CD Review: THE WOLVERINE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/25/2013
THE WOLVERINE soundtrack | ©2013 Sony Music

For a composer with muttonchops when it comes to horror scoring, Marco Beltrami has shown his talent for playing supernatural superheroes with the likes of The Crow and Hellboy. Taking multiple stabs at his second Marvel character after his berserker score for BLADE II, Beltrami actually ends up giving powerful restraint to his take on Weapon X for THE WOLVERINE. Dealing with a mutant whose powers of self-healing and longevity were God-given before his protruding finger-razors were souped-up with adamantium, Beltrami is more musically interested in playing a bub battling with his own inner demons, a man who’d far rather […]Read On »


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CD review: MONSTERS UNIVERSITY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/16/2013
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY soundtrack | ©2013 Walt Disney Records

As the composer who first put Pixar on the CG toon map with TOY STORY, Randy Newman has had a gleefully antic time with the company’s armadas of cute playthings and bugs. Perhaps it was because the creatures of MONSTERS, INC. were far more furry friend than fiend that Newman’s Carl Stalling-esque approach stood out for its mischievousness and warmth- his over-the-top toon sound perfect at playing a one-eyed goblin and giant blue beast as big softies. Now Randy Newman gets to return a decade later with Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan in this winningly pleasant prequel that takes […]Read On »


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CD review: ROSEWOOD soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/14/2013
ROSEWOOD soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Beyond exploring other galaxies and ravishingly exotic lands, the urbane composer John Williams has found a rich, melodic vein to mine in the south from THE REIVERS‘ coming of age to CONRACK‘s rural school and the comedy-drama car chase that marked Williams’ first collaboration with Steven Spielberg on THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS. But this Queens’ native’s way of knowing how to wield a guitar, jaw harp and harmonica like a regular good old boy would also show the region at its ugliest in a Florida town called ROSEWOOD, whose white population expelled its black populace during one murderous night. While John […]Read On »


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CD review: THALE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/13/2013
THALE soundtrack | ©2013 Movie Score Media

From child vampires to giant trolls and Santa’s naked evil helpers, strange creatures have increasingly been appearing from the Nordic regions. THALE is an especially striking, coccyx-accented young woman to arrive from these hinterlands. And the mystery behind her is played for all of its beautiful eeriness by composers Raymond Enoksen and Geirmund Simonsen, musical creature hunters who’ve yielded stunning findings for this new wave of “fairy tale” horror pictures, whose originality is rapidly putting Hollywood’s genre films to shame. The fiddle seems an indigenous instrument to this isolated, rustic lands of forest and snow, so it’s appropriate that THALE […]Read On »


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CD review: WORLD WAR Z soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/11/2013
WORLD WAR Z soundtrack | ©2013 Warner Bros. Records

Sure Marco Beltrami scored the first movie in zombie history that elicited a tear-jerking lump in one’s throat instead of ripping it out. But just because Beltrami did such a great job on the simillarly terrific WARM BODIES, don’t think the guy behind SCREAM, HELLBOY and THE THING has gone all soft and emo on us as WORLD WAR Z shows with music-gnashing global destruction. Imagine ten thousand Ghost Faces piling on top of each other to make mincemeat out of humanity, and you’ll hear the relentless, rhythmic rage that’s made Beltrami the go-to guy for horror scoring. There’s tons […]Read On »


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CD review: AFTER EARTH soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/10/2013
AFTER EARTH soundtrack | ©2013 Sony Music

They may have started off with the THE SIXTH SENSE. But with one godawful M. Night Shyamalan movie after the next, the one thing you can be assured of is a very good score by his musical enabler James Newton Howard. His scoring always manages to make the absurdity that the director’s fallen into just a bit less goofy, whether it’s using solo violins to embody killer planets for THE HAPPENING or LADY IN THE WATER‘s rapturously symphonic fairy tale. While there’s no surprise that Howard has risen to the challenge with AFTER EARTH, it’s no small help to his […]Read On »


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CD review: YELLOW ROCK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/09/2013
YELLOW ROCK soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

As every western from ULANZA’S GOLD to JEREMIAH JOHNSON has proven, two big no-no’s for the white man is to go crazy for precious minerals, let alone violate a sacred Indian burial ground. Both are done in spades for the indie oater YELLOW ROCK, as a well-intentioned search party spins out of control with greed to the accompaniment of a vengeful, straight-arrow score by Randy Miller. An underrated, orchestral composer for such films as HELLRAISER III, WITHOUT LIMITS and TV movie spins on DARKMAN and FIRESTARTER,  Miller has always put impressive thematic muscle into his work. His talent is especially […]Read On »


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CD review: WHAT MAISIE KNEW soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/08/2013
WHAT MAISE KNEW soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

As a composer with a sensibility as rhythmic as it is eccentrically loopy, Devotchka’s Nick Urata has captured the ups and downs of adult relationships with such charming scores as CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, RUBY SPARKS and ARTHUR NEWMAN. What makes WHAT MAISIE KNEW particularly striking is how gentle Urata is in his approach, but no less ironic as he evokes a children’s sensibility to depict a little girl who’s caught in a tug of war between her divorced parents and their new amours. It’s an “Alice in Wonderland” approach where a fantasia of bells, gentle pianos, halting strings and a […]Read On »


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CD review: BENEATH and WE STEAL SECRETS

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/04/2013
BENEATH soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

Spinning out a groovily weird indie score beat with the likes of ANOTHER EARTH, 28 HOTEL ROOMS and NOBODY WALKS, the collective called Fall On Your Sword (otherwise known as Will Bates, doing that Daft Punk mask think on his company’s website) has managed to sound different with each soundtrack, especially when dealing with the dual horrors of killer fish and our government’s clandestine activities. Probably the wackiest, and perhaps creepiest musical-design treatment that a mega-piranha has yet gotten, BENEATH uses teeth-scraping metallic effects and berserk buzzing, so much so that the score’s subject feels like it’s about a swarm […]Read On »


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CD review: DRESSED TO KILL soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/23/2013
DRESSED TO KILL soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Filmmaker Brian De Palma couldn’t have asked for a better composer to assist in his stylish Alfred Hitchcock dress-ups for SISTERS  and OBSESSION than the composer the Master of Suspense did wrong with TORN CURTAIN. After Bernard Herrmann’s passing, a talented Italian named Pino Donaggio, who’d thrilled with the right musical stuff whilst pursuing DON’T LOOK NOW‘s killer dwarf about Venice, stepped into the maestro’s music shoes to perfectly replicate Herrmann’s identity in a way that would make Kim Novak jealous. Of the De Palma-Donaggio collaborations that included CARRIE, BODY DOUBLE, BLOW OUT and RAISING CAIN, none reached the stimulating […]Read On »


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