CD Review: WILLARD soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/12/2013
WILLARD soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Squeaking, clawing, skittering and doing the polka? These are but some of the musical approximations of being both rat and human screwball that Shirley Walker conjures in her beyond brilliant score for one of the last decade’s most unexpected cult pleasures. As an orchestrator for such macabre Danny Elfman efforts as BATMAN RETURNS and NIGHTBREED, Shirley Walker got to demonstrate a talent for black humor and eccentric orchestrations, seizing upon her abilities for the BATMAN animated series and the hilariously gore-licious FINAL DESTINATION series. It was that gross-out franchise’s creators Glen Morgan and James Wong who had the brilliant idea […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES: VOLUME 2 (3,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/02/2012
BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES: VOLUME 2 soundtrack | ©2012 Nathan Furst

Shirley Walker was a woman who shattered the stereotype that no female composer could assume the musical costume of a male superhero, let alone a major Hollywood action score. Walker’s dynamic orchestral sound proved them wrong from THE FLASH to TURBULENCE. But if there’s one identity that she’ll likely be remembered for assuming, then it’s the darkly heroic music of the animated Batman, a lavish, film noir sound that embodied the WB network’s retro vision of the Caped Crusader, one that many fans still view as the finest representation of their DC icon. Walker’s work wasn’t simply “cartoon” music that […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND (3,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/21/2012
SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND soundtrack | ©2011 La La Land Records

A year before Johnny Rico screamed, “Kill ‘em all!” towards the bug planet of Klendathu, space marines were shouting their battle cries at Chigg fighters on the deepest galactic skies of the small screen. And just as Basil Poledouris applied symphonic battle fury to that film’s classic score, Shirley Walker showed she had the right, manly militaristic stuff to blast aliens to the tune of a 1996 Emmy scoring nomination for SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND. X-FILES. Producers Glenn Morgan and James Wong followed up that show’s tenuous genre tone with this outright sci-fi series, their first with Walker, who’d go […]Read On »


COMMENTS (0)

CD Review: FINAL DESTINATION 5 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/28/2011
FINAL DESTINATION 5 soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

Death wasn’t proud when it took Shirley Walker after her three, mordantly thrilling scores to the FINAL DESTINATION saga. And though its fifth verse is the same as the first, Walker’s black-humored approach has been continued with telltale, twisted finesse by Brian Tyler, who joined the franchise with entry four. Even with all those numbers, the series has arguable found its best footing since the original with five, buoyed on by Tyler’s bombastic approach that plays each ghastly Rube-Goldberg gore wind-up with the freshness of the series’ first death. Beginning with a rock guitar and orchestral head banger that throws […]Read On »


COMMENTS (1)
Increase your website traffic with Attracta.com

Dr.5z5 Open Feed Directory

bottom round