Archive
Golden Globe Nominations 2001
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has announced the nominations for the 59th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2001.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- CRAIG ARMSTRONG for Moulin Rouge!
- ANGELO BADALAMENTI for Mulholland Drive
- PIETER BOURKE and LISA GERRARD for Ali
- JAMES HORNER for A Beautiful Mind
- HOWARD SHORE for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- JOHN WILLIAMS for A.I. Artificial Intelligence
- CHRISTOPHER YOUNG for The Shipping News
- HANS ZIMMER for Pearl Harbor
These are first nominations for Armstrong, Shore, and Young. It is the second nomination for Bourke, the second nomination for Badalamenti, the third nomination for Gerrard, the fourth nomination for Zimmer, the fifth nomination for Horner, and the nineteenth nomination for Williams. Gerrard previously won for Gladiator in 2000. Zimmer previously won for The Lion King in 1994 and Gladiator in 2000. Williams previously won for Jaws in 1975, Star Wars in 1977, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- DAVID BAERWALD for “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge!
- ENYA BRENNAN, NICKY RYAN, and ROMA RYAN for “May It Be” from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- PAUL MCCARTNEY for “Vanilla Sky” from Vanilla Sky
- GORDON SUMNER (STING) for “Until” from Kate & Leopold
- DIANE WARREN for “There You’ll Be” from Pearl Harbor
The winners of the 59th Golden Globe Awards will be announced on January 20, 2002.
IRIS – James Horner
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In collaborating with the virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell on his latest score, Iris, it would seem that James Horner is developing a reputation akin to that of John Williams in the way that he is attracting top-quality classical talent with whom to work. With Charlotte Church also working with him on A Beautiful Mind, these two latest scores could be taken as an indication that Horner’s standing in the crossover classical music world is growing at a steady rate, after the commercial successes and album sales his scores have enjoyed of late. It is perhaps worth noting that Horner, Bell and Church are all contracted Sony Classical artists, and it is no coincidence that Sony are marketing both scores by heavily publicizing the soloists, but the optimist in me would like to think that it is Horner’s creativity rather than a marketing strategy who have brought them together. Nevertheless, an artist as talented as Bell brings a definite sense of class to the project – and it doesn’t hurt that Horner’s music is superb in its own right. Read more…
LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMÉLIE POULAIN/AMÉLIE – Yann Tiersen
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Every year, it seems at least one foreign language film takes the international box office by storm, becoming the art-house crossover darling of its time. In 2000, it was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Before that, we had Life is Beautiful, Run Lola Run and Il Postino. This year we have Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain – or Amélie, as it has become known across the world. Already a massive success in its native France, Amélie subsequently raced to the top of the North American charts, has been nominated for multiple major awards, looks to be a shoo-in for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and has increased further the reputations of its director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, leading actress Audrey Tautou, and composer Yann Tiersen. Read more…
LIFE AS A HOUSE – Mark Isham
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Despite his well-founded reputation as an accomplished jazzer, Mark Isham has shown on several occasions a real aptitude for writing quiet, emotional music that tugs at the heartstrings. His latest score, for the moving drama Life as a House, is one of these, and fits in well with earlier works such as Nell, October Sky and Fly Away Home, The film, directed by Irwin Winkler, stars Kevin Kline as George, a man for whom life is not going well: he has split from his wife Robin (Kristin Scott-Thomas), is estranged from his wayward son Sam (Hayden Christensen), has lost his job, and is diagnosed terminal cancer and given four months to live. Feeling a need to put his life and affairs in order before he shuffles off the mortal coil, George asks Sam to help him as he embarks on an ambitious project to knock down and re-build his house on the coast, in the hope that, through their shared experiences, father and will reconcile their differences before he passes away. However, Sam does not relish the prospect of working hard on a house with a father he has no interest in, when he could be drinking and partying with his buddies… that is, until mom starts to reappear on the scene, and he begins a tentative relationship with Alyssa (Jena Malone), the pretty girl-next-door. Read more…
FROM HELL – Trevor Jones
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a while since Trevor Jones hit the film music world with a new cinematic score. In recent years, the affable South African has concentrated mainly on writing for low budget, low profile big screen and television scores, scoring critical successes with efforts such as Merlin and Cleopatra, and commercial success with Notting Hill, but little public recognition. The political drama Thirteen Days went some way to redressing that balance in the early months of 2001, and continues with From Hell, a dark thriller set in 18th Century London. Read more…
MULHOLLAND DRIVE – Angelo Badalamenti
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Angelo Badalamenti: what a turn around. After knocking my socks off with The Beach and The Straight Story, and converting me into a fan of the New Yorker’s unique style of film music, he goes and pulls a score like this on me. Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch have always been somewhat unconventional, as works like Wild at Heart and Lost Highway attest, but Mulholland Drive could almost be taken as an exercise in sound design than anything resembling conventional music. As someone who has been around scoring sessions enough to recognize that ALL film music takes talent to create, I would not be rude enough to suggest that Badalamenti did not know what he was doing with this score… but that doesn’t mean I have to like it in any way shape or form. Read more…
Remembering Alex North, 1910-1991
Composer Alex North died ten years ago today, on September 8, 1991, at his home in Los Angeles, California, after a short illness. He was 80.
North was born Isadore Soifer in December 1910, in Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. His father died during surgery for appendicitis in 1915, leaving the family in severe with financial hardships. In the late 1920s, Isadore’s older brother Jacob began writing articles for radical labor publications, and to shield his family from right wing political persecution, Jacob adopted the pseudonym “Joseph North”. Soon the family followed his lead, and Isadore Soifer became Alex North.
In the Second World War, North served as a captain in the U.S. Army Special Services division, where he was responsible for “self-entertainment” programs in mental hospitals. He also composed music for more than twenty-six documentary films for the Office of War Information, which kick-started his love for film music.
After the war North studied at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School in New York, and in Moscow with noted Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. A lifelong advocate for serious music in American life, he began his career composing for theater and modern dance, working with such figures as John Steinbeck and choreographer Anna Sokolow.
North’s Hollywood breakthrough came in 1951 with director Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire, where his use of dissonance, blues motifs, and psychological underscoring created a new musical language for film. North’s score for director Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960), with its sweeping orchestral palette and stirring themes, remains a landmark of epic film scoring. Read more…
GHOSTS OF MARS – John Carpenter
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
When is a soundtrack not a soundtrack? When it’s a rock album. Or when it’s called John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars. In my opinion, the sole purpose of a film soundtrack is to elicit an emotional response from the audience watching the film it accompanies. All other considerations about whether it is considered “good music” are secondary to the fact that its creation is to support a visual image. By saying this, I am almost making myself redundant as a reviewer of soundtrack albums as opposed to scores as heard in the film, but the point I am trying to make is that a good soundtrack album doesn’t necessarily mean that it contains a good score, and vice versa. This album is a case in point. Read more…
CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN – Stephen Warbeck
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Stephen Warbeck just gets better and better. I have to admit that, when he won the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love back in 1998, I dismissed his victory as nothing but sheer luck – a middling composer being fortuitously attached to the right movie at the right time. As time has passed, however, my opinion has changed. Fanny and Elvis and Mystery Men were OK. Billy Elliott was good. Quills was excellent. And now, with Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Warbeck has finally emerged as a bonafide competitor to John Barry, George Fenton and Rachel Portman as the British composer of choice for romantic dramas. Read more…
AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY – Cliff Eidelman
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I’ve waited three long years to type this sentence. Cliff Eidelman is back. The TV movie Witness Protection notwithstanding, it’s been a lean three years away from the scoring circuit for this extremely talented 34-year-old composer, whose career seemed to have completely stopped in its tracks. After bursting onto the scene in 1991 with his score for Star Trek VI, and enjoying six or seven years of comparative success, Eidelman suddenly stopped getting hired, despite him applying to score dozens for movies and narrowly failing to make the cut at the final hurdle. His last album of music was from the family drama One True Thing, in 1998 – until now. Read more…
FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN – Elliot Goldenthal
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
It’s been a long wait since Titus for Elliot Goldenthal to spring a new score on the world, but it has been more than worth it. His work on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is, from a pure enjoyment perspective, possibly the best of his career to date. I say that it is his best from an enjoyment perspective not because this score is his most challenging or complex – those accolades are reserved for works such as Alien 3 and Titus – but because, in terms of themes and developments, and for old-fashioned beauty, Final Fantasy has them all licked. It’s a dark, dark, score, make no mistake, but it contains more than its fair share of moments in the light. Read more…
LARA CROFT – TOMB RAIDER – Graeme Revell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Few films have had as troubled a post-production than Tomb Raider, the first big-screen outing for the pneumatically-breasted super heroine from the world of computer games, Lara Croft. Musically, the entire set-up was a shambles, eclipsing even such scoring debacles as The Avengers and What Dreams May Come. The first name attached to the project was John Powell; then, game composer Nathan McCree was announced as being the film’s composer. To the utter dismay of score fans, it was then announced that dance DJ Norman Cook (aka Fat Boy Slim) would co-ordinate the soundtrack. Then, in an amazing about-face, Cook was bumped off and Michael Kamen came in. Sigh of relief. But then, with just weeks to go before the film’s high profile premiere, Kamen downed tools and bolted the project, leaving poor old Graeme Revell with less than 10 days to write and record a 50-minute score for a full orchestra augmented by electronics. The Hollywood composing merry-go-round seemingly knows no depths of stupidity. Read more…
EVOLUTION – John Powell
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Having never been particularly enamored with either of their individual works, I have often wondered just what kind of chemistry develops when Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell work together to enable them to write such charming and ebullient scores as Antz, Chicken Run and Shrek. I have also often wondered whose musical personality is the more dominant when it comes to these magnificent animation works – and now I think I know. Evolution, John Powell’s first major solo score since Face/Off and Forces of Nature, is a definite kissing cousin to the Dreamworks hits in terms of tone and style, and has more than changed my attitude of the Englishman as a composer in his own right. Read more…
PEARL HARBOR – Hans Zimmer
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Director Michael Bay so much wanted for Pearl Harbor to be his Titanic – an epic love story that takes place within one of the most tragic, violent, and talked-about events of the 20th Century. But, with Michael Bay being the director he is, it had to not just equal, but eclipse James Cameron’s Oscar-winning watery thriller. Instead of sinking one boat, Bay sinks a couple of dozen. Not content with presenting a simple boy-meets-girl story, Bay turns Pearl Harbor’s romance into a love triangle. And, in an effort to outdo James Horner’s work on the earlier film, Bay hired Hans Zimmer to wring every last emotional drop from his audience and his listeners. And he succeeds – almost. Read more…
THE LUZHIN DEFENCE – Alexandre Desplat
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
What’s the sound of a French composer falling off a tall building? Desplat. I’m opening this review with a joke because I’ll wager that most of you have never heard of Alexandre Desplat, the French-born composer of The Luzhin Defence. Before I saw this film and heard this album, I knew his name, and could I list a few of his previous films (Innocent Lies, A Self Made Hero, Love Etc.), but nothing beyond that. Even now, biographical details about Desplat’s life are sketchy – I don’t even know how old he is – but I do know this: he is a composer of considerable talent. Read more…
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