reminded of the recent, end-of-an-era passing of John Barry- a composer unafraid to swim in waves of lush melody, always writing music that would be heard loud and beautifully clear over even the most effects-filled soundtrack. While I’m not saying that David Hirschfelder is in that composer’s league, his symphonically bursting score for SANCTUM packs that kind of melodic ballsiness, even if there’s zero romance to be found in this delightfully cornball, testosterone-filled movie where a bunch of fellow Aussies spend as much time screaming at each other […]Read On »


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CD Review: SUNSET BOULEVARD – Original Soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/09/2011
Sunset Boulevard Soundtrack | © 2010 Counterpoint Records

If it was only talk that helped to kill the silent movie stars, it’s likely that some of them may have been able to squeeze a few more years out of the goggle-eyed mooning and over-expressive hand gestures that passed for screen acting. But when the rapturous strains of Eastern European émigrés like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman joined with the newfangled dialogue recording and sound effects, the silent stars were indeed shot deader than the screenwriting lothario who messes with the wrong Hollywood cougar in 1950’s SUNSET BLVD. So it would be fitting that one of […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE FILM & TV MUSIC OF CHRISTOPHER GUNNING

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
The Film & TV Music of Christopher Gunning. Soundtrack | ©2010 Chandos Records

In his four-decade and counting career, Christopher Gunning has been a stalwart of the English scoring scene with a wide variety of television and film work, his music evoking a lush symphonic sound that will nicely remind listeners on these shores of the late John Barry. Now with the success of what might be his most moving, and heartfelt score for the Edith Piaf biopic LA VIE EN ROSE, Chandos has taken the opportunity to record a treasure trove of Gunning’s greatest hits with the BBC Philharmonic, selections that are no small revelation of the composer’s  lassically-trained talents, especially now […]Read On »


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CD Review: NORTH DALLAS FORTY soundtrack (2,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/06/2011
NORTH DALLAS 40 soundtrack | ©2010 Film Score Monthly

One of the more curious composer-to-picture match-ups in the 70’s was throwing John Scott, a genteel English composer renowned for such classically lush scores as ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA and THE COUSTEAU ODYSSEY, into the very macho game of football- and we aren’t talking the Euro definition of guys kicking around a pigskin. Yet it’s exactly that strongly thematic sense of drama that let NORTH DALLAS FORTY make a memorable touchdown as one of America’s better sports films. Credit Canadian director Ted Kocheff, who’d worked with Scott on the equally unlikely Aussie thriller WAKE IN FRIGHT to let the composer make […]Read On »


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