CD Review: PARADISE / CAN’T BUY ME LOVE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/25/2013
PARADISE / CAN'T BUY ME LOVE soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

As a soundtrack label particularly in love with unsung gems from the ’80s and ’90s with every release from JUDGEMENT NIGHT to FRIGHT NIGHT, Intrada’s busy release schedule often has a way of surprising fans of two decades when groovy keyboards met lush orchestras. Now a particularly nice two-fer arrives that demonstrates comedy-centric composers at their symphonically sweeping best – one soundtrack accompanying an outright drama, and the other helping to give melodic depth to a sweet pop morality fable. 1991’s PARADISE used the then-marriage of stars Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson to give extra emotional heft to a bereft […]Read On »


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CD Review: WYATT EARP: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/24/2013
WYATT EARP: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Sure, 1993’s TOMBSTONE may have smoked 1994’s WYATT EARP at the box office O.K. Corral, a place where near-simultaneous movies with same subject matter are forced to shoot it out – the spoils usually afforded to the first picture into Dodge City. In this case, TOMBSTONE certainly had it over EARP in terms of length and enjoyability. And its terrific score by SILVERADO‘s Bruce Broughton was certainly a gunslinger to be reckoned with, even more ironically that it was Lawrence Kasdan’s western that truly impacted his composing career. But now with La La Land revealing the epic scope of James […]Read On »


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CD Review: BLONDY (500 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/23/2013
BLONDY soundtrack | ©2013 Quartet Records

A prolific Italian composer whose hundred-plus film output ranged everywhere between the killer sea life of CAVE OF THE SHARKS and TENTACLES to the sexploitation of MIDNIGHT BLUE and SKI MISTRESS, Stelvio Cipriani’s beautifully melodic scores have always imparted a touch of class, particularly for pictures that combined thrills with heavy eroticism. 1976s BLONDY (also know as VORTEX) featured Ingmar Bergman star Bibi Andersson having a decidedly non-philosophical affair, though the movie’s real object of stripped-down attention was French actress Catherine Jourdan. Perhaps her most enticing lover here is Cipriani’s gorgeous score, whose languorous, stroking theme for piano, silken strings […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE KING’S WHORE (500 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/22/2013
THE KING'S WHORE soundtrack | ©2013 Music Box Records

One of France’s great melodists, Gabriel Yared’s impossibly lush, romantic scores like Oscar-nominated THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and Oscar winning ENGLISH PATIENT have recalled such melodic masters as Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. So one can imagine the spot-on results when Yared truly climbs into those costumed shoes when the assignment asks for that style, which is the theme of this splendid three-for release from the French label Music Box Records. First up, it’s hard to imagine a more blunt title than THE KING’S WHORE  a very good bodice ripper from 1990, with Timothy Dalton employing all of his dashing, royal […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MATRIX RELOADED (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/21/2013
THE MATRIX RELOADED: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

When THE MATRIX appeared in 1999, Don Davis’ score was one of those thunderbolt game changers that pretty much re-wrote the book on sci-fi scoring. Taking the already revolutionary approach of such modern classicist-to-film composers as John Corigliano (ALTERED STATES) and Elliot Goldenthal (ALIEN 3) into the computer reality of bullet time kung fu action, Davis’ use of high-tech electronics and a distorted, brass orchestral writing was a kick-ass head trip that created an oppressively thrilling sense of darkness and defiance against the future’s robot overlords. Davis’ fusion of melody and musical sound design was a classic in every sense […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE MIRACLE WORKER (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/20/2013
THE MIRACLE WORKER soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland

Helen Keller remains the most famous special needs student in history, her struggle to the light after being looked at as being blind, deaf and dumb guided to the light by the miraculous efforts of her teacher Annie Sullivan. With Keller’s valiant lessons in living fully first detailed in her book, then seen on stage in William Gibson’s play, it was only natural that Hollywood would afford a completely sensory version of struggle with Arthur Penn’s Oscar-winning 1962 adaptation of THE MIRACLE WORKER. One of its biggest challenges was given to Laurence Rosenthal, who had to conjure the sound of […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/19/2013
THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland

Sure Alfred Newman is known for towering, drama-filled epics like THE ROBE and HOW THE WEST WAS WON. But I have to confess that I’m even more game for the legendary composer’s far frothier stuff. It seems that Newman was just as prolific, if unsung with sweet, jazzy comedy, an effervescent touch for orchestra and brass that Kritzerland is finally giving a chance to shine with such confections as TAKE CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Now THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY is all ours for Newman’s 1961 score, whose wedding bells herald Fred Astaire’s arrival […]Read On »


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CD Review: PLANES and TURBO soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/18/2013
PLANES soundtrack | ©2013 Walt Disney Records

Mark Mancina has a long history of scoring talking animals for The Mouse House, from his arrangements on Hans Zimmer’s THE LION KING to his own adventurous score to TARZAN and BROTHER BEAR. However, his new, exhilarating work for a little plane that could flies far more in the spirit of TOP GUN and REMEMBER THE TITANS than a reincarnated bruin. With noble trumpets, rock-military rhythm, a rousing chorus and a sweepingly courageous orchestra, one might easily expect the underdog team entering a Midwestern stadium for the big game they somehow made it to. It’s a propulsive, flesh and blood […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE GRANDMASTER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE GRANDMASTER soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

If anything, Wong Kar-Wai’s movies are about the lack of movement, an overrated auteur reputation built on languid pacing and dreamily unreadable characters. All of this makes his choice to make a high-kicking Ip Man picture all the more surprising, and for once interesting. As expected, THE GRANDMASTER comes across as the artsiest Hong Kong chopsocky movie ever made, a stunning visual poetry that often beats down the always-spectacular action choreography by MATRIX master Yuen Woo-Ping. That leaves two musical martial artists named Shigeru Umebayashi and Nathaniel Mechaly to really do the heavy lifting when it comes to conveying physical […]Read On »


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CD Review: HEMLOCK GROVE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/10/2013
HEMLOCK GROVE soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

While he’s more than shown his blunt orchestral adeptness with the shrieking torture-horror scores for his two unsettling stays in the European HOSTEL,Nathan Barr is a composer who’s most unsettling creative talents lie at home in rustic America. The vampire bayou of TRUE BLOOD has made him the horror-scoring equivalent of Flannery O’Connor, creating music whose dulcimers and stings enticingly reek of Southern gothic black magic. Even when Barr packs up and travels to the imaginary Pennsylvania town of HEMLOCK GROVE, it’s still hard to take the country-sounding horror out of the boy.HOSTEL creator Eli Roth has given this Netflix […]Read On »


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