Soundtrack Reviews + News

Just uploaded is a quartet of reviews for ongoing (and likely eternal) franchises:

Doctor Who continues to steam through new seasons, and Silva Screen’s latest release features 2+ hours of Murray Gold’s music from Season 6 [M]. Also from Silva is music from Sherlock: Season 1 [M], composed by David Arnold and Michael Price, who do a pretty good job aurally linking the series with the current feature film franchise, scored by Hans Zimmer.

Soundtrack Reviews + News

Just uploaded are a quartet of fun action & sci-fi scores for video games. La-La Land Recorss have released a pair of beautifully mastered 2-disc sets for hans Zimmer's Crysis II [M] and Bear McCreary's SOCOM 4: Navy SEALs [M], and Bioware's released Inon Zur's music from Dragon Age II [M]. I've also added a review of Zur's score for the first Crysis [M] (Sumthing Else Music) to rounf things out.

In a recent interview in May, Winifred Philips spoke to the Sound Byte Blog regarding life as a working film and video game composer. The Q&A runs a meaty 20 mins., and it's a genial piece where Phillips discusses her career, including recent releases such as Sim Animals (2008), Spore Hero (2009), and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010).

Lastly, Universal recently released Ridley Scott's Legend (1986) on Blu-ray, and the Digital Bits noted a few extras from the DVD weren't ported over. Missing are "the 3 animated storyboard sequences, the production notes (that help to provide context for some of the extras), the standard cast & crew bios and - most importantly - the DVD-ROM features which included a script-to-screen viewer." I reviewed the DVD when it emerged in 2002, and I keep having to clarify the following: the Tangerine Dream score is NOT isolated on the DVD; it's the album tracks dumped into a separate audio track *in mono*. It's a useless feature on the DVD and BR, and Universal most likely was told by The Dream's management not to isolated the score in stereo, rather than the studio being cheap.

Those interested in the BR edition can read a Q&A between Film Score Monthly's Andy Dursin and Special Features producer Charles de Lauzirika.






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Action, Baby!

Yes, it’s Friday, the last day of a year I wasn’t crazy about, but at least a year with some solid entertainment and creative efforts worth writing about. Hey, I even got to write about malodorous muck like At Long Last Love [M] (1974), and never hit the shuttle button once (though I did shout at the TV, begging Burt Reynolds  ‘For the love of God, keep your mouth shut!’ when he was a bar or two away from murdering another Cole Porter song.

I dare Shout! Factory to release that film in 2011. They’ve already got Stanley Donen’s Lucky Lady (1975) slated for an early February release, so Peter Bogdanovich’s mess is a natural thematic follow-up.

In any event, the theme of this wave is Action! and it’s headed by Inception, both Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray [M] and the soundtrack CD [M] (Water Tower Music).

It’s interesting to hear people that love the film for its artistry, director Christopher Nolan’s bucking of all-CGI effects, and his scriptorial craftsmanship, and the nay-sayers who found the film either boring, baffling, or annoying.

Inception is sci-fi, which I guess doesn’t appeal the broadest possible audience if there’s no bug-eyed or invading alien monsters like the idiotic ID4 (Independence Day) which raked in a fortune in spite of being a bloated rip-off of Kenneth Johnson’s unsubtle moral parable V.

I mention ID4 because you really have to go back a bit for a major sci-fi film that grabbed the attention of critics and audiences, and while Inception did well, it’s nothing like ID4.

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were never subtle in their work – one German message board poster called 2012 (2009), Emmerich’s most recent I-hate-America volley, as being nothing but crash, crash, boom, boom, bang, bang abfall (which it is) – whereas Inception’s Nolan went for another puzzle film that provokes thought and analysis.

The payoff isn’t people of the world raising their arms and doing the screaming “Yay!” dance of joy (I hate that cliché. Really, really hate that cliché), but rather the smile of personal reward, either from figuring out the puzzle, being surprised by Nolan’s genuine ingenuity, or the outright cleverness of Inception, much in the way Nolan’s Memento (2000) is a his ultimate puzzle film (and David Fincher’s sick little The Game coming in second).

Inception is 2.5 hours long, but it feels like a slightly less than 2 hour movie, which is a hell of an accomplishment from a filmmaking stance because the sense of brisk pacing comes from skillful editing and the filmmaker’s ability to grab the audience and keep their minds busy with puzzles, theories and gradual revelations in spite of actual scenes being ostensibly just dialogue. That’s magic, whether it’s a dialogue film, or a balance of dialogue and action. Working that illusion, but feeding the audience substance.

The only other films that come to mind where a nearly 3 hours felt like 2 are The Right Stuff (an amazing little movie about the pilots in NASA’s Mercury space program, based on Tom Wolfe’s book); and Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece, Heat, incredibly a remake of an utterly mediocre, stilted, and badly dated 1989 TV movie called L.A. Takedown that no one remembers.

A close contender is Milos Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus, and like the aforementioned films, it illustrates the artistry that can exist in a commercial realm if the filmmakers are skilled, have deep passion for the material, and are given wiggle room by the studios.

(Some of you may be thinking ‘Hey! What about Kevin Reynold’s Waterworld or Kevin Costner’s The Postman? and while they initially qualify, those films ultimately fail. The former makes no sense, and the latter loses its mind and becomes a Star Trek episode. Both personal visions feel as long as they are.)

You can regard Amadeus and Inception as art films, but the other two are commercial works by studio system mavericks, and to my eyes The Right Stuff and Heat are the best examples of creating the illusion of fast pacing when the damned movie’s an hour longer.

In any event, since the theme is action – Inception switches to the best James Bond sequence outside of a James Bond film (and puts the makers of Quantum of Solace rightly to shame) – I’ve also uploaded a series of action-related soundtracks.

I’ve an early review of Clint Mansell’s Faster [M] and John Powell’s Fair Game [M] (both from Lakeshore Records), Harry Gregson-Williams ridiculously fun Unstoppable [M] (La-La Land Records), and one of my favourite scores of the year, Guy Michelmore’s Jackboots on Whitehall [M] (MovieScore Music).

Michelmore’s evocation of a 1968 war score is brilliant. Completely (well, almost) straight-faced, and the spirit of Elmer Bernstein is everywhere.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor

KQEK.com

British Bleakism returns to form

I still think when Michael Reeves made The Conqueror Worm / Witchfinder General, in 1968, he didn’t singularly create British Bleakism, but he compacted all the dour elements that the British do so well in cinema.

Granted there are the kitchen sink dramas of the Free Cinema graduates as well as the emotionally grungy works by documentarians and indie filmmakers with a bent on improv and raw emotions, but in terms of delivering misery within a recognizable genre, Reeves did it exceptionally well in his period horror film. People scream in agony, they die horribly, families are torn apart, and a seething anger or acidic self-loathing affect a group of characters who ultimately lose their minds in the end, with nary a happy ray of sunlight beaming from the sky to stop audiences from feeling like walking off a cliff into some crashing waves.

Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but if one has seen Reeves’ Witchfinder General, then one knows how well the Brits have carved out their own brand of dramas about incestuous human misery where no one walks away unscathed. They’re emotionally mean, and they don’t generally wallow in torture porn moments; maybe flashes of, but not for the sake of making people sick and wanting to run from the theatre as a rule.

Author David Peace’s Red Riding series is a fine member of the Bleak school, at least those three novels of the four that were dramatized into a trilogy for Channel 4. It’s a grim production that was broadcast around March of this year, and while the teleplays haven’t made it to home video yet, keep an eye out for them, because they’re worth a peek.

Each episode is given a date stamp, so 1974 was directed by Julian Jarrod (Kinky Books, Cracker), 1980 by James Marsh (Man on Wire), and 1983 by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie). They’re all good, they all make one want a stiff shot of Fernet Branca to ease the upset, and I’ve reviewed the lot based on the broadcast versions.

Released in tandem with the series is a soundtrack CD from Silva Screen that features decent suites of themes by each teleplay’s composer, and while an appropriately grim album, it’s also bloody good music by relative newcomers Adrian Johnston (Kinky Boots), Dickon Hinchliffe, and veteran Barrington Pheloung (Inspector Morse).

Each composer managers to evoke the period, remain stylistically true to the tone of the other scores, and make listeners feel utterly miserable. One doesn’t have to go as far as having another Fernet, but maybe listening to a happy tune to ease one back into the sunlight helps.

Also uploaded is Angels & Demons, the latest offering from Hans Zimmer and co-composers Atli Orvarsson and Lorne Balfe. The album has some strong moments, but the score has some similarities to a well-known Italian horror score by some iconic prog rockers…



- MRH

A Few More Soundtracks (Dark, and Light)

Just uploaded are a trio of new releases from the major studios:

- The Dark Knight (Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.), proving the collaboration between Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard in Batman Begins wasn't a fluke.

- Swing Vote (Hollywood), featuring a quartet of John Debney cues in this songs-and-score downloadable album.

- Meet Dave (Varese Sarabande), offering a surprisingly light and amusing comedy/adventure score from John Debney.

Coming next: early Michael Powell from MPI!

And imminent: Paul Jones on film – The Committee (from MVD Visual) and Peter Watkins’ Privilege (from Project X / New Yorker Films), and a few more soundtracks.



- MRH

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