Author Archive

ARRIVAL: Composer Johan Johannsson learns to speak in alien tongues – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/20/2016
ARRIVAL soundtrack | ©2016 Deutsche Grammophon

Maybe it’s something in the water in Iceland that’s produced an invasion of mournfully beautiful and stylistically innovative musicians, each setting out to revolutionize the word with a tonal language of ear-opening, futuristic art. In much the same way that Bjork has caught the world’s attention with her mind blowing take on pop, Johann Johannson has been terraforming a sometimes typical landscape of film scoring into a thing of haunting beauty. Listening to such works as PRISONERS, McCANICK, FREE THE MIND and his Oscar-nominated THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING and SICARIO are haunting journeys into humanity at its worst, and best. Low, nearly sub-sonic […]Read On »


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MOONLIGHT: Composer Nicholas Britell gets classically serious in the down low hood – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 11/05/2016

In a tough urban environment, being loud and proud is something reserved for the macho occupations of drug dealing and gangsterism, certainly not in the far more vulnerable act of proclaiming oneself as gay. It’s a contrast that marks both filmmaker Barry Jenkins’ artistically subtle approach to MOONLIGHT, and his composer Nicholas Britell’s classically ethereal score. As divided into three “chapters,” Jenkins paints the quiet coming of age of Chiron, the seemingly meek son of a crack addicted mother who falls under the foster fatherhood of the sympathetic dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali, currently impressing as the far more villainous crime kingpin […]Read On »


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THE ACCOUNTANT: Composer Mark Isham plays a unique set of action skills – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/15/2016
THE ACCOUNTANT composer Mark Isham | ©2016 Mark Isham

  One might expect composer Mark Isham to have had a tender musical upbringing that resulted in a soft-spoken composer who carried a powerfully blown trumpet. No doubt he was given some very different life choices than Chris – a highly functioning autistic youth with a natural gift for math and an equally big bullying target on his back, one that makes his military dad train Chris and brother in the killer skills that mature a budding genius into “The Accountant’s” cross between Rain Man and The Punisher. Certainly one of the crazier Hollywood films to give socially challenged characters […]Read On »


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PHANTASM RAVAGER: Director David Hartman takes on The Tall Man – Exclusive Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/07/2016
PHANTASM RAVAGER | ©2016 Well Go USA Entertainment

Where many long-surviving horror franchises are in the process of continually rebooting their characters with little sense of continuity or care, the PHANTASM series has stood out since 1979 for mostly using the same faces in front of and behind the camera. It’s a sense of familiarity, and family that has endeared a legion of “phans” to the series, giving them a personal sense of identification not only for the undead-battling brothers Mike and Jody (A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury) and their best bud Reggie “The Cream Man” (Reggie Bannister), but also has made us love the gravely humored Tall […]Read On »


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SULLY: Musicians Christian Jacob and Tierney Sutton bring soulful jazz to new Clint Eastwood film

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/26/2016
SULLY soundtrack | ©2016 Varese Sarabande Records

Catastrophe and American heroism have long been passengers together in Hollywood, as square-jawed, macho men save the chosen few with the aid of scores as fiery as their commanding voices. But sometimes real life miraculously allows everyone involved in a disaster to not only survive, but to become a movie whose savior is as resonantly soft-spoken as his score. Such is the astonishing case to be seen, and heard in filmmaker Clint Eastwood’s gripping, and moving dramatization of “The Miracle on the Hudson,” when white-haired pilot Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger somehow managed to land U.S. Airway Flight 1549 in New York […]Read On »


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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: Composer Simon Franglen takes James Horner for a final ride – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/25/2016
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN soundtrack | ©2016 Sony Classical Records

Few fans were aware of James Horner’s taste for daredevil thrills that made the soft-spoken composer rival just about any of the action heroes he scored. When Horner’s plane crashed into the desert far outside of Hollywood, a legion of admirers were at first astonished to find out how he perished, then swiftly overcome by the shockwave of just what the sudden loss of one of modern film scoring’s most notable signature voices meant. For where so many of Horner’s compatriots had fallen to the wayside over the decades when he first came to the fore, Horner had been on […]Read On »


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Alex Somers scores a mystical trip with CAPTAIN FANTASTIC – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/14/2016
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC soundtrack | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

If an alt. rock band has captured a spirit of ethereal, Earth mother transcendence, then the gentle, drifting melodies and angelic voice of Iceland’s Sigur Ros could be considered the equivalent of one-ness with the woods. Two vital parts of a sound that’s drawn a cult-like following around the world are Alex Somers and Jón “Jónsi” Þór Birgisson, otherwise known as the band Jónsi and Alex. Having met when both were students at Berklee’s College of Music, the home of so many composers to be, Somers would travel to lifemate Birgisson’s frost-covered home, creating art and albums that were as […]Read On »


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SAUSAGE PARTY composer Christopher Lennertz creates beautiful music for filthy edibles – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/13/2016
SAUSAGE PARTY soundtrack | ©2014 Madison Gate Records

In person or conducting, Christopher Lennertz has a boyishly enthusiastic personality that could easily make you imagine he was a member of The Goonies just a few decades before. So it’s no surprise that he’s becoming a go-to composer for funny animal kids’ movies are increasingly playing a part on a diverse resume with the likes of ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS, HOP, MARMADUKE and CATS & DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE.  It’s a merry melody orchestral style that sings with colorful brightness and adventure. Yet in R-rating land, Lennertz is having just as much fun getting down and dirty for […]Read On »


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Composer Jay Wadley musically schools Logan Lerman’s INDIGNATION – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/12/2016
INDIGNATION soundtrack | ©2016 Nettwerk Records

A time capsule in many, almost outrageous respects, INDIGNATION takes us back to 1951, a year when youths went to college for a stringent education, as opposed to schooling themselves with beer and girls. The decade’s beginning was also marked by a “police action” in Korea and a home front war against sex, whose acts taken with utter casualness now could result in social shaming, or far worse back in The Day. It’s into this Puritanical environment of higher learning that the intellectually strident Marcus (Logan Lerman) tries to find himself at a college in Cleveland, rebelling against his provincially Jewish […]Read On »


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Steven Price scores with the SUICIDE SQUAD – Interview

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/14/2016
SUICIDE SQUAD soundtrack | ©2016 Water Tower Records

From THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN to THE DIRTY DOZEN, Hollywood scores have rejoiced in teams of bad-asses determined to go out in a blaze of glory. But seldom has a composer done a Holy Hell blow out like Steven Price with SUICIDE SQUAD. Packing together a rogues gallery of wannabe Batman killers into a force of extraordinarily evil magnitude, the Oscar winner of GRAVITY creates an ironically unintended superhero score to kill them all. Taken from Arkham Asylum for their mad skills with weapons, sorcery, mutant powers and sensual psychotic chops, Price brings the hybrid rage of today’s action scoring to the next level, blending […]Read On »


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