Archive
RESCUE DAWN – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I’ve been watching the third season of the surprisingly wonderful American version of “The Office” on DVD. Those of you who don’t know anything about the show, bear with me… I’ll talk about the music in a second. Anyway, there’s this one episode where the ever-hungry Kevin is attempting to decide whether to go to the office party where all the fun is, or the office party with brownies and cupcakes being held by the most un-fun lady in the office (named Angela). Kevin looks at the camera, and ponders aloud… “Hmm… Brownies (smile)… Angela (frown)… Brownies (smile)… Angela (frown).” Read more…
TMNT (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES) – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Clark Douglas
I was rather irritated when I first heard that the title of the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie would be “TMNT”. “Sheesh,” I thought, “haven’t we had enough of finding a shorter way to say everything in America? Why do we have to frickin’ abbreviate everything? Besides, what sounds cooler than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? It’s just fun to say!” However, after seeing the film, it seems the movie has an appropriate title. These turtles are many things, but they most certainly aren’t teenagers. “Tired” would fit the bill a bit more accurately. Read more…
PREMONITION – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Clark Douglas
Let’s just be upfront about things. “Premonition”, the latest Sandra Bullock vehicle, is a pretty ridiculous time-bending film, as almost every time-bending film is. Let’s face it, very few movies have been able to pull off a “time warp” theory convincingly… but some of them work in spite of it. I have been unusually kind to these movies in recent days. I gave Bullock’s previous time-bending romance “The Lake House” a kind review, and also tossed some generous comments in the direction of Tony Scott’s “Déjà Vu”. However, I will not show such mercy to “Premonition”, and as with all of those other films, my opinion has very little to do with the time warp element. Read more…
POSEIDON – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest addition to the ever-growing list of unnecessary Hollywood remakes (following hot on the heels of the likes of The Pink Panther and When a Stranger Calls), Poseidon is a big-budget action-adventure disaster movie directed by Wolfgang Peterson – who is himself no stranger to watery problems, having previously directed Das Boot and A Perfect Storm. When a luxury cruise liner is capsized by a massive tidal wave on New Year’s Eve, the surviving revellers – Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum – find themselves desperately climbing through the wrecked ship, trying to escape before the whole thing sinks and drowns them all… and that’s basically it. It’s a very simple plot, which sticks close to director Ronald Neame’s 1972 original (which starred Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Roddy McDowall among others), but will be totally redundant for anyone who remembers it, or its classic John Williams score. Read more…
THE PROMISE – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
So, here’s a statement you won’t see me make very often: The Promise is the best score of Klaus Badelt’s career, and one of the best scores to be released in the first half of 2006. As I have written on many, many occasions, one of my favourite styles of film music is the combination of a western orchestra with solo performances by Chinese instruments, and Badelt’s score for director Chen Kaige’s visually sumptuous film is the latest to join a long and distinguished list, along with the likes of Rachel Portman’s The Joy Luck Club, Conrad Pope’s Pavilion of Women, Basil Poledouris’s The Touch, and Tan Dun’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Read more…
CONSTANTINE – Brian Tyler and Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest in a long line of comic book adaptations to hit the silver screen, director Francis Lawrence’s film Constantine is based on the classic Hellblazer story by Jamie Delano and Garth Ellis, transposed from Liverpool to contemporary Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves stars as John Constantine, a man cursed with the awareness that a war between angels and demons is taking place on Earth. Having been driven insane by his visions, he committed suicide as a youth, but was sent back by the angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) and charged with destroying as many demons as possible, in order to atone for his sins and be able to enter Heaven again when he finally dies for the second time. However, as the story begins, Constantine finds himself facing his biggest challenge yet: with the help of a similarly gifted Los Angeles cop (Rachel Weisz), Constantine must thwart the plans of Satan’s son, who is planning to be re-born on Earth himself. Read more…
NED KELLY – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Peter Simons
Now here’s a composer who has shot to stardom at rocket speed: Klaus Badelt. Whether or not he really deserved all the projects he’s worked on remains a hot issue on many a forum. I, for one, have yet to hear a soundtrack by Badelt that is not remarkably derivative of other scores. That is not to say his albums aren’t enjoyable, no siree! His music for The Time Machine, albeit severely “inspired” by many other scores, was one of last year’s highlights. Badelt’s latest, Ned Kelly, is no exception. It too shares so many similarities with other scores that I’ve had to look at the cover to remember which CD I put on. Not that the score isn’t enjoyable, though. It is in fact quite beautiful, if you can get past the obvious influences. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In giving Pirates of the Caribbean a four-star review, I’m making myself undergo a crisis of conscience. How can I, as a “respected” reviewer of film music, give such a high rating to a score which is quite blatantly inappropriate for the movie, predictable to the extreme, and derivative of virtually every major Media Ventures action score written in the last ten years? The answer, simply, is that it is a whole lot of fun. Pirates of the Caribbean is possibly the ultimate soundtrack guilty pleasure. Directed by Gore Verbinski, Pirates of the Caribbean is a large-budget action film based on the classic ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, in which visitors are treated to a stately underground boat ride through the old Caribbean, where animatronic pirates shiver their timbers on a daily basis. Read more…
THE RECRUIT – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Peter Simons
Ever since John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams left the Media Ventures studio, Klaus Badelt has been busier than ever. We are barely halfway through 2003 and already the young composer has scored five movies, including the Aussie drama Ned Kelly, the Matrix rip-off Equilibrium, and the swashbuckler Pirates of the Caribbean. And then there is this one: The Recruit. A thriller directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Colin Farrell as a brilliant CIA-trainee who is asked by his mentor (Al Pacino) to detect a mole operating within the Agency. If nothing more, Donaldson has created an entertaining movie. Donaldson is a bit of a stealthy director in Hollywood, despite several entertaining high-profile movies such as Species, Dante’s Peak and Thirteen Days. For the music Donaldson has turned to a different composer for every new movie, creating an impressive track record of having worked with the likes of Vangelis, Maurice Jarre, Mark Isham, Chris Young and Trevor Jones. For The Recruit, he turned to Klaus Badelt. Read more…
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER – Klaus Badelt
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It may be a slightly early in a composer’s career to be making statements such as this, but I would be willing to bet that, within five years, Klaus Badelt is the most successful and respected Media Ventures graduate Hollywood has yet seen. This may seem like faint praise, forever lumping him in with the MV crew and making him guilty by association, but when you consider the career free-fall of composers such as Mark Mancina and Nick Glennie-Smith in recent years, the two 2002 scores by the young German promise excellent things. The second of his two scores, after The Time Machine, is K-19: The Widowmaker, a serious and somber submarine thriller starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film is set in a tense 1961, the time at which the cold war between the USA the former Soviet Union was at its worst, on board the pride of the Soviet Navy’s submarine division: warship K-19. Hoping to nullify the American threat of nuclear attack, K-19 is placed strategically off the coast of America under a new commander, Alexi Vostrikov (Ford), who replaced the ship’s popular former captain Polenin (Neeson). However, when the K-19’s nuclear reactor malfunctions, tensions begin to surface – not just because of the threat of a meltdown onboard, but because crew members still loyal to Polenin threaten to mutiny. Read more…
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