Archive
DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY – Randy Edelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Certain film stars, especially those who die young, often attain a mythical status in popular culture after their death. James Dean is one of these figures. Marilyn Monroe is another. More recently, people like Chadwick Boseman are likely to maintain a significant profile for many years to come. For Asian Americans, their iconic star who died too soon is Bruce Lee, the San Francisco-born actor whose passion for martial arts – and his combining of those two things on film – made him a star. Lee died from a cerebral edema in July 1973 at the age of 32 with just a handful of released films – including The Big Boss and Fist of Fury – to his name; Enter the Dragon, his most famous film, and Game of Death, would be released posthumously. Despite his brief period of stardom, Lee’s movies revolutionized martial arts cinema, with their blend of realistic fight scenes and philosophical overtones. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a biopic based on his life; it stars Jason Scott Lee (no relation) in the title role, co-stars Lauren Holly as his wife Linda, and features Nancy Kwan, Robert Wagner, and Michael Learned in supporting roles. The film is directed by Rob Cohen, and has an original score by Randy Edelman. Read more…
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS – Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans is a classic of early American literature. It was published as part of his ‘Leatherstocking Tales’ series and chronicles a set of highly romanticized adventures set in pre-independence America about the life of frontiersman Nathaniel ‘Hawkeye’ Bumppo, a fictional character based on real-life contemporaries like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain were battling for control of North America, and sees Hawkeye becoming embroiled in the conflict when he is tasked with safely transporting Alice and Cora Munro, the two daughters of a British colonel, away from Fort William Henry, which us under siege by the French. Hawkeye enlists the help of his friend Chingachgook and Chingachgook’s son Uncas – the Mohicans of the title – and together they embark on a thrilling adventure which sees them getting involved in the political and social issues of the day, trekking across the inhospitable and rugged countryside, and clashing with the Huron, deadly rivals of the Mohicans. Read more…
COME SEE THE PARADISE – Randy Edelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every once in a while, a piece of film music transcends the movie for which it was written and takes on a life of its own, becoming enormously famous and popular with the general public, despite the majority of them having no idea where it originally came from. If you went to a cinema at any point in the 1990s and watched the trailers you will have heard one such cue: a driving, momentum-filled piece of drama and intensity, filled with surging strings, powerful percussion, epic cymbal clashes, even a cimbalom, before it all ends on a gripping, tension-filled chord. It was used in the trailers for everything from Clear and Present Danger to A Few Good Men, Patriot Games to Philadelphia, Rob Roy, and so many others, and it was of course the legendary “Fire in a Brooklyn Theatre”. But, originally, it came from this score – Come See the Paradise by Randy Edelman. Read more…
KINDERGARTEN COP – Randy Edelman
THROWBACK THIRTY
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having spent most of the 1980s playing a series of unstoppable villains or muscled action heroes in films like Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Commando, and Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to add a new aspect to his career in the early 1990s by starring in a series of more family-friendly comedies. He started in 1988 with Twins, in which he was paired with the pint-sized Danny De Vito, but it was not until 1990 that he was asked to carry a comedy all by himself. That movie was Kindergarten Cop, directed by Ivan Reitman, and saw Schwarzenegger starring as John Kimball, a tough LAPD narcotics detective forced to go undercover as a teacher in an Oregon kindergarten in order to help protect the ex-wife of a ruthless drug dealer. Having spent his entire career breaking rules – and the heads of criminals – Kimball of course finds himself wholly unprepared to look after a class full of raucous pre-teens, and hilarity ensues, while the threat of the drug dealer looms large in the background. The film co-starred Penelope Ann Miller, Pamela Reed, and Richard Tyson, and was an enormous box office hit, grossing more than $200 million at the box office, and proving that Schwarzenegger’s star power was not limited to fist-fights and gun battles. Read more…
A SYMPHONY OF HOPE: THE HAITI PROJECT – Christopher Lennertz et al.
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
On January 12, 2010, the city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti was effectively flattened when it was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Within a matter of seconds over 50,000 people had been killed, and over a million people left homeless. Diseases such as cholera blighted the survivors and thwarted relief efforts, and since then the humanitarian crisis in the country has reached staggering proportions, with over 250,000 residences destroyed and basic services and infrastructure left in ruins. Reacting to the global call for help, film composer Christopher Lennertz was inspired to act. Calling upon his fellow composers and other members of the Los Angeles film music community of musicians and engineers, Lennertz teamed up with the charity Hands Together to create A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project, a musical fundraising project intended to help the people of Haiti. Read more…
A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project
Last Saturday, March 26th, I had the honor attending the recording sessions for “A Symphony of Hope: The Haiti Project” at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, CA. The brainchild of composer Christopher Lennertz, the Symphony is musical fundraising project designed to help the people of Haiti in their desperate time of need.
A year after the terrible earthquake which destroyed the lives of thousands of Haitians, it was clear to Lennertz that the need for assistance was greater than ever. In response Lennertz came up with the idea of the “Symphony of Hope”, and invited 25 leading film composers to collaborate with him on a project to benefit the Haiti Earthquake Relief fund. Read more…
THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The fourth film in the Mummy franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, was unceremoniously ripped apart by film critics as by the far the weakest link in the franchise. The films have been getting progressively worse and worse as they made their way from The Mummy to The Mummy Returns to The Scorpion King to this film, and straight-to-DVD sequels notwithstanding, director Rob Cohen’s film looks to have finally sounded the death knell over what was once a successful set of films. Brendan Fraser returns as adventurous archaeologist Rick O’Connell, who this time finds himself in the far east in the company of his wife Evie (Maria Bello) and almost-adult son Alex (Luke Ford), crossing paths with the resurrected mummy of an ancient Chinese emperor named Han (Jet Li), whose vengeful spirit was encased – along with his vast army – inside terracotta statues by a sorceress (Michelle Yeoh). Read more…
27 DRESSES – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A breezy romantic comedy starring Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl and directed by Anne Fletcher, 27 Dresses is a film about a perennial ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride’. After serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, Jane Nichols (Heigl) finally resigns herself to her matrimony-less fate when her sister Tess (Malin Åkerman) accepts a proposal of marriage from her boss George (Edward Burns), whom Jane secretly loves. Into the situation comes reporter Kevin (James Marsden), a frustrated serious journalist stuck covering the society pages, and who has a view of marriage as cynical as Jane’s. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, it’s not difficult to predict what happens next. Read more…
BALLS OF FURY – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
A somewhat peculiar movie which combines, of all things, kung-fu with ping-pong, Balls of Fury was a vehicle for up-and-coming comedy actor Dan Fogler. Fogler plays down-and-out former professional ping-pong champion Randy Daytona, whose life is changed when FBI Agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) recruits him for a secret mission: to travel to the far east and compete in a legendary “extreme ping pong” tournament organized by the nefarious Feng (Christopher Walken) – who is on the FBI’s most wanted list, and also happens to be the man who murdered Fogler’s father. Read more…
UNDERDOG – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
All you really need to know about Underdog is that it’s about a canine super-hero voiced by Jason Lee, based on an animated cartoon series which debuted in 1964. That one line plot description gives you ample opportunity to decide what Frederik Du Chau’s film is all about – and whether it’s a worthwhile investment of time to seek it out. Despite a fairly impressive supporting cast that includes Amy Adams, Brad Garrett, James Belushi and Peter Dinklage, the film was a comparative commercial failure; this lack of financial success also ultimately led to the mainstream cancellation of the planned soundtrack CD, which would have featured Randy Edelman’s original score. Read more…
SURVIVING CHRISTMAS – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Containing what is surely one of the most ill-advised premises ever to drive a mainstream studio movie, Surviving Christmas is one those most unfortunate creations: a Ben Affleck comedy. Ben stars as Drew Latham, one of those fabulously wealthy advertising executives who only exists in the movies, who is facing the holiday season alone after being dumped by his girlfriend (Jennifer Morrison). Desperate for companionship, Drew decides to return to his childhood home: now the house of the Valco family – father Tom (James Gandolfini), mother Christine (Catherine O’Hara), son Brian (Josh Zuckerman), and daughter Alicia (Christina Applegate). Being one of those movie characters who is both amazingly rich and slightly mentally unbalanced, Drew does what any normal person would do and offers the Valcos $250,000 if they will “pretend” to be his family over the Christmas period. Hilarity, as they say, ensues – or in this case, not, as the film sank without a trace at the US Box Office. Read more…
GODS AND GENERALS – John Frizzell and Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
After the massive success of Randy Edelman’s Gettysburg score in 1993, it was only natural that he should be involved in the music for the sequel. However, whereas most of the music in Gettysburg made surprisingly good use of an anachronistic synthesiser and string amalgam, the music for Gods and Generals is more traditionally orchestral, employing powerful instrumental and choral forces without anything remotely electronic to be heard. The most surprising – and pleasing – thing about it is that it was written by John Frizzell, who is enjoying something of a career renaissance with what is easily his most high-profile and accomplished score since Alien Resurrection. Rather than being an actual sequel to Gettysburg, Gods and Generals actually covers much of the same ground, but from different perspectives and points of view, notably that of the legendary General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephen Lang) and the events of 1861-1863, leading up to the legendary battle at Gettysburg. Gods and Generals is directed by Robert F. Maxwell, from the book by Jeff Shaara, features a star-studded supporting cast including Jeff Daniels, Mira Sorvino, Kevin Conway, Bill Campbell, and Robert Duvall as General Robert E. Lee, and clocks in at a staggering 3 hours 40 minutes running time. Read more…
THE WHOLE NINE YARDS – Randy Edelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Just what the world has been waiting for – a new Randy Edelman score. After spending 1999 as a virtual bystander, the synthmeister has burst back onto the film scoring scene with an incredible five scores in just over than twelve weeks, the first of which is this one: the gangster comedy The Whole Nine Yards. A smash hit in America, the film stars Bruce Willis as good-natured hitman Jimmy the Tulip who, in an attempt to get away from the gaze of the authorities, moves into a new house in suburban Montreal. However, dentist Matthew Perry does not take kindly to his new neighbour, and hi-jinks ensue – especially when the men in dark glasses start appearing at his front door! The film is directed by Jonathan Lynn, who previously made My Cousin Vinny and The Distinguished Gentleman, and co-stars Rosanna Arquette, Natasha Henstridge, Kevin Pollak and Oscar-nominee Michael Clarke Duncan. Read more…
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