CD Review: PRANCER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/28/2014
PRANCER soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Holiday cheer is now abounding at Intrada Records with the recent releases of Alan Silvestri’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL and Bruce Broughton’s THE THANKSGIVING PROMISE. But perhaps their most unexpected early present to arrive is Maurice Jarre’s score for 1989s PRANCER. While this tale of a reindeer that may or may not be Santa’s favorite beast of burden might not have the cult cache of “A Christmas Story,” “Prancer” is certainly a chestnut for the cable generation. The star at the top of its feel-good Xmas tree is a truly beautiful score by Maurice Jarre. Then at the height of his […]Read On »


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CD Review: FROZEN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/27/2014
FROZEN soundtrack | ©2013 Walt Disney Records

An iced cornucopia of The Magic Kingdom’s greatest fairy tale hits that reprises the Hans Christian Anderson LITTLE MERMAID magic, FROZEN brims over with cute sidekicks, a dashing hero and the upped ante of two princesses – one with a power that Professor Xavier would admire. It all makes for exactly the kind of pre-teen soundtrack catnip that set the studio’s animated standard for a reason, and is once again delivered at the height of hiply imaginative panache. FROZEN‘s memorable numbers have been co-written by the WONDER PETS duo of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (who also happen to have […]Read On »


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CD Review: VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/26/2014
VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland

Kritzerland is proving to be the France of retro record labels by being just about the first company to get into the Jerry Lewis soundtrack musical catalogue, first with Walter Scharf’s delightful THE GEISHA BOY and now with the double-header of VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET and THE DELICATE DELINQUENT, two scores that reflect Lewis’ wacky ingenuity. The star often had fun playing off of movie genres, and his chance to indulge in sci-fi tropes is also heard in the absolute delight that composer Leigh Harline has in making hay with aliens-among-us clichés, as particularly heard in The Theremin. Its […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE FIFTH ESTATE

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/19/2013
THE FIFTH ESTATE soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

Where you could have synth keyboards or an orchestra playing computer espionage in the dial-up modem days of WAR GAMES or THE NET, hacking has now grown to become an international enterprise of the hip and politically savvy. And along with these very good looking nerds, the techno thriller genre’s music has evolved into lightning-fast connection combos of trance-industrial rhythms, as often practiced by DJ’s getting their feet wet as film composers. So it’s nice to hear a composer who helped rep a new wave of film music back in the 80s with the oddball likes of BLOOD SIMPLE and […]Read On »


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CD Review: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/18/2013
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

Those expecting the kind of orchestrally ferocious, percussion-gnashing cannibal family score that usually comes with the rural, inbred territory aren’t going to get the expected soundtrack serving, in spite of one clan’s gruesome steadfastness that WE ARE WHAT WE ARE. The credit for this unusually intelligent, and delicate approach to a genre that splatters both flesh and instruments with equal helter-skelter abandon goes to the collaboration between composer Jeff Grace and director Jim Mickle, who previously collaborated on the apocalyptic vampire fable “Stake Land,” and now has relocated a Mexican meat-eater film for upstate New York with the same brand […]Read On »


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CD Review: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/17/2013
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Where most Hollywood films do their best to instill some sense of reality into true-life movies, director Paul Greengrass has the ability to make his re-enactments real, which makes it no easy task for the composer to musically capture that sense of cinema verite. Where John Powell did an admirable job of creating an inevitable sense of dread with the ticking time-bomb percussion, Arabic suspense and tragic heroism that would send Greengrass’ UNITED 93 to its awful fate, the director’s new, equally gripping, but far “happier” ending for the true story of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS demands a way more visceral approach, and […]Read On »


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CD Review: BOUNTY KILLER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/16/2013
BOUNTY KILLER soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

Greg Edmondson certainly knows something about a trashed-out future after his twangy sci-fi score for the cult TV show FIREFLY. And when it comes to high adventure, his videogame music for the blockbuster “Uncharted” series stands as the genre’s answer to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Though made for decidedly less than that film, his new score for this post-apocalyptic mash-up of MAD MAX and TANK GIRL is a big bunch of balls-out fun. With a rousing orchestral performance that just might make Nashville a new symphonic scoring destination, Edmondson pours on a sound of bright, galloping nobility that would […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE COUNSELOR soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/15/2013
THE COUNSELOR soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

After such impressive scores as the majestic haunting of THE AWAKENING and the entrancingly downbeat crime drama BLOOD, the prolific English composer Daniel Pemberton finally gets a major Hollywood score for fellow Brit Ridley Scott’s THE COUNSELOR. It’s a gig that lands Pemberton once again on the wrong side of the law, and south of the border as a suave legal eagle gets in way over his head in the Mexican drug business. But that doesn’t mean that Pemberton can’t have black-humored fun with the bloodshed at hand with a nice big helping of Spaghetti Western music. It’s an ironic, […]Read On »


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CD Review: RISING SUN (Limited Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/14/2013
RISING SUN soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland Records

Where most Hollywood “Asian” movies usually kowtowed Orientals into secondary positions below the American actors (though mixed up a bit in this case with the brogue of Sean Connery and the urban cool of Wesley Snipes), we can credit RISING SUN director Philip Kaufman for bringing some level of authenticity to this thriller’s cultural melange by hiring Toru Takemitsu for his sole Hollywood film. One of Japan’s most revered movie composers for his work on KWAIDAN, WOMAN IN THE DUNES and RAN, Takemitsu’s sole work truly stands out for his mastery of the distinctly American genre form known as film noir. […]Read On »


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CD Review: STANDING UP soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/13/2013
STANDING UP soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Brian Tyler is best known for blowing stuff up real good in such might-makes-right scores as THE EXPENDABLES, IRON MAN 3 and THOR: THE DARK WORLD. Easily one of his most deliriously bombastic entries in this action field was for D.J. Caruso’s action thriller EAGLE EYE, which makes their new collaboration on “Standing Up” all the more surprising and powerful. For this story of two decidedly non-testosterone kids who run away from bullying at their summer camp, Tyler and Caruso show that real strength lies from within. It’s a lesson that the composer spells out with one of his most […]Read On »


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