CD Review: THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO and THUNDERBIRD 6 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/01/2015
THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO and THUNDERBIRD 6 soundtrack | ©2014 La La Land Records

Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s marionette-centric genre shows like JOE 90 and SUPERCAR might have seemed like charmingly ingenious kids’ stuff in other people’s wire-holding hands. Yet it was the couples’ joyful, uncondescending commitment to their literally wooden characters, and ingeniously designed models that made them truly come to flesh and blood life, especially by filling them with the robustly symphonic scores of Barry Gray. Their imaginations truly took off to become the toast of England, and the TV-watching world with their series THE THUNDERBIRDS, which had the Tracy family and their International Rescue roster of rocketships coming to the near-future’s […]Read On »


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CD Review: BLOW OUT soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/31/2014
BLOW OUT soundtrack | ©2014 Intrada Records

After CARRIE and DRESSED TO KILL, DePalma and Donaggio were at the top of their ersatz Hitchcock-Herrmann game when they took a nihilistic detour into the paranoia-conspiracy territory that fueled such similarly bleak classics as THE PARALLAX VIEW and THE CONVERSATION. But while there was nothing remotely “meta” about those movies’ dark approach, the thrill of any collaboration between this director and composer was in seeing, and hearing just how close their homages could get to the originals and survive, while still being dazzlingly stylish in their own right. On that count, BLOW OUT is a terrific example of being […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/30/2014
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION soundtrack | ©2014 Music Box Records

One can only imagine the honor for a French composer to score an epic based on the events that defined his country’s future, and for a small time the ideals of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité. And it’s in that spirit one can understand the pure, gorgeous passion that Georges Delerue gave to THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. This massive, six-hour, two-part cinematic endeavor was done for the event’s 200th anniversary, starring the English-speaking likes of Jane Seymour, Peter Ustinov and Sam Neill, and ultimately turned into a TV miniseries that’s still unavailable on video in this country. Delerue had certainly done sweeping, […]Read On »


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CD Review: GORKY PARK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/29/2014
GORKY PARK soundtrack | ©2014 Intrada Records

James Horner’s career was taking off in 1983, due to a dynamic signature sound that often meshed impactful percussion with richly thematic melodies that paid homage to such modern classical Russian masters as Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. So it was fitting that Horner’s music would journey to their Motherland with GORKY PARK, its unique story (by NIGHTWINGS‘ killer bat author Martin Cruz Smith) pitting a Soviet cop against a murderous American capitalist pig, with furry sables as the MacGuffin behind a skinned face triple slaying. One need not dig far to turn up Horner’s usual, impactful suspects with a score that […]Read On »


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CD Review: LES PASSAGERS soundtrack (500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/28/2014
LES PASSAGERS soundtrack | ©2014 Music Box Records

What Americans among us would have known that the first adaptation of popular thriller novelist Dean R. Koontz (written as SHATTERED under the pseudonym of K.R. Dwyer) was done for a French movie? But then, who’d have realized that its composer Claude Bolling wasn’t the first musician in the driver’s seat for a movie that ultimately appeared on our shores as THE INTRUDERS in 1977. But thanks to this intriguing Music Box Records release, both musical takes are out there to savor for as the road got paved for far better known Koontz movies as HIDEAWAY and WATCHERS. But there’s […]Read On »


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CD Review NO GOD, NO MASTER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/27/2014
NO GOD, NO MASTER soundtrack | ©2014 Varese Sarabande Records

The anarchist movement in the early 1900s and the mass deportations its bomb-planting extremists inspired remain obscure, in spite of their lessons being more relevant today than ever in a society willing to do anything to stop terrorists in their midst. It’s a tragic, dramatic importance that infuses this historical drama, whose ambitious scope is given immense, tragic power by Nuno Malo’s score. With a sweeping, symphonic talent that actually made us musically believe in THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, the Portuguese composer take on affecting images of poverty-oppressed Italian immigrants struggling, some violently, for a new life in a land that’s […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MAZE RUNNER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/24/2014
THE MAZE RUNNER soundtrack | ©2014 Sony Classical

Starting off his career as an assistant to Jerry Goldsmith on STAR TREK NEMESIS and THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, John Paesano has certainly been busy with DC animation, DV action and friendly children’s stuff with such work as SUPERMAN BATMAN APOCALYPSE, S.W.A.T. FIREFIGHT and ANOTHER CINDERELLA STORY. But given the chance to crush kids on a major Hollywood playing field, Paesano blazingly takes off with THE MAZE RUNNER to land in a zone of body-crushing walls and prowling creatures – attacking the opportunity with terrific excitement and character-oriented melody to boot. Where the YA sci-fi genre has given a […]Read On »


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CD Review: RECLAIM soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/23/2014
RECLAIM soundtrack | ©2014 Silva Screen Records

Israeli composer Inon Zur is a rock star when it comes to scoring dozens of videogames from LORD OF THE RINGS to EVERQUESTand SOULCALIBER, But success in one genre can often lead to a prison-like sentence from those who can’t see movie scoring talent from the sword-swing PS3 trees. Thankfully, Zur has gotten to break out with exceptional results in the far more realistic realm of child trafficking for RELCLAIM. John Cusack can certainly lay claim to that title as he keeps getting pulled back into the VOD arena as a bad guy, this time as the deceptively calm villain […]Read On »


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CD Review: RELENTLESS JUSTICE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/22/2014
RELENTLESS JUSTICE soundtrack | ©2014 Buysoundtrax Records

David A. Prior, the Z-movie commando who gave the world the hilariously brutal DEADLY PREY is back in the woods with a one-person army who happens to sport a killer figure and an Australian accent. While I don’t know if Victoria De Vries beats someone to death with their own dismembered arm, at the least she’s got Chuck Cirino as her musical wingman when it comes to racking up a body count. A composer who’s been to the ‘Nam of countless schlock movies, Cirino can be counted on to give his all to this sort of insanity, from the killer […]Read On »


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CD Review: WON TON TON soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/20/2014
WON TON TON soundtrack | ©2014 Kritzerland Records

Neal Hefti was one of the swinging-est composers of the Mad Men era, a musician who put a happy-go-lucky bachelor pad groove into the wet bar of such comedies as SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE and BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. However, it’s his cool, superhero scoring via Vegas for TV’s BATMAN that remains Hefti’s best-known work among a criminally under-represented discography. Thankfully, Kritzerland comes to the rescue with this two-fer of great scores for box office bombs (whose chances certainly weren’t helped by their way-too long titles). While I can’t attest if 1976s WON TON […]Read On »


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