CD Review: THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/06/2011
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T. Soundtrack | ©2010 Film Score Monthly

There were some pretty bizarre kids’ movies back in the day like SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. But no now grown-up cult item still has the tuneful catchiness of 1953’s 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T, which stands as the only insane collaboration between uber-serious producer Stanley Kramer, phantasmagorical children’s author Dr. Seuss, and Friedrich Hollaender, a German cabaret composer whose political whimsy would see him sent packing from Nazi land to a Hollywood career. This colorful fantasy about a piano-hating kid’s ultimate bad dream would see Hollaender put Seuss’ wonderful gibberish to melody, resulting in a number of tongue-twisting delights […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE TOURIST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/05/2011
THE TOURIST soundtrack | ©2010 Varese Sarabande Records

Forget Johnny Depp. No man is proving to be a more reliable companion to Angelina Jolie’s mysterious allure like James Newton Howard, who turns in his second terrific score for the actress after this year’s SALT. While there’s a surfeit of that film’s ballsy spy action here, THE TOURIST is mostly plying the same kind of luxurious, old-world waters that Henry Mancini and John Barry did when movies like CHARADE and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE were the height of escapist fashion- a throwback appeal that THE TOURIST pulls off with panache. Most of this music is the elegant equivalent of […]Read On »


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CD Review: HAPPY NOW soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
Happy Now soundtrack | ©2010 Movie Score Media

Euro-specialist label Movie Score Media now goes digging into the ghosts of their favored composers’ pasts with their “Discovery Collection”- a cool niche within a niche that reveals what might be a real spook with 2001’s long-buried score to HAPPY NOW. And it’s likely that ATONEMENT Oscar winner Dario Marianelli is similarly smiling due to the light that MSM is shining on his atypically wacky mystery score for an uber-serious composer, one which chronicles a Welsh politician’s amazement that the girl he and his mate most definitely murdered years ago is now back in town. Listening to the soundtrack’s Theremin-like […]Read On »


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CD Review: 48 HRS. soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 02/03/2011
48 HRS. soundtrack | © 2011 Intrada Records

While James Horner showed he could go where no Enterprise scorer had gone before with his breakthrough, nautical-styled space adventure for 1982’s STAR TREK II, it would be that year’s 48 HRS. which truly showed him off as being far from a one-note composer. If audiences hadn’t seen this kind of hilariously foul-mouthed, squib-filled “buddy cop” movie before, then they certainly hadn’t heard the vibrant, ethnic spin that Horner put on the genre – a ferociously energetic approach that made KHAN’s musical wrath sound positively sedate by comparison. Horner likely keyed off of the manic urban energy that filled Eddie […]Read On »


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CD Review: CLASH OF THE TITANS soundtrack (3,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/31/2011
Clash of the Titans Soundtrack | ©2010 Intrada Records

With no offense to Ramin Djawadi’s rock-fueled percussion that accompanied the more-than-manly, 3-D CGI revamp of this year’s CLASH, it’s likely that Laurence Rosenthal’s symphonically lush, hero-making music of the gods was the stuff that played in Perseus’ ears as he slew Medusa and turned the Kraken to stone. It’s an old school style that will also forever identify CLASH for a certain geek generation, for whom no amount of cool computer effects will ever replace Ray Harryhausen’s home-made brand of stop-motion wonder, for whom Rosenthal’s score provided a more than worthy send-off. Now Intrada pays tribute to the alter […]Read On »


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CD Review: BRUC soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
Bruc Soundtrack | ©2010 Movie Score Media

You can likely put the number of Napoleon-ea action scores on a short list, a unique quality that makes the genre open musical territory for Spanish-born (and American-trained) composer Xavier Capellas, who’s handled the scoring chores on such Spanish-funded horror pictures as BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR and FAUST. BRUC carries as similarly unhinged quality as a Catalonian goes Rambo on the Emperor’s assassins who pursue him through the mountainous wilds of Monteressat, giving Capellas the opportunity to unleash heroic hell in one of the more weirdly off-kilter period scores since Joe Lo Duca’s BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF. Here more symphonically traditional adventure […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE BOUNTY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
The Bounty Soundtrack | ©2010 Buysoundtrax

The idea of having someone else try to re-create the inimitable sound of Vangelis is enough to induce a Vietnam flashback to the infamous New American Orchestra’s “adaptation” of 1982’s BLADE RUNNER, done at the time of the film’s release to cash in on fans’ desperate desire for an official soundtrack that would be twenty-five years in coming. While admirers of his similarly excellent 1984 score to the BOUNTY are still waiting to hear its original tracks release beyond two cuts on Vangelis’ “Themes” CD, Buysoundtrax’ “new” BOUNTY album definitely won’t make the composer’s crew seasick, especially with Dominik Hauser […]Read On »


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CD Review: FAMILY PLOT (5,000 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/27/2011
Family Plot soundtrack | ©2010 Varese Sarabande Records

In his 50-year plus career, Alfred Hitchcock had his macabre way with every top composer from Miklos Rozsa to Dmitri Tiomkin (not to mention Bernard Herrmann). So it seemed fitting that he’d go out with a bang by using John Williams, whose suspenseful career was on the fast track with the just-released JAWS. Instead of turning to the knife-slashing suspense one would expect Hitch to sum up his repertoire with, the director went for far more light-hearted fare about a sleazy psychic and her pursuers, taking Williams down a deliciously twisted road of dark comedy that would serve as a […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE ILLUSIONIST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/26/2011
THE ILLUSIONIST soundtrack | ©2010 Milan Records

There have been many terrific, epically in-your-face scores for this year’s exceedingly tasty crop of Hollywood CGI toons. So it’s particularly nice to hear the powerful gentility of his beautifully animated French film, one that just received a deserved Oscar bone nod to the quickly vanishing hand-drawn pictures that used to be the category’s, and industry norm. That’s also very much the theme for director-animator-composer Sylvain Chomet’s fable about the waning days of vaudeville, as embodied by a magician who plies his rabbit about Europe in the early 60’s. Where Chomet’s equally wonderful, and far more antic TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE […]Read On »


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CD Review: POLTERGEIST Special Edition (10,000 Edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/24/2011
Poltergeist (c) 2010 Film Score Monthly

Certainly one of the loudest, and most exciting horror scores belongs inside the television set of the Freeling family, as installed by Jerry Goldsmith. Though a master of just about every movie genre, horror had provided a creatively malefic voice for Goldsmith. He’d marry Bartok-esque impressionism and old scratch violins for THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, blow on MAGIC’s unbalanced harmonicas and win his only Oscar for chanting THE OMEN’s black mass.


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