CD Review: FOOTNOTE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/15/2012
FOONOTE soundtrack | ©2012 Milan Records

Who’d have thought that the seemingly boring process of Talmudic translation would result in pokey pizzicato music that makes you think you’re listening to the score of the latest dumb multiplex pratfall fest, as mixed with the zanier stylings from THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. However, what you’re actually experiencing is the ever-maddening Tom and Jerry sound of a cat and mouse battle between hyper-intellectual father and son, the smarts behind this seemingly goofball soundtrack brilliantly captured by Israeli composer Amit Poznansky. Where so many ultra-serious pictures from the Holy Land are as dramatically dry as its sands, FOOTNOTE turns out […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE WOMAN IN BLACK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/11/2012
THE WOMAN IN BLACK soundtrack | ©2011 Silva Screen Records

When horror connoisseurs think back on the classic legacy of Hammer films, they’ll usually envision creatures prowling amidst haunted, Gothic abodes on dark and stormy nights. The musical equivalent to these memorable images was equally as atmospheric, as such Hammer “house” composers as James Bernard (HORROR OF DRACULA), Benjamin Frankel (CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF) and Harry Robinson (TWINS OF EVIL) applied melodically fearsome orchestral strains to the studio’s old-school terrors. However, it’s not like Hammer didn’t thrust their monsters into the modern age with equally contemporary scores, a creative attitude that’s typified the studio’s recent rebirth through such pictures as […]Read On »


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CD Review: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/10/2012
EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC soundtrack | ©2011 Nathan Furst

Ennio Morricone has gotten some real humdingers to score in his more-than-prolific career, particularly when it comes to such crazy genre pictures as ORCA, HOLOCAUST 2000 and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS. Yet while these movies might be inadvertently hilarious, Morricone has always played the most ungodly material with a straight face, no more so than with EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC. One of this sequel’s many hilarious mistakes was turning its evil spirit into an African locust demon named Pazazu. Yet it’s this same tribal spirit that makes Ennio Morricone’s score for an otherwise woeful film so intriguing. With high-pitched […]Read On »


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CD Review: A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/28/2012
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s part of this seditious series’ way of twisting straight-laced society that the latest HAROLD & KUMAR movie – A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS –  has gotten William Ross to do a lushly melodic score for number three in 3-D. After all, this is the THUMBELINA composer who’s also orchestrated the warm, fuzzy, child-friendly sound of Alan Silvestri’s THE POLAR EXPRESS and A CHRISTMAS CAROL.  So it’s fitting he’d apply said holiday magic to a VERY special yuletide film filled with s pot-crazed super baby, a sadistic Russian and an ornery Mexican hombre. But it’s in how well Ross nails that […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/27/2012
SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS soundtrack | ©2011 Water Tower Music

Sherlock Holmes was always a bit of a stuffed British shirt before Guy Ritchie gave him a rock and roll, martial arts attitude that re-invigorated the character with his SHERLOCK HOLMES franchise and its latest installment SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS. Part and pipe of Ritchie’s in-your-face makeover was Hans Zimmer’s audacious score, whose crashing player pianos, scratchy strings and bombastic orchestra gave a terrifically fun, steampunk attitude to Holmes, in much the same way as his defiantly anti-historical music brought unexpected juice to the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN soundtracks. Now Holmes and his ever reluctant partner Watson are […]Read On »


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CD Review: HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/24/2012
HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED ANNIVERSARY soundtrack | ©2011 Microsoft Studios

It’s been ten years since The Master Chief took on The Covenant to essentially create the modern video game industry. And through numerous sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs, the legend of the HALO name brand has been the one ringworld to rule them all. But just as importantly, HALO helped show the non-gaming industry that music for the medium could rival the musical quality, and production values heard on television and film. Credit for that can be given to HALO composers Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, the distinct voices that have been heard through all the main HALO games. While it […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE IDES OF MARCH soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/23/2012
THE IDES OF MARCH soundtrack | ©2011 Varese Sarabande Records

In the midst of a very busy year that’s included THE TREE OF LIFE, EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE,  the finale of HARRY POTTER and the ironic opening and closing titles of CARNAGE, French-gone-gloriously Hollywood composer Alexandre Desplat found time to expose our nation’s king-making machine during the month of THE IDES OF MARCH. Far more serious in tone than his previous, ironically offbeat political takedown for GHOST WRITER, Desplat lets his Americana flag fly here, and at low, concerned mast. A Copeland-esque orchestra reveals George Clooney’s potential president as yet another moralist full of hot air, with a trumpet […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHAME soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/22/2012
SHAME soundtrack | ©2011 Sony Masterworks

SHAME director Steve McQueen (soon never to be confused with the actor) takes us on the musically eclectic predilections of a sex addict’s listening tastes, both from Brandon’s utterly confident position as a vinyl-obsessed pick-up artist to expressing the unrelenting carnal drive whose reasons are never expressed in the film. A bit more of a glossy cousin to the sensual, s & m likes of 9 1/2 WEEKS than SHAME would like to admit, McQueen’s choice cuts lend class to the unseemly, ranging from Glen Gould’s vocalized Bach playing to the seductive retro beats of Blondie’s “Rapture” and Chic’s “I […]Read On »


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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 »


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CD Review: TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY soundtrack | ©2011 Silva Screen Records

Having dealt with political subterfuge in “Che” and his Oscar-nominated score for “The Constant Gardener,” Spaniard Alberto Iglesias gets to take on Britain’s spy agency of The Circus for the second major adaptation of John Le Carre’s classic novel TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. But whether Iglesias was dealing with Latin rhythms or African percussion on his previous ventures into subterfuge, the composer’s work has always been distinguished by how simultaneously cerebral and melodically entrancing it’s been. That talent is taken to a whole new, subtle level here for what might be the calmest, action-less and near-geriatric spy movie of all […]Read On »


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