Archive
RENAISSANCE – Nicholas Dodd
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To the outsider, the relationship between the composer and the orchestrator is a strange, symbiotic, largely misunderstood affair. Composers, who are ultimately responsible for the majority of the sound of their own work, pass off their musical outlines to others for “fleshing out” for a variety of reasons, time pressure being the most frequently cited. A seasoned composer like John Williams, whose recent scores have been orchestrated by John Neufeld and Eddie Karam, will hand over manuscripts which are 99% complete in detail, leaving the orchestrators with little to do other than write it out neatly and prepare it for copying. Others, on the other hand, will have little more than a melodic line written out, and it will be up to the orchestrator to convert this simple tune into something which can be played by a large symphony orchestra. It is in these circumstances that the influence of the orchestrator becomes apparent: he or she will add a great deal of their own musical personality to scores which are not yet fully realised, and depending on how successful the composer is, the familiar touch of a particular orchestrator can be heard, sometimes above that of the actual composer. Over the years, a great number of orchestrators have left their mark, from early pioneers like Hugo Friedhofer, through Alexander Courage and Arthur Morton and Grieg McRitchie, to today’s top talents like Mark McKenzie, Robert Elhai, Brad Dechter and Conrad Pope. Arguably the most identifiable of the current crop, however, is Nicholas Dodd. Read more…
ALL THE KING’S MEN – James Horner
Original Review by Clark Douglas
When it was originally slated for a late 2005 release, “All the King’s Men” was being touted as one of those “can’t-miss” Oscar nominees, with a good director and a cast that Academy members couldn’t help but drool over. Then it disappeared. Many rumors surfaced, as they always do, the most prominent one being that it was feared “All the King’s Men” couldn’t hold up against the 2005 competition. After a year of retooling and new marketing, it’s finally here, and despite the relatively weaker movie crop of 2006, “All the King’s Men” doesn’t stand a chance. The film is based on the 1946 novel of the same name, which was made into an Oscar-winning 1949 film. Our narrator and central figure, Jack Burden (Jude Law) tells us a familiar story… an idealistic, charming politician (Sean Penn) with big goals who was hindered by his weaknesses… most notably, his weakness for women. If Bill Clinton’s name is coming to mind, it should come as no surprise that James Carville played a major role in helping get this film off the ground. Read more…
THE BLACK DAHLIA – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The enduring mystery of the ‘black dahlia’ murder case has intrigued and confounded Hollywood since 1947. It involves the grisly death of an aspiring young actress named Elizabeth Short, who was found dead – literally chopped in half at the waist and dismembered – in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, 8 miles south of downtown Hollywood. The shocking brutality of her killing made her much more of a media figure in death than she ever was in life, who dubbed her “The Black Dahlia”, a pun on the title of the Alan Ladd film The Blue Dahlia, which had recently been released. Despite the efforts of hundreds of police, and the enormous media coverage, Short’s killer has still never been found, although the suspects at the time included such high profile names as publisher Norman Chandler, folk singer Woody Guthrie, gangster Bugsy Siegel, and even Orson Welles. This fascinating history is the basis of director Brian De Palma’s latest film, based on the novel by James Ellroy, which hypothesises one possible version events. The all-star cast includes Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, and Mia Kirshner as Short. Read more…
HOLLYWOODLAND – Marcelo Zarvos
Original Review by Clark Douglas
There’s been an awful lot of buzz surrounding “Hollywoodland” in the past month or two, and that’s not so surprising… at a first glance, the film looks like Oscar material. It’s a handsomely crafted movie boasting a cast with a lot of credentials. To top things off, the movie is based on a true story, which somehow always manages to increase the chances of a film during awards season. Given these elements, it is a bit surprising to find that “Hollywoodland”, on the whole, is rather unremarkable. No, it is not a bad film, and I wouldn’t think of advising anyone not to go see it, but at the same time, I can’t really recommend it. Read more…
LASSIE – Adrian Johnston
Original Review by Clark Douglas
The world’s most loveable bitch is back! I refer not to Sir Elton, but to Lassie, that much-acclaimed wonder dog to top all wonder dogs. Sure, Rin-Tin-Tin and Toto had their fifteen minutes, and Scooby-Doo isn’t far behind, but surely Lassie bests them all. If that fact was ever in doubt, this latest adventure seals the deal. One might expect a 2006 version of Lassie to feature a bunch of pop culture references, cameo appearances, in-jokes, and perhaps even a celebrity voiceover for Lassie herself. This “Lassie” is, thankfully, nothing like that, and we can be equally grateful that Timmy and his constantly-trapped leg are nowhere to be found, either. Director Charles Sturridge has crafted a beautiful retelling of Eric Knight’s original novel, which had previously been adapted into the charming “Lassie, Come Home” in 1943 with Elizabeth Taylor and Donald Crisp. Read more…
THE ILLUSIONIST – Philip Glass
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I make no secret of the fact that, for the most part, I’m not a huge fan of Philip Glass’s music. Over the years, scores such as Kundun, The Hours, and his ‘qatsi’ trilogy, which were all acclaimed by the mainstream music media, have generally left me cold and un-moved. His style of writing, the repeated rhythmic patterns, the micro-motifs, and the entrenched ‘minimalism’ just doesn’t appeal to my ear. As far as Philip Glass the composer is concerned, however, I gained a great deal of respect for him as a person when, several years ago, he began conducting a fascinating ‘experiment’ on himself by agreeing to score mainstream Hollywood studio movies – the Angelina Jolie thriller Taking Lives, the Stephen King adaptation Secret Window, and so on – simply to see whether he could do it or not. Whereas the contemporary classical music world tends to sneer at film music as being a lesser art form, Glass took the trouble to discover for himself just how difficult a job being a mainstream film composer can be, and in doing so endeared himself to many who have been arguing this very point for years – myself included. It perhaps comes as no surprise, therefore, to discover that his latest effort is a very high-profile, mainstream studio picture: the elegant magical romantic adventure, The Illusionist. Read more…
PULSE – Elia Cmiral
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Once upon a time, for a short period, Elia Cmiral was considered a ‘hot property for the future’ in Hollywood music circles. Having taken a tortuous circuit to the mainstream – via his Czech homeland, his adopted country of Sweden, and work on the TV show Nash Bridges – his first major film, the 1998 Robert De Niro thriller Ronin was pretty much roundly praised. Then, two years later, came the nadir: the ill-fated, critically derided Battlefield Earth, which almost single-handedly re-destroyed John Travolta’s career, and catapulted Cmiral into the realms of straight-to-video Z-grade horror movies. Pulse is only his fourth cinematic feature since the turn of the millennium and, unfortunately, neither the film or the score is likely to alter his career trajectory. Read more…
THE DESCENT – David Julyan
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
One of the best received and acclaimed British horror movies in many years, The Descent is the sophomore effort of young British director Neil Marshall, who looks set to become a hot cinematic property in years to come if his first two movies are anything to go by. Following on from his hugely popular debut Dog Soldiers, The Descent is a gut-wrenching, viscerally terrifying, white-knuckle rollercoaster of a movie which manages to terrify its audience despite its deceptively simple plot. After the death of her husband and daughter in a freak car accident a year previously, one-time thrill seeker Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) agrees to visit a gang of her old friends on holiday in the Appalachian mountains for a pot-holing expedition, hoping that rekindling the camaraderie will shake her out of her post-traumatic funk. The group – which includes her best friend Beth (Alex Reid), team leader Juno (Natalie Mendoza), and adrenaline junkie Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) – head off into the hills and, at first everything goes to plan. However, a few wrong turns and a freak accident later, the friends find themselves trapped deep in an underground cave system with no obvious way out. Worse yet, someone – or something – seems to be down there with them. Read more…
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE – Mychael Danna
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The ‘big movie’ at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, Little Miss Sunshine is the first feature film from acclaimed directors, husband-and-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who have helmed countless music videos and TV commercials over the years. The film is a road movie comedy with an intellectual heart, and follows the fortunes of a dysfunctional family who are driving cross-country in a VW bus to enter their daughter in the California Little Miss Sunshine pageant: dad Greg Kinnear, mom Toni Collette, Nietzche-loving son Paul Dano, pre-teen beauty queen Abigail Breslin, suicidal uncle Steve Carell, and coke-snorting grandpa Alan Arkin. It all sounds rather contrived, but by all accounts the film is a heart-warming comedy which also has the academic chops to tackle such meaty subjects as philosophy, family values, and the inherent exploitativeness of child beauty pageants. Read more…
MONSTER HOUSE – Douglas Pipes
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Discovering the work of a brand new composer is always an exciting event, especially when that composer’s debut score is a success. So, I hereby introduce the film music world to Douglas Pipes, composer of the new animated comedy-horror from Sony Pictures, Monster House. The film is a computer generated fable about a group of teenagers in suburban America who discover that their neighbour’s dilapidated, scary old house is really a living, breathing, monster – which has a penchant for devouring anyone, or anything, which ventures too close! Although the film owes a great deal to both Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling in terms of its story and overall tone, the film has been roundly praised for its excellent animation, multi-faceted appeal for both children and adults, witty screenplay, excellent voice cast (which includes Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Catherine O’Hara, Kathleen Turner and Jon Heder), as well as its music. Read more…
LADY IN THE WATER – James Newton Howard
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The critics have not been kind to N. Night Shyamalan of late. Ever since he burst onto the scene in 1999 with The Sixth Sense and was immediately hailed as the new wunderkind in Hollywood, the Indian-American writer/director has come under increasing fire for his subsequent projects, many of which were criticised for tricking the audience and relying on ‘last minute twist’ gimmicks. His seventh film as director, Lady in the Water, has come in for the harshest criticism of all; Shyamalan has been accused of everything from narcissism to self-indulgence, having cast himself in a significant pivotal role, and freely admitting that the entire story was cooked up from a bedtime story he made up for his children. Needless to say, I personally think it’s his best film since The Sixth Sense. Read more…
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When I wrote my review of Klaus Badelt’s score for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl back in 2003, my opening paragraph read: “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?”. Three years later, and Hans Zimmer’s score for the sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, has me thinking the exact same thing. Yet again, though, the bottom line is this: it may be inappropriate, and simplistic, and bear no relation to either the Disney ride or the musical genre conventions of pirate movies, but each and every time I listen to it, I have a bloody good time, and thoroughly enjoy the experience. Read more…
SUPERMAN RETURNS – John Ottman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
As much as Marco Beltrami was walking into a film music minefield by being asked to follow on from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen, John Ottman’s task following in the footsteps of John Williams on Superman Returns was probably too daunting to imagine. John Williams between the mid 1970s and the early 1980s was enjoying arguably the most creatively fruitful period of his career, writing Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. within eight years of each other. The original Superman came right in the middle of this golden period in 1978, and became an instant classic, with Williams’ music providing the right amount of thrills and spills and heroic ebullience the film required. The Superman March has since gone on to become one of film music’s most well-loved and recognisable themes. Read more…
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT – Brian Tyler
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve never actually seen any of the films, so it’s quite possible I could be missing something, but I’ve never fully understood how The Fast and the Furious became a franchise. The films themselves seem to be little more than elongated car chases filled with various kinds of sexy imagery – shiny chrome bodywork on the autos, scantily clad women draped over them – and star increasingly anonymous hunky male leads caught up in some kind of flaccid crime plot which involves having to drive at ludicrous speeds. Having already gone through Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Tyrese Gibson, the third instalment stars Lucas Black (all grown up after his performance as a kid in the Oscar-winning Sling Blade), as Sean Boswell, a teenage troublemaker sent to live with his strict military father in Japan, and who gets caught up in the underground world of ‘drift racing’ round the streets of Tokyo. Read more…
THE OMEN – Marco Beltrami
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When Marco Beltrami was asked to score director John Moore’s remake of The Omen, it’s difficult to know whether he jumped for joy, or groaned in dismay. Jerry Goldsmith won his one and only Academy Award for his score for the original Omen in 1976, and in doing so added a new dimension to the way horror movies are scored: the ‘Latin Chant’ has become so-over used these days that it’s almost a cliché, but back in the day when Goldsmith first used them, they were groundbreaking. Beltrami is, of course, a former student of Goldsmith’s at USC, and so stepping into his great teacher shoes must have been a daunting prospect indeed. The wonderful news is that, ultimately, Beltrami has produced a wonderful modern horror score which is original to Beltrami’s musical sensibility, but can also stand as a loving homage to his mentor. Read more…
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