Archive
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…
ROAD TO PERDITION – Thomas Newman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One thing that cannot be taken away from Thomas Newman is the fact that (with the possible exception of Elliot Goldenthal) he is, by far, the most original voice working in film music today. Newman has, literally, created a style of writing that no-one has heard before, and through recent films like American Beauty and Erin Brockovich and In the Bedroom, given Hollywood a unique musical perspective on modern life. Imitators follow his lead, but Newman’s unique brand of quirky rhythmic techniques and innovative orchestrations remain as one of today’s truly distinctive voices. What people tend to forget, though, is that for all his marimbas and sazes and funky monkeys, Newman is equally excellent at the “big orchestral thing”. Road to Perdition, his latest work, reaffirms that. Read more…
MEN IN BLACK II – Danny Elfman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s nice to see Danny Elfman being silly again. I don’t mean Pee-Wee Herman silly; God forbid, the music was great but if he ever scores another movie like that something very wrong will have happened to the world. It’s just that, for the last few years, Elfman seems to have become a very serious man, scoring dark and weighty films such as Proof of Life and Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Returning to the sci-fi chaos of the Men in Black universe has allowed Elfman to metaphorically let his hair down and go a bit wacky. He’s probably at his best when he does. Read more…
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