Reviews

CD Review: The Best Scores of 2012

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/06/2013
CLOUD ATLAS soundtrack | ©2012 Water Tower Records

THE BEST SCORES OF 2012 BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin / Cinereach Music) An adolescent’s ability to turn a dangerous world into a place full of fantastical possibility provides the subtext for this strikingly fresh, Cajun-cum-magical realism score by director Benh Zeitlin and co-composer Dan Romer. “Beast’s” flooded island is a palpable, dangerously enchanted place in this jambalaya of music box bells, fiddles and plucked strings, strongly melodic storytelling that dances with local flavor while taking listeners to a truly new, mythic land where giant prehistoric pigs can come to life. In the their native […]Read On »


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CD Review: LOS ANGELES, 1937 (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
LOS ANGELES, 1937 soundtrack | ©2012 Perseverance Records

As Peter Best was to The Beatles, Phillip Lambro is to film scoring history, the musician who could have been a contender if only it was felt that he had the chops to accompany an iconic act. In Lambro’s case, that historically elusive prize was 1975’s CHINATOWN, whose soundtrack he’d labored on before director Roman Polanski and producer Robert Evans summarily tossed the score after a teen-filled test screening (a similar fate that happened to Gabriel Yared years later on “Troy”), leaving Jerry Goldsmith a scant ten days to whip out what’s arguably one of the greatest scores ever written […]Read On »


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CD Review: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN soundtrack (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/05/2013
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

By 1971, the question asked by most over-the-hill Hollywood starlets was “Whatever happened to?” or “What’s the matter?” as their onscreen romantic glamour was traded in for roles as homicidal harpies. In the latter query about WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN, it’s Debbie Reynolds’ dancing teacher who wants to know what the heck is up with her partner Shelly Winters when their dance school for Shirley Temple wannabes starts to hit the bloody skids. Devilish camp humor was a big part of the appeal of watching Grande Dames shrieking whilst holding blunt instruments, “hagsploitation” that marked the studio swan song […]Read On »


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Exclusive Interview: Edward Asner talks GRACE and his return to HAWAII FIVE-0

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 01/04/2013
Ed Asner in HAWAII FIVE-0 - "Kalele" | ©2012 CBS/Norman Shapiro

Right now, Edward Asner is in the play GRACE at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. The show opened Oct. 4 and is closing this Sunday, Jan. 6. Asner will doubtless head into another acting gig. The seven-time Emmy winner, famous to TV viewers for playing Lou Grant on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and LOU GRANT, and beloved by filmgoers of all ages for voicing balloon-maker Carl in UP, took some time to talk about his play, his recent appearances on HAWAII FIVE-0 and what we all can do to make things a little better for each other. ASSIGNMENT X: […]Read On »


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Exclusive Interview: FRINGE star Seth Gabel talks ALLEGIANCE, his work on FRINGE and ARROW

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN
Seth Gabel in ALLEGIENCE | ©2012 XLrator Media

In the film ALLEGIANCE, which opened theatrically last week in New York and this weekend in Los Angeles and Austin and is available on VOD, Seth Gabel stars as National Guard Lieutenant Danny Sefton. It’s 2003 and National Guard companies, much to their surprise (and often dismay), are being shipped to active combat in Iraq. Sefton has gotten himself reassigned so that he won’t have to ship out with the company, but when one of his men goes AWOL, he finds himself grappling with a huge moral crisis, to say nothing of physical danger. Florida-born Gabel spent several seasons on […]Read On »


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CD Review: HAWK THE SLAYER soundtrack (1,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
HAWK THE SLAYER soundtrack | ©2012 Buysoundtrax

There’s perhaps no finer smell of cult cheese then an 80s so-bad-it’s good sword and sorcery movie, a genre that Buysoundtrax seems to love above all other labels as they follow up THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER with this hilariously entertaining gem that started off that decade. But where Albert Pyun’s movie drew from the Hammer ranks by getting VAMPIRE CIRCUS‘ David Whitaker to compose a classically symphonic score, HAWK THE SLAYER director Terry Marcel had LUST FOR A VAMPIRE‘s Harry Robertson (who also produced the picture itself) melds disco with an orchestra for a score of immense guilty pleasures. […]Read On »


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Blu-ray Review: DEATH VALLEY (1982)

By CARL CORTEZ
DEATH VALLEY (1982) Blu-ray | ©2012 Scream! Factory

Stars: Paul Le Mat, Catherine Hicks, Stephen McHattie, Wilford Brimley, Peter Billingsley, Edward Herrmann Writer: Richard Rothstein Director: Dick Richards Distributor: Scream! Factory Suggested Retail Price: $26.99 Scream! Factory is digging deep for great horror movie titles that haven’t been given a proper DVD or Blu-ray release and that continues with this month’s entry DEATH VALLEY from 1982. The notable thing about this movie was that it features Peter Billingsley a year before he made a big splash as Ralphie in the classic A CHRISTMAS STORY. Here, Ralphie, errr, Billy, doesn’t even have to worry about a BB gun, he […]Read On »


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CD Review: CONDORMAN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/03/2013
CONDORMAN soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

For a studio who’s goofier late 70s / early 80s live action efforts involved a cat from outer space, an astronaut in King Arthur’s court and a midnight treasure hunt that tried to rope audiences in by offering a real prize, perhaps no oddball old regime premise was as face-palming as a cartoonist jumping off the Eiffel Tower in a bird suit. But if there was one composer who could turn this kind of Clouseau-esque bumbling into a class act, then it was Henry Mancini, whose score for 1981s CONDORMAN had a feeling of swooping, bold comedic adventure that’s made […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE UNTOUCHABLES: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/02/2013
THE UNTOUCHABLES: LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

Ennio Morricone has never been better then when composing for Sergio Leone’s epics of American gangster-ism, whether it was committed in dust busters for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, or in the flashy 30s hood attire of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. So it seemed only natural when the Italian maestro finally pulled a job for crime-obsessed director Brian De Palma, whose 1987 take on THE UNTOUCHABLES remains not only one of the best TV-to-film translations ever, but a picture where De Palma’s stylistic swagger was a perfect fit for Morricone’s, propelling him to made man status […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Special Edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/01/2013
THE HOBBIT soundtrack | ©2012 WaterTower Music

Probably the best reason to celebrate Peter Jackson’s plodding return to Middle Earth in THE HOBBIT is that it gives Howard Shore a chance to once again make the aural trek from Hobbiton for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. The fact that listeners will feel they’ve already been on this familiarly epic road for a good long time makes for a welcome sense of return to the dictionary’s worth of musical vocabulary that Shore had so painstakingly set up in the previous LORD OF THE RINGS saga. Now THE HOBBIT more than proves the axiom that if it something ain’t […]Read On »


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